If Your Strategy Starts With "We Will," It Probably Isn't Strategy

In my advisory work, I sit in on a lot of meetings with principals of AEC firms. A common scenario unfolds after losing a significant pursuit to a competitor. The response is immediate: hire more BD staff, add a service line, open another office, expand geographically. Ninety minutes later, there is a whiteboard full of ideas and something that looks like a strategy.

Except it isn't.

What I rarely hear is the harder question: Why did we lose? More importantly, what was our contribution to the loss?

Maybe the competitor understands the client better. Maybe our value proposition isn't as differentiated as we think. Maybe we're competing in markets where scale doesn't matter. Or maybe we've never clearly decided where we want to compete and why we believe we can win there.

Those are strategy questions.

Strategy is about choices and beliefs. What do we stand for? Where will we compete? What do we know about our clients? Why are we positioned to win?

Planning comes after that.

Here's a simple test:

• If the sentence starts with "we will," it's probably a plan.

• If it starts with "we believe," you're getting closer to strategy.

"We will open a Calgary office" is a plan.

"We believe mid-sized municipal clients will pay for integrated planning and engineering services, and that we are better positioned than competitors to deliver them" is strategy.

If you genuinely believe the second statement, opening a Calgary office may be one logical action. The plan should flow from the belief, not the other way around.

Too often, firms decide what they're going to do and then reverse-engineer a strategic rationale. It rarely sticks because people understand the action but not the underlying choice.

There's another important factor: who is in the room, and when.

Principals should wrestle with the strategic choices. Where will we compete? What won't we do? What are we willing to invest in? Those conversations require evidence, challenge, and difficult trade-offs.

Then widen the room.

Bring in project managers, emerging leaders, and those closest to clients and delivery. Give them the choices and ask how to make them real. They'll identify risks, challenge assumptions, and help turn strategy into action.

The best firms don't have everyone in every conversation. They have the right people in the right conversation at the right time.

Strategy creates the choices. Planning turns those choices into action. When people understand both, alignment becomes much easier.

Maybe the question isn't whether your firm has a strategic plan.

Maybe it's whether you're creating the right rooms for strategy to actually happen.