Lessons in "Strategy" writing: Turning vision into a real direction for the future

Unpacking the confusion, commitment, and communication required to make Strategy actually work

When we kicked off our first formal corporate strategy effort at Mozilla, I thought the hard part would be surfacing tradeoffs or aligning priorities. Turns out, the hard part came earlier.

After a full day of SWOT exercises, a senior leader pulled me aside and asked genuinely: “What do you mean by corporate strategy? What will it contain?”

That moment stayed with me. Because strategy means different things to different people:

• Is it a North Star?

• A set of choices?

• A rigid framework?

The answer is “yes to all of the above”, depending on who you ask. But here’s what we defined and found useful instead:

Strategy is a set of long-term choices we make — and don’t make — to focus the company on what truly matters.

Why Strategy feels abstract (and is still so necessary)

Strategy can feel maddeningly vague.But when done right, at the end of the day it is about high-stakes problem-solving. It’s where inspiration meets constraint. And more than anything, it’s where execution begins or fails.

I recommend Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt, a bit academic, but dead on: strategy is about diagnosing the real issues, making hard choices, and aligning action.

Skip the fancy frameworks. Do the real work.

I often get asked: “Should we use PESTLE? Porter’s Five Forces?” My answer: only if they help you think better. Not all frameworks apply evenly to all environments.

I tend to skip most frameworks except a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis. Leaning on external research, internal interviews, and good judgment is critical and knowing what to hone in on, is even more important. Because strategy isn’t a test of frameworks, it’s a test of focus.

Death by a thousand shrugs

A Strategy is only as good as the people who carry it. You don’t “land” a Strategy with a deck reveal. You land it by equipping the loudest, most influential voices to carry it when you’re not in the room. Connecting what we plan to do with the why is important.

Leaders who dismiss the communications and cultural element of a Strategy are signaling that alignment doesn’t matter.

Strategy sets the course, execution gets you there

Execution without Strategy is chaos. Strategy without execution is a wish list. Both matter. At Mozilla, we landed a Strategy and connected it to priorities, roadmaps and goals. That takes communication loops, clarity of roles, and decision rights. It also takes consistency of communication & expecattions to build trust especially in high-change environments.

In conclusion

I have experienced that strategy isn’t just about making bets. It sometimes has to be about recommitting to who we are, even as we evolve how we operate. But more than anything, it means helping people see that strategy isn’t a doc you publish. It’s a habit. A way of thinking. A shared language for the hard work ahead. And that’s when it becomes real.