That which leads

I was tired. We all were. No amount of delicious Greek coffee was going to rescue this type of tiredness. It wasn't from all the hours – although there were plenty consumed. It was from that very human feeling that we'd had a frantic few months, with lots of ups and downs, and yet, we couldn't actually name a single thing that moved the business towards something valuable.

Lot's of busy work. Lot's of showing up, turning up, working, meeting, discussing and trying things, and yet, here we were at the finish line more or less exactly where we started, only wearier. Stuff created, no value to point at, and thirty or so burning-out people wondering what went wrong. I'm sure you've felt that too. I think we all have.

The thing missing from those few months wasn't effort – my word, we gave plenty of that. What was missing was direction. And direction, rather awkwardly, tends to go by a name that sounds like it belongs to management consultants and boardrooms and laminated posters next to lifts in the office: strategy. Which is a shame, because underneath the corporate dryness it's one of the most powerful things we have. Or don't, as we found out after those busy few months.

The word strategy comes from the Greek for the office of a general – the act of leading, of setting out with intent – and over the centuries it softened away from the military origins into something simpler and, I think, far better: that which leads. Not that which controls. Not that which predicts. Not that which mandates. Not that which hopes and prays and wishes. Not that which demands. Nope, that which leads.

Strategy is nothing more mysterious than the act of creating a direction, so that you, me, anyone moving alongside you, can act with confidence, align around the direction and invest honest time, energy and attention moving together. It is not a vague sense of somewhere over there, where 1000 people scatter themselves across fifteen reasonable paths at once.

Because that scattering is the real cost of not having one. Without a direction, energy doesn't stop being spent and vanish; it just sprays, all over the place, and often on the wrong things. Attention get scattered across seemingly important, but likely competing work. You work hard, often staggeringly hard, and somehow end up on the east side of Sheffield, whilst some are in London, a few more ended up in Amsterdam, and some are in Côte d'Azur, in the South of France, lounging on sunbeds and sipping a delightful French 75.

Effort climbs and yet valuable progress stubbornly doesn't, and the super frustrating part is that you often can't even see why – because from the inside, frantic activity feels exactly like getting somewhere. It's only at the finish line that you notice the value didn't emerge, the wheels were spinning, and you and a few others are sipping a John Smiths, whilst the French 75 people have swiftly moved on to a Boulevardier.

I do like my French cocktails by the way.

So what does having a direction actually take? Less than the hundred-page document I once saw a leader, literally, read at a strategy refresh meeting. And rather more than fifteen New Year's resolutions too. In practice it rests on three important things.

The first is a picture of where you're going that's genuinely worth going to. Somewhere compelling, exciting, interesting, important and commercially viable. Not a list of targets. Not a column of resolutions. Not a made up unicorn place written for a different company. A vivid, clear, felt sense of what you're trying to become, who you're trying to serve and what that looks and feels like. The future you're reaching toward, described well enough that you can see yourself standing inside it, and so can other people. This matters far more than we tend to credit, because few of us actually move toward metrics, or a list of resolutions, or market share numbers. We move toward a story of the future. We move toward meaning, toward possibility, toward a vision of things we can picture and want, towards something that connects on an emotional level.

Describe that future vividly and everything downstream gets easier; leave it as a column of numbers with market share and CapEx investments, and you'll spend your days managing a spreadsheet and not leading the very people who might make it a reality. It, of course, goes without saying that there must be some business logic to your strategy, evidence will help too, and often tough to reach, but believably possible outcomes is good too.

The second is an honest look at why you're not there already. This is the hardest of the three and, interestingly, the most important, and it sits on a single deceptively simple question: if that future is so appealing, why are we not living it yet? This isn't an invitation to a bout of self-flagellation – it's the opposite. It's respect for reality and truth. It's the willingness to name, without flinching, the things that absolutely stand in the way: the poor habits you've kept, the fear you route around, the conversations you've avoided for a year. Most strategies skip this part entirely, likely because it can be so painful to take at look at reality. And, let's face it, the reality we have right now was, in many ways, created by us. Ask the honest question first, and the answers turn out to be the most useful material you have.

The third is movement – but movement aimed, deliberately, at the specific obstacles between where you are and where you're going, rather than movement for its own sake. This is the part I love, because it's what keeps a direction alive rather than laminated: action teaches. You try something, you watch what actually happens, you adjust. The direction guides the action, and the action, in turn, sharpens the direction. A direction of the future isn't meant to be set and rigid, it's to be lived; it's meant to be attentive – to learn from what happens the moment you move towards it. Reality doesn't undo a good direction. It refines it.

I should point out that none of this is easy, and it asks four things of you at once that don't always sit comfortably together. Imagination, to picture a future that doesn't exist yet, vividly enough to want to build it and clear enough for it be felt emotionally. Honesty, to name the reality you're actually standing in, including the unflattering bits, even if they make you cry a little. Patience, to hold the line through the long, thankless, and often messy, stretch where you've committed but nothing has visibly paid off. That can be unsettling. And restraint – the hugely underrated discipline of saying no to a lot of other things, and aiming at the few things that matter most. Because you will always have more problems worth solving than you can possibly solve, and more things you'd like to do than you realistically can, which makes a real strategy as much an act of leaving-alone as an act of doing. It decides not only what you'll chase, but what you'll deliberately, intently, ignore.

And when it comes together, something rather lovely happens. The work doesn't get easier, but it starts to make sense. And when our work makes sense, it's often much more pleasing to be in it. You can see progress. Your decisions stop contradicting each other. Effort begins to gather momentum instead of simply being busy action in different directions. Without a direction you can move very fast in the wrong one and call it productivity and achievement. With a direction, even a slow plod has meaning, because it's finally pointed somewhere worth going.

You don't need much to hold a good strategy. A future worth moving towards, an honest account of what's in the way, and a direction of travel. The rest, all of it, is learned in motion, from putting the strategy and plan into action, and refining as you go.

So the next time you reach the end of a week, or a few months, all tired and not much further than where you started, it's worth remembering that the cure is not more effort, more busyness, more energy. You had plenty of that already. What you need was something worth pointing it at, and that often makes the hard weeks feel very different indeed. Who knows, maybe you'll be the one in the south of France sipping on a French 75.