A Plan Is Not a Strategy

October 16, 2025

I watched a short HBR video where Roger Martin broke down the difference between a plan and a strategy. It made me realize that for a lot of my own projects, I’ve just been making to-do lists instead of thinking about how to actually win. Here are my notes on the idea.

The Problem with “Strategic Planning”

Martin starts by saying that most “strategic planning” has nothing to do with strategy. It’s just a fancy name for planning.

A plan is just a list of things you’re going to do.

• Improve the customer experience.
• Open a new office.
• Start a new hiring program.

These all sound like good ideas, but they are just a list of activities. They don’t have a coherent theory behind them that explains how doing these things will lead to winning.

Planning feels comfortable because it focuses on costs and inputs, things you can control. You decide to spend the money to build a factory. You decide to hire more people. But a strategy is about an outcome you don’t control: getting customers to choose you over everyone else. That’s a much harder problem.

Strategy is a Theory for Winning

So what’s a strategy? Martin defines it as an integrative set of choices that positions you on a playing field of your choice in a way that you win.

A strategy has a theory. It says:

1. We will compete on this playing field, not another one.
2. Here is how we will be better than anyone else on that field.

The choices have to work together. A plan can be a random list of good ideas. A strategy is a set of connected choices that reinforce each other to produce a specific outcome.

The Southwest Airlines Example

The best part of the video was the Southwest Airlines example. Back when the major US airlines were just “planning” things like what new routes to fly, Southwest had a strategy to win.

Their theory was simple.

• Where to Play: Be a substitute for bus travel. Cheaper than flying, but way more convenient and faster than a Greyhound bus.
• How to Win: Make a set of choices that create a much lower cost structure, so they could offer lower prices.

Here are the connected choices they made:

• Fly point-to-point: No hub-and-spoke system. This meant their planes spent more time in the air making money, not waiting on the ground.
• Use only one type of plane (737s): This made maintenance, training, and gate operations super efficient.
• No meals on flights: They specialized in short flights where meals weren’t necessary.
• No booking through travel agents: They encouraged people to book online, which was cheaper for them and more convenient for customers.

The big carriers were just playing to participate. They were planning. Southwest was playing to win. They had a strategy. And it worked. They started small and eventually became the biggest carrier in the US because they had a clear theory for how to be better than their competitors in a specific market.

How to Build a Real Strategy

So if planning is a trap, how do you avoid it? Martin gives a few clear steps.

First, you have to accept that strategy comes with some nervousness. You can’t prove in advance that it will work. It’s a bet. A plan is safe because you can check off the boxes, but it won’t lead to anything great.

Second, you need to clearly lay out the logic. Ask yourself: “What would have to be true for this strategy to work?” Make a list of these conditions. This is the most useful part for me. It turns your strategy into a set of testable hypotheses. You can then watch what happens and see if your assumptions are correct. If something isn’t working out, you can tweak the strategy.

Finally, keep it simple. A good strategy should fit on a single page.

1. Our Aspiration: What is our goal?
2. Where to Play: What is our playing field?
3. How to Win: How will we be better than our competitors?
4. Capabilities: What skills do we need to execute this?
5. Management Systems: What systems do we need to support our choices?

This was a really helpful video. It made me realize that a plan is a list of things you will do, while a strategy is a framework for making choices that will help you win. Planning is a way to guarantee losing slowly. Strategy at least gives you a chance to win.