If I was only allowed one word to define the mindset of strategy development and execution, I’d always start with the word ‘choices’ (and its derivatives like choice and choosing). Having spent thousands of hours reading the seminal works of respected strategy consultants and revered business school professors, this is the key word that appears the most.

McKinsey & Company talk about making “hard-to-reverse” choices. I like this phrase. It sets a tone of long-term commitment to choices aimed at achieving the firm’s goals. Harvard’s Professor Michael Porter (of Five Forces fame) is the world’s leading authority on strategy. He defines it as “integrated choices that define how you will achieve superior performance in the face of competition”.

Strategy is much more than catchy slogans, lofty goals, and impressive sounding mission statements. It’s about making long-term choices that mutually support each other. The compounded benefit helps you profitably and sustainably win your customers’ business.

Let me illustrate with a simple example. At its launch, Dell Computers made the clear long-term choice to target and sell directly to technology-savvy customers who ordered and received exactly the specification of computer that they wanted. At the time, other PC manufacturers (Apple, IBM etc.) sold indirectly via IT resellers, department stores and specialist shops. Dell’s ground-breaking strategy involved a totally different set of integrated, mutually supportive choices from product-trained sales, to specifically targeted advertising, to ‘just-in-time’ manufacturing, to in-house post-sales support. Any increased cost of sale was far outweighed by the benefits. Dell kept no inventory. There was very little waste. It paid no channel margins. And it won new and repeat sales by providing an excellent customer experience enabled by its direct and intimate customer relationships. This doesn’t sound as exciting as things that the cooler technology companies did. But, in the 1990’s, Dell was second only to Apple in profitability.

So, please, do regularly pause and assess whether you have made the best, integrated, long-term choices to maximise growth.