Some leaders are obsessed with the strategy. Excel tables, impeccable slides, three -year roadmaps, competition benchmarks … Everything seems to gravitate around this idea that “the strategy is the key to success”. But if I told you that, often, this obsession with strategy slows down more than it advances?
Yes, you heard. The strategy is not useless, but it is overvalued. What really makes the difference is not your carefully traced plans, but the habits that you (you, your teams and your business) build. Because a habit is a silent but powerful engine, while a strategy remains, most often, a pretty paper that flies to the first unexpected.
The tyranny of strategy
Let’s start with the observation: how many leaders devote weeks, even months, to refine a perfect strategy, to find itself a few months later to note that the market has changed, that customers have evolved or that competition has anticipated their movement?
The strategy is fascinating: it gives the illusion of control. We think we plan, we think we plan, we think we are driving. But the reality is often more brutal. The plans are frozen, while the world is fluid. Strategic decisions can become mental prisons. We remain blocked to execute a plan instead of experimenting, learning and adapting.
And this is where habits come into play.
Habits: embodied strategies
Imagine your business as a living organization. The strategy is the construction plan for this body. Habits are the muscles and cells that make this body work on a daily basis. You can dream of a perfect body, but if you don’t move, if you don’t feed your muscles, nothing will happen.
Habits are repeated, automatic, almost invisible actions. And it is precisely their invisibility that makes them powerful: they shape your corporate culture, your productivity, and above all, your ability to create value constantly.
A leader who reads all the financial reports of the world, but who has not used to speak to his customers, to challenge his teams or to test his ideas, will remain a theoretical leader. On the other hand, the one who builds listening, experimentation and daily listening habits becomes a concrete actor of the transformation.
Repetition: engine of excellence
There is a lesson that each leader should learn: excellence is not born from a brilliant plan, it is born from rehearsal. Simple and regular habits have more impact than a masterful but punctual strategy.
Take the example of Amazon. Jeff Bezos has built his empire not by drawing complex strategies each year, but by establishing a daily obsession for the customer. Each decision, each meeting, each product launch was guided by a habit: “What is the customer thinking?” This habit, repeated tirelessly, has shaped a culture and a company that are not content to follow the market, they reinvent it.
For a manager, this means that instead of spending hours writing detailed plans, it is better to invest time to create habits that will move the business every day, in the right direction.
Start small, but systematically start
The trap of many leaders is to want to revolutionize everything at once: to reorganize the company, to launch five new products, to change the economic model … and often, nothing materializes. The real force lies in the small habits that are added.
Do you want to improve the culture of innovation? Start by establishing a habit of weekly micro-expressions. Do you want to increase customer loyalty? Start with a daily personalized contact habit with a customer or a partner.
It is this constancy, repeated over weeks and months, which ends up creating a deep transformation.
Habits shape culture
To forget the strategy does not mean to abandon any vision. This means understanding that corporate culture is built by the daily habits of its leaders. What you do every day, not what you write about a slide, becomes the norm.
- If you get used to celebrating constructive failures, your teams will dare more.
- If you are used to asking difficult questions, your collaborators will think more freely.
- If you repeat the habit of experimenting and measuring, the company becomes agile naturally.
In other words, your personal habits become the invisible guide that guides the company, often more effectively than any strategy.
The impact on strategic decision
Ironically, it is by forgetting the daily strategy that we make better strategic decisions. How ? Because by building habits of experimentation, observation and analysis, there is a continuous flow of concrete data and real learning.
Instead of deciding on the basis of frozen hypotheses, you decide on the basis of repeated observations and tangible experiences. A daily habit of customer feedback, KPIS monitoring or team meeting becomes a living strategy.
Thus, the strategy is no longer a frozen document, but a dynamic flow, nourished by the habits of the company.
Disruptive leaders think in terms of habits
Look at the great leaders you admire. What distinguishes them is not only the vision they display in their speeches, but the habits they embody. Elon Musk lits, questions, tests constantly. Satya Nadella encourages curiosity and empathy every day. Anne Rigail in Air France listens to her teams and tests operational initiatives to improve the service.
These leaders have understood a simple truth: personal and organizational habits are the most powerful lever to transform a business, much more than any strategic plan frozen over three years.
How to start building powerful habits
1/ Identify key habits: focus on actions that will have the greatest impact on culture and performance.
2/ Start small: a massive habit often fails; A repeated micro-habit with Constance becomes an invisible force.
3/ Repeat with discipline: Constance is more important than intensity. 5 minutes every day is better than an hour once a month.
4/ Measure and adjust: Observe the results, adjust the behavior and let proof guide your adjustments.
5/ Incubate culture: transform your personal habits into collective habits, then into corporate culture.
Each habit is a small lever which, put end to end, produces spectacular effects on performance and innovation.
The paradox of modern leadership
It is not always the strategy that makes the difference, but what you do, concretely, every day. The plans are shattered in the face of the unexpected. Habits are shocking.
As a manager, your mission is not to create the perfect plan, but to create perfect habits. Habits that promote learning, creativity, audacity and agility. Habits that shape culture and performance without you needing to monitor every detail.
