A Didactic Review of the Lean Strategy-Making Approach

 A Better Way to Make Strategy

A Didactic Review of the Lean Strategy-Making Approach

In an era defined by rapid market shifts, geopolitical uncertainty, and technological disruption, the ability of companies to craft effective strategy has never been more vital  or more challenging. The article “A Better Way to Make Strategy” by Michael C. Mankins (Harvard Business Review, May–June 2025) proposes a radical rethink of how organizations approach strategy: replacing slow, top-down planning cycles with a lean, problem-focused, and iterative approach. This review distills the key concepts, advantages, and practical steps of the methodology in a reader-friendly format.

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📌 Introduction: Why Strategy Needs to Change

Traditional strategy-making is often described as a once-a-year planning ritual led by a small group of senior leaders. These strategic plans tend to rely on outdated assumptions, result in generic PowerPoint decks, and rarely lead to meaningful execution. Mankins argues that this model is no longer fit for a volatile world. Today, strategy must be dynamic, continuous, and aligned with real-time learning.

The lean approach is based on three principles:

1. Set clear performance ambitions.

2. Identify and prioritize the gaps that prevent progress.

3. Solve the most critical problems on a rolling basis.

This transformation doesn’t just produce better strategies it makes strategy-making a more inclusive and performance-driven process.

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🧠 Principle #1: Clarify the Strategic Ambition

Mankins begins by emphasizing that every lean strategy starts with a concrete performance ambition a clearly articulated goal such as increasing market share, reducing costs, or improving customer satisfaction. The aim is not to create lofty, abstract visions but to define tangible, measurable objectives.

Once this ambition is set, the organization identifies the performance gap: the difference between what the company will achieve if it continues on its current path versus what it must achieve to meet its ambition. This gap becomes the starting point for strategy-making, and it must be translated into a list of strategic problems to solve.

For example, if the ambition is to grow revenue by 10% per year, and current trajectory predicts only 5%, the 5% gap must be decomposed into solvable challenges  such as weak pricing, poor customer retention, or slow product development.

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🧰 Principle #2: Build a Strategic Backlog

Borrowing from agile and lean software practices, Mankins introduces the concept of a strategic backlog  a living list of problems the organization must solve to close the performance gap. These problems become the real “work” of strategy.

Each item in the backlog should be:

• Tied directly to the performance ambition.

• Clearly articulated as a challenge to be resolved.

• Prioritized based on impact and urgency.

This process eliminates the guesswork and political lobbying often present in strategic planning. Instead of vague initiatives or aspirational slogans, teams focus on real business issues that, if addressed, will move the performance needle.

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🌀 Principle #3: Solve Problems in Cadence

The most distinctive feature of the lean approach is its cyclical, ongoing nature. Strategy-making is no longer an annual meeting; it becomes a continuous problem-solving process embedded in the business.

Each cycle follows three steps:

1. Diagnose the problem using data and analysis.

2. Generate solutions through collaborative ideation.

3. Decide and implement concrete actions with clear owners and deadlines.

This loop repeats for every item in the backlog. New problems may emerge, old ones may evolve, and completed initiatives are monitored for results. Crucially, decision rights are distributed among cross-functional teams, not just held by the C-suite. This democratization of strategy increases ownership and accelerates decision-making.

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📊 Real-World Applications and Benefits

The article highlights how companies that adopt lean strategy-making report:

• Faster execution of initiatives.

• Higher employee engagement in strategy.

• Better alignment between strategic goals and operational actions.

One example includes a global logistics firm that accelerated its warehouse automation program by breaking the strategy into solvable parts and resolving blockers in bi-weekly cycles. Another company shifted from annual budgeting to a rolling planning model, freeing teams to reallocate resources quickly based on what worked and what didn’t.

The lean method turns strategy into a series of experiments, where hypotheses are tested, results are tracked, and adjustments are welcomed rather than resisted.

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⚠️ Risks and Pitfalls to Avoid

Like any management innovation, lean strategy-making is not without its challenges:

• Overloaded backlogs: Without strong governance, the backlog can grow faster than the team’s capacity to address it.

• Cultural resistance: Teams used to top-down directives may struggle to embrace this participatory, data-driven model.

• Superficial implementation: Some companies may adopt the language of lean without adopting the discipline—holding strategy sprints but failing to track execution.

To mitigate these risks, leadership must actively champion the new process, model curiosity, and build the organizational muscle for problem-solving.

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🧭 How to Implement Lean Strategy-Making

Here is a simplified roadmap from the article for companies ready to adopt this approach:

1. Define an Ambition: Choose one bold, quantifiable performance target.

2. Estimate the Gap: Determine the delta between current trajectory and the ambition.

3. Create a Backlog: Break the gap into discrete, solvable business problems.

4. Launch Cycles: Establish regular strategy sessions to analyze, ideate, and decide.

5. Track and Learn: Use KPIs to monitor results and iterate accordingly.

6. Scale and Sustain: Once the process works for one ambition, expand it across the organization.

Importantly, this is not a “plug-and-play” framework. Each company must tailor the cadence, governance, and team roles to its context.

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🧑‍💼 Leadership Imperative

Mankins underscores the role of senior leaders in enabling the lean model. Executives must shift from planners to facilitators, providing clarity on ambition, removing roadblocks, and empowering teams to act. They must also celebrate learnings from failure and treat incomplete goals not as setbacks but as insights.

Strategy, in this sense, becomes less about predicting the future and more about building the capability to shape it.

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📚 Conclusion: Strategy as a Continuous Discipline

“A Better Way to Make Strategy” offers a compelling vision for the future of strategic management. In place of rigid plans and C-suite isolation, Mankins advocates for a living, breathing process of goal-driven problem solving. His lean strategy framework is especially well-suited to today’s dynamic business environment, where agility, learning, and alignment are essential.

This approach:

• Makes strategy more inclusive.

• Improves execution.

• Aligns resources with high-impact actions.

Companies that embrace it will not only survive disruption—they will thrive because of it.