Perspective on Strategy in the context of coaching practice.

1. Tony Llano _ vFINAL _ pp 1
Coaching Community of Practice (COP)
7 December 2015
Prepared Comments
vFINAL
Introduction: A little about me...
Intro Comments:
“Strategy” has become a nebulous and meaningless word that often leads to
confusion and, therefore, requires a clear definition. If you get three “strategists”
in a room and ask them to define, “strategy,” you’re likely to get several
contradictory answers. Add to this a variety of related terms—including,
“strategic thinking,” “strategic planning,” “strategic management,” “strategic
analysis,” “corporate strategy,” “marketing strategy,” “HR strategy,” etc.—and
you quickly start to appreciate why talking about “strategy” without defining our
terms can lead to misalignment and misunderstanding.
So, what is strategy? Simply stated, strategy is about making choices, and, often,
it is about choosing what not to do in a particular context. While operational
effectiveness is about managing for the present—i.e., improving current

2. Tony Llano _ vFINAL _ pp 2
processes, becoming more efficient and reducing waste, etc.—strategy is about
making choices in a future context (see Vijay Govindarajan). Strategy leverages
creativity and intuition, the ability to synthesize a variety of sources of
information (internal and external), and the aptitude to create a compelling
narrative to drive decision-making, often challenging ingrained biases about
current realities and future potentialities. This process of making choices—and
the variety of tools, techniques, & frameworks that aid “strategists” to make the
best possible choices—can be applied in a variety of contexts and disciplines,
including marketing, operations, corporate, M&A, etc.
It seems that strategy and strategic thinking are often consigned to a small group
of thought-leaders who are “smart people” who can think “strategically.” While
this is the conventional wisdom, nothing can be further from the truth! If you
accept that strategy is fundamentally about making choices, and since we all,
individually and collectively, make choices every day, by definition, therefore, we
are all strategists, or, at least, we have the potential to be...
And, more relevant to our conversation today, while strategy is often used in the
context of business decisions and competition, strategic thinking certainly applies
to personal growth, including the variety of tools that help individuals make
choices to enhance personal satisfaction, leadership potential and effectiveness.
In the context of this Community of Practice, coaching strategies “open new
possibilities” and provide new ways of perceiving future potential, mindfully and
assertively. Coaching strategies and other related tools, in essence, help us make
better choices.
Questions & Answers:
What would happen to a company if there was a vision and a goal, but
there wasn’t a strategy done at the beginning?
o A company without a strategy, without a clear set of guidelines about
how to make choices, would be rudderless
Imagine a large boat in the middle of a vast ocean during a
storm. Now imagine that boat without a rudder—without a

3. Tony Llano _ vFINAL _ pp 3
set of tools to make informed and aligned decisions—that boat
will roam and react to every stimuli without a clear direction
and no effective way to respond to the elements (read:
competition)
o A company without a clear strategy causes collective anxiety and a
lack of confidence in the company’s ability to compete for the future
What do you need to keep top of mind when thinking about a strategy?
o Strategy is about making choices; we all make choices, therefore,
we’re all strategists as I stated earlier
o This reality, in my view, should provoke a sense of responsibility in
each of us to be as informed as possible to make better choices to
challenge dominant logic around processes, metrics, and,
importantly, to counter-balance “the way we’ve always done it” and
the “not invented here syndrome.”
How do you learn to become better at thinking strategically? (any
practices that you can use?)
o Seek to learn always and be open to all possibilities
o Ask questions, but not just any regular, run-of-the-mill questions!
No, ask questions that generate meaningful insight, i.e., questions
that drive people to perceive their reality differently, more
intentionally & clearly
o Read everything you can in the context of your current
responsibilities
The more you read and learn, the better you’ll synthesize and
leverage creativity and intuition to produce integrated
narratives to help the organization make the best possible
decisions in the context of competition for the future

4. Tony Llano _ vFINAL _ pp 4
What connections do you make in your role as a strategist with the
NeuroLeadership Institute (NLI) models to help people achieve goals?
o As a coach and strategist, I have a responsibility to leverage the NLI
tools to help my “coachees” make the best possible choices given the
objectives (i.e., the Primary Goals) they’re trying to accomplish
o I have to listen attentively to my coachees to understand what’s truly
important to them and to appreciate their worldview, in particular in
the context of how they perceive themselves
o Finally, it’s about (a) having an engaged dialogue and (b) asking
effective questions that generate insight and position my coachees
for success
How do you structure your time in order to allow for strategic thinking?
o Jon Kabat-Zinn once wrote, "if we're not careful, it is all too easy to
fall into becoming more of a human doing than a human being, and
forget who is doing all the doing, and why.“ (Repeat this statement!)
o I think it behooves all of us as strategists—i.e., as people making
choices every day; choices that impact our health, our productivity,
and our self-image—to make time to think and to reflect, to read
and to learn
o If you’re just doing things without a clear narrative or notion about
what is important and relevant in your life, you’ll likely be less
fulfilled
o I try to make time every day to synthesize, to reflect, and to make
connections between what I perceive about the world around me
o This process of synthesis, I find, helps me with the creative process
necessary to think strategically