But here’s the rub: if you have to state those values to keep people behaving, then the issue isn’t with your strategy—it’s with your hiring. And if you fail to live up to your values - in dramatic style - what does that mean about your values?
We’ve worked with lots of organisations whose mission statements read like moral checklists:
✨ Human-centred
✨ Honest and kind
✨ Continually improving
✨ Contributing to the community
...all good things. But none of them help when it’s time to make a difficult choice.
If your strategy or values sound ridiculous when flipped—“We aim to be dishonest, inefficient and uncaring”—then they’re not strategy. They’re truisms. They sit beautifully laminated in reception, but are useless in a real decision-making moment.
This matters. Make no mistake: your core values and your mission statement are all the bedrock of your strategy. If they're meaningless, you're building your vision and strategic choices on quicksand.
Strategy isn’t what you’d like to believe about yourself. It’s the thing that helps you say yes to this and no to that. David Ogilvy said strategy is sacrifice. Roger Martin says it’s about choices.
So if your competitors are doing the opposite of you—and losing money—you're not being strategic. You’re just doing the obvious.
Same for schools: show me a successful international school not banging the drum of global citizenship. Or a national curriculum that advocates for “failed learners and meek mobs” ("successful learners and effective contributors" are two of the key principles behind the Scottish curriculum). These aren't strategies. They’re hopes.
A good strategy names the sacrifice:
💥 We focus on learning experience as a whole—even if it means slower syllabus coverage.
💥 We prioritise interactive direct teaching—even if it jars with tradition.
💥 We continue blended learning—even if it reduces enrolment numbers.
Strategy shows what you’re not doing—and does it with pride.
So here’s your provocation: What are your “even ifs”?