What Do We Actually Mean When We Say “Strategy”?
A reframing of strategy through a stewardship lens - offering leaders a way to make choices that balance delivery, people, and the future, and to stop carrying weight that belongs at a different level.
Strategy is one of the most overused words in leadership – and one of the least clearly held.
Most organisations have strategies.
Most teams have plans.
Most leaders are busy.
And yet, many still feel a quiet sense that something isn’t aligned.
That’s rarely a failure of effort.
More often, it’s a failure of level – and of stewardship.
By stewardship, I mean the practice of holding people, place and planet in trust – across past, present, and future.
Because strategy doesn’t exist in one place.
It exists across nested layers – and stewardship is what holds those layers in balance.
Strategy Is About Choice – Stewardship Is About Balance
At its core, strategy is about making choices under constraint.
Stewardship asks a different, complementary question:
How do we make those choices in a way that holds people, purpose, and the future in trust?
Without stewardship, strategy optimises for speed, power, or short-term gain.
Without strategy, stewardship becomes intention without traction.
Stewardship is not the absence of power – it is the disciplined use of it.
The work of leadership is holding both
Strategy Lives at Different Levels – Stewardship Connects Them
Here’s a conceptual way to understand the different types of strategy – and the stewardship questions that keep them aligned.
1. System or Sector Strategy
Strategy question: What future are we trying to shape – and why?
Stewardship question: Who is affected by this future – including those not in the room and those not yet here?
This is strategy at the widest aperture.
Time horizon: decades
Focus: legitimacy, resilience, shared outcomes
Examples: climate transition, digital governance, public service reform
Stewardship at this level resists narrow self-interest and asks leaders to act as custodians of conditions, not owners of outcomes.
2. Organisational Strategy
Strategy question: Where will we play – and how will we succeed?
Stewardship question: What are we willing to protect, and what are we willing to stop, in order to succeed well?
Time horizon: 3–5 years
Focus: mission, positioning, capability choices
Stewardship ensures that trade-offs are named honestly – and that success doesn’t come at the hidden expense of people, culture, or credibility.
3. Portfolio or Programme Strategy
Strategy question: Which bets matter most right now?
Stewardship question: What must not be asked of people, systems, or partners at the same time?
Time horizon: 1–3 years
Focus: prioritisation, sequencing
This is where stewardship shows up as restraint.
Not everything that is possible is responsible.
4. Department or Function Strategy
Strategy question: How do we contribute to the whole?
Stewardship question: Are we adding value – or simply adding demand downstream?
Time horizon: 1–2 years
Focus: role clarity, operating model
Stewardship at this level prevents functions optimising for themselves while weakening the wider system.
5. Team Strategy
Strategy question: What must this team be excellent at?
Stewardship question: What does sustainable performance look like here – for humans, not just outputs?
Time horizon: quarters to a year
Focus: ways of working, decision rights
This is where stewardship becomes tangible: psychological safety, pacing, quality, and care.
6. Individual Strategy
Strategy question: Where will I place my energy and influence?
Stewardship question: What am I carrying that is no longer mine to hold?
Time horizon: months to a few years
Focus: identity, capacity, wellbeing
Many leaders burn out not because they lack resilience – but because stewardship has failed upstream.
The Core Insight for Transformation Leaders
Strategy answers what we choose.
Stewardship answers how we choose – and who bears the cost.
When stewardship is absent:
individuals absorb systemic ambiguity
teams compensate for unresolved trade-offs
programmes substitute for clarity
A simple diagnostic I often use is this:
At what level is this decision actually a strategy question – and who should be holding it?
And one final reflection to carry with you:
As you look at the strategies you’re part of right now, which level are you being asked to carry – and which level actually needs to step up?
When strategy and stewardship are held together, something shifts.
Progress becomes sustainable.
Decisions become calmer.
Leadership stops feeling like constant extraction – and starts to feel like custodianship.
And in complex systems, that’s what makes change actually stick.
With care, courage, and consistency.
Thoughts, as always, welcome.
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I am…
An executive coach and the CEO of Be The Waves, growing stewardship for a thriving planet.
I helping good people lead great things; in other words - I empower Stewardship
Good people care about others, our planet and beauty. Great things are changes for the betterment of society and all that lives within an around it. It sounds big and fun - it is.
I'm also an endurance racing cyclist and a go getter.
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