What is the difference between a strategy and a plan?

A plan is internal facing: the money you spend and the things you control. A strategy is making choices that you hope will influence customer behavior. Strategy expert Mike Goitein explains.

Quick Answer

• Nobody has a strategy problem. They have customers going to a competitor, or costs they can't hit.
• Strategy is what you are already doing. It is not a PowerPoint deck and it is not a plan.
• A plan is internal facing. It is money and people, the things you control.
• Strategy is making choices that you hope will influence customer behavior, to mutual benefit.
• Start by reverse engineering the strategy you are doing now, and ask if it is effective.

This fits inside a bigger picture. If you want the full view first, here's the bigger picture.

A plan is what you control. A strategy is about the customer.

Mike Goitein starts with a blunt point: nobody has a strategy problem. Nobody thinks, "I need strategy." They think their customers are going to some other competitor, or they can't make and deliver things at the right cost level.

But everybody already has a strategy, because strategy is what you are already doing. It is not a PowerPoint deck. And it is not a plan.

Here is the difference, in Mike's words:

• A plan: "I'm going to take this much money and spend it. I'm going to have these people do these things." That is internal facing. It is what you control.
• A strategy: making choices that you hope will influence customer behavior in certain ways of mutual benefit.

So his process does not open with a new strategy. It opens with the one you have. You reverse engineer what you are doing now and ask: is it effective? As Dane put it back to him, you don't come in and say "this is your strategy, do this." You ask what they are doing now, how that is not effective, and figure it out from there.

"It's not a PowerPoint deck and it's not a plan." Mike Goitein

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Frequently Asked Questions

Is a strategy the same thing as a plan?

No. A plan is internal facing: how you will spend money and what people will do. A strategy is making choices that you hope will influence customer behavior in ways of mutual benefit.

Does every company already have a strategy?

Yes, according to Mike Goitein. Strategy is what you are already doing, so everybody already has one. The question is whether it is effective.

Where should strategy work start?

By reverse engineering the strategy you are doing now and asking if it is effective, before anyone proposes a new one.

Most teams don't get this right on the first try. Here's how we approached it for a real team. Curious what it'd look like for you? Let's talk it through.

Full Clip Transcript

Mike: Nobody has a strategy problem. Nobody knows or thinks about, hey, I need strategy. They are like, well, my customers are going to some and other competitor. I can't make the things and deliver them at the right cost level. But ultimately, strategy is what you're already doing. So everybody out there has already has a strategy and they're already doing strategy. It's not a PowerPoint deck and it's not a plan. A plan is like, okay, I'm gonna take this much money and spend it. I'm gonna have these people do these things. That's internal facing what you control. Strategy is making choices. Like I said, that you hope will influence customer behavior in certain ways of mutual benefit. And that's really the key is that you make those decisions. And whenever we do strategy, we always start by saying, you reverse engineer what the strategy is that you're doing now. And is it effective? Yeah. So you don't just come in and say, this is your strategy, do this. You'd say, what are you doing now? How is that not effective? And then you figure out from there.

Full Interview Transcript

Dane: Hello, everyone. I'm Dane Frederiksen. I am a GEO video expert. And I'm joined today by Michael Goitein. Am I saying that right?

Mike: Nailed it.

Dane: You said like Frankenstein. And you are a strategy expert. Strategy experts focused on the customer and the product. Why don't you explain a little bit, for those who don't quite know what that means, what your expertise is in that area?

Mike: Absolutely, Dane. Strategy does one thing. It helps change customer behavior in ways that gets them to do things that mean success for them as well as for our product.

Dane: Right. So strategy is such a funny word. I hear it used lovingly and begrudgingly. And so in your mind, what is strategy? To me, it's been like, it's what we're going to do, but it also includes a little bit of what we're not going to do. There's something we're choosing to not pursue. Does that sound right?

Mike: Very much so. And I think there's that customer-centric piece. We make a few clear choices about who we're talking to, in what markets, with what offer. That means by definition, Dane, to your point, we're saying no to talking to everybody, but we're focusing in.

Dane: So when you're talking about focusing on the customer strategically, do you have a starting place in your process? Where do we begin? Is it with the goal? Is it with the customer pain? What's the starting point?

Mike: We like to talk about opportunities. An opportunity is ultimately a customer pain point. But for something like ice cream, there is no actual pain point, right? It's like a hope, dream, desire, opportunity, need, want, so forth. So any of those things could give you a person with a specific want. That's your persona, right? And that's where you can start to dig in.

Dane: Okay. So what I always try to do on these calls is find some new area between your expertise and mine. And so I'm really focused right now on AI search and using video to help people connect with their customers and show up when they're searching, in AI search or in traditional search. My approach is, because we now have AI tools that allow us to transcribe customer calls, we have all this data about what customers are searching for. It's so tempting. We make our product or whatever and we talk about it and think about it a certain way. But we might call it one thing, and they're calling it something else. So the words that they search for are very important to harvest, and then make video answers that answer the specific questions that they have, in their language. So it's going to resonate, and they're going to watch your videos, and they're very interested because you're speaking their language.

And so what's going to happen then is, because you're answering the question deeply and well, you're going to tend to be the best answer. So you're going to show up in these AI searches, which means you're not invisible like an AI summary, because that's kind of cannibalizing everybody's web traffic right now. So this is the strategy to be a part of that customer journey. So as they get down and they start thinking about product features and benefits and getting more specific, you're helping them at each stage of their customer journey. And during that journey, because you're doing long-form video, you're actually building a relationship. It's a one-way relationship, but they're getting to know you, getting to like you, getting to trust you. And in B2B, especially big-ticket items, you have to have that trust. We're in a very low-trust environment. People are going 80% of the way through their buying journey before they're even willing to talk to a salesperson. So we have to do a better job of equipping them to self-educate. So that's really my focus right now.

Your profile really caught my attention because of those words, actionable strategy, right there in the front. It's been such a bugbear for me, because trying to sell strategy is like, I don't know, selling sand in a desert or something. Nobody wants to buy this stuff, but they want outcomes. They want solutions. And so I was really intrigued what you would have to say about how you make a strategy actionable, rather than a 20-point PowerPoint deck that's got some cool ideas in it, but we don't know what to do with that thing.

Mike: Right. Dane, I just want to compliment you. One key thing that you said really jumped out at me, which was, we think about what we want to do, what we want to put out in the world. But I think the big difference and separator and competitive advantage for you is that you are using the terms that people use to describe the problems themselves. And that's, I think, a big thing. And we can tie that directly into the concept of strategy. Nobody has a strategy problem. Nobody knows or thinks about, hey, I need strategy. They're like, well, my customers are going to some other competitor. I can't make the things and deliver them at the right cost level. But ultimately, strategy is what you're already doing. So everybody out there already has a strategy and is already doing strategy. It's not a PowerPoint deck. And it's not a plan. A plan is like, okay, I'm going to take this much money and spend it. I'm going to have these people do these things. That's internal facing, what you control. Strategy is making choices, like I said, that you hope will influence customer behavior in certain ways of mutual benefit. And that's really the key, is that you make those decisions. And whenever we do strategy, we always start by saying, you reverse engineer what the strategy is that you're doing now. And is it effective?

Dane: Yeah. So you don't just come in and say, this is your strategy, do this. You'd say, what are you doing now? How is that not effective? And then you figure out from there.

Mike: And I've done this exercise with a lot of people. And I will say, let's say out of 50 times that we've done this, probably only one time somebody said, yeah, well, let's continue doing the strategy we're already doing, now that we can see it laid out. So yeah, people always want to make changes and do things.

Dane: So I'm curious, what's top of mind for you? What are you working towards, just generally, without getting into specifics too much? And maybe part of that, what about what is happening with AI right now is making a new challenge for you or a new opportunity? How has that changed your job, basically?

Mike: Yeah, I mean, the approach to strategy that I advocate for, that I work within, this is an approach that was started by Michael Porter and his five forces. And then Roger Martin was part of Monitor Group, to use these concepts in actual business consulting engagements. And Roger Martin continued to huge success at P&G. And so there is a tradition of this, but not a lot of this information is out there. So there's not a lot for the LLMs to scrape. And so if you ask them about strategy, you'll probably get something akin to a McKinsey deck, which is something like a playbook strategy, and it's got certain well-defined areas. And then they just kind of copy and paste that for each engagement. So if you use AI for your strategy, it could tend to backfire, because it'll have a very sort of cookie-cutter approach, a lowest-common-denominator approach to strategy. And so what I like to do is then focus on, AI can be hugely beneficial if we use it in the right ways. If we ask the right questions, if we do the right kinds of research. And again, the final thing I was saying about AI is that so much of what you get back is plausible, especially if you're using a better model and you're prompting it better. But there's a huge gulf between plausible and actually useful and actionable and true. And just having the wisdom and experience to be able to differentiate between those things.

Dane: Right. Well, I'm curious how your work with customers is changing now with AI too. We talked a little bit about how their journey is different now. They're going further along in their own self-education journey before they're willing to talk to sales. Is that changing your approach at all?

Mike: Absolutely. I mean, I think everybody is to some degree very well educated, with air quotes, right? But they might have fundamental misconceptions about some key things. Dane, I think you've seen the same thing. And again, this is why, when the training data is just what's out there on the web, it's not always going to be the best data. And you won't always grab the right inferences from that. So I think from my perspective, for sure people understanding the landscape and understanding different approaches to strategy are really helpful. And then having tried other things, what hasn't worked, and trying something different, wanting to take a different approach.

Dane: Yeah, you brought up an interesting sort of dilemma. I hadn't quite considered this. Because buyers are educating themselves, and they may not be getting the right education, they're kind of misunderstanding some things. How do we then re-educate them or correct their misunderstandings if they're not even ready to talk to us yet? So this sounds like maybe it's the mission of the content, but I can't think of another way how you're going to get through to them.

Mike: You definitely nailed it, Dane. It is the mission of the content. And what I learned from working with different thought leaders in the space is, it's not about so much saying what you're for as much as what your contrarian perspective is. Everybody expects certain things, and you'd say something that runs very counter to that. And for example, a lot of people think strategy is a plan. Well, strategy isn't a plan. But people don't understand that difference. We kind of talked about it at the top, but a plan is just internally facing, what you want to do, how you're going to manage your money. The strategy is focused on a customer and making a few clear choices so that you can influence their behavior. So they're two totally different things.

Dane: So you mentioned thought leadership there, and I wanted to get your take on that. We live in an era now where what we're doing right now, this sort of remote video thought leadership content, is so easy to do. And I think because of the low trust out there, it has more weight than ever. Because you see an article, you don't know if it's slop, or it sounds plausible, like you said. So this seems to me like one of the more valuable activities someone could be doing to build trust with their customers, or even internally, and get visibility along the way. I'm kind of curious to what extent you might be using that. Is that part of your plans? How does that hit for you?

Mike: Yeah, it's an excellent point, Dane, because it's one thing to put something out there and put your name on it when maybe you didn't actually write it. To your point, you might have gotten some help from, yeah, either a ghostwriter or an LLM or both. And so you can't really fake a frank, candid conversation. And this kind of thing really makes a difference. So people can listen to what you're saying and make their own judgment as to, oh, this person seems articulate, and they seem to have a little bit of a different approach. So I think it's a fantastic strategy. And something I've personally considered, although I do monthly podcasts on my Substack. But to have it framed as that, as something that AI cannot duplicate at this time: personality, approach, worldview, all of these critical things. It's pretty amazing.

Dane: Yeah. So as we wrap up here, I always like to have a fun game. If you had one piece of advice you could leave people with, it could be whatever's top of mind for you right now, or maybe specific to your experience. What do you think would be a nice nugget to leave our viewers with?

Mike: Yeah, I'll say two things that are top of mind for me right now. I think one of them I mentioned, which is, I don't think you always have to go and do something totally different, but it is important to stop and really clearly define what it is you're doing now. You might have this PowerPoint deck that says, oh, I think I'm doing these things. But are you really doing those things? What are you really doing? How often are you engaging with clients, through what channels? And so just write down what it is you're doing now. Call it a strategy, call it whatever you want.

And then the final thing, Dane, that really kind of blew my mind, is I was in a conversation with one of the founders of Zynga. And so he has a framework called Proven, Better, New. And his framework says we waste a lot of time trying to come up with new offers and try new things, when really what we need to do is think about any offer that we do as something proven. What's the proven component of it? What are we offering that's better? And what's the net new thing? So I think you could look at your offer through that lens. So proven is video content, right? And then I think the value add for what you're doing is that piece of speaking to people in their own words. And then adding AI on top of that, that's the new. So your offer really does have all three parts of that strategy framework.

Dane: Right. That's a great little nugget. Thanks again for doing this. It's really nice getting to know you. And thanks for sharing your wisdom.

Mike: Thank you. Thanks for the invitation. Happy to chat today.