A founder once told me:
- “We need a strategy… but we’re not ready for it yet.”
- “Why not?” I asked.
- “Because even our basic processes — like order intake — are a mess. We need to fix that first.”
Sounds reasonable.
But it’s the wrong way around.
You wouldn’t repaint a room if the entire building was structurally unsafe.
It doesn’t matter how nice the walls look — the value of the apartment will collapse with the rest of it.
The same goes for your business.
Strategy doesn’t come after order.
Strategy shows you what kind of order actually matters.
It tells you:
– Which processes are worth fixing
– Which ones are no longer relevant
– And what new systems you’ll need tomorrow
📎 Typewriter manufacturers kept “optimizing” — right up until the computer arrived.
📎 Taxi companies kept “cleaning up operations” — then Uber happened.
Don’t waste time improving processes that won’t survive your own future.
👉 Start with strategy.
Everything else follows.
Svyatoslav Biryulin