Strategic Thinking: "The key note of everything to be SIMPLICITY".

On a visit to the Imperial War Museum in London yesterday, I came across the following document recently put on display for the first time. It's a handwritten note by Gen Bernard Montgomery - his plan for D-Day, boiled down to a single piece of paper. When you think about the size of the undertaking; 160,000 troops crossing the Channel on a single day, accompanied by hundreds of warships and aircraft, it's remarkable.

Compare this to most of the strategy reviews businesses engage in. The result is often reams of documentation and PowerPoint presentations, that generally lead to confusion and no appreciable change or successful outcomes.

There's a clear lesson here when it comes to strategic thinking - "The key note of everything to be SIMPLICITY".