---
title: "Don't buy more strategy than you need"
description: "A strategic choice is rarely a revolution, and the process does not need to be large. Why I have led strategy work myself in recent years – and how I intend to work now that I am on the other side of the table."
date: 2026-09-06
author: Merete N. Kristiansen
publisher: Kristiansen & Co
canonical: https://kristiansenco.no/en/insights/ikke-kj%C3%B8p-mer-strategi-enn-dere-trenger/
---

# Don't buy more strategy than you need

I have bought advice all my working life, as a leader and as a board member. In recent years I have nonetheless chosen to lead our strategy processes myself, with help from our own people. Not because I don't believe in outside help, but because I have too often seen the project grow larger than the question.

My starting point as a leader is simple: a company has to keep changing. You look for opportunities, choose some things and drop others, based on the resources you actually have. A strategic choice is rarely a revolution. More often it is a correction of course, or a new area added to what you already do. That does not call for six months and a sixty-page document. It calls for asking the right questions, getting the answers on the table, and making up your mind.

Yet these processes often become large. More than once I have wondered whether that is because it means more billable hours for the people running them. It is an honest suspicion, and I am taking it with me now that I am moving to the other side of the table.

Many companies do not have people to spare for this. The person running the company has neither the time nor the experience to lead such a process alone, and everyone else has more than enough to do delivering on what has already been promised. A new market, a new customer group, a direction nobody is responsible for yet – that work is never urgent, and so it is always pushed back. This is where I believe outside help has a place. Not to find the answer, but to lead the work of finding it.

This is how I intend to work. First, understand the company – what it lives on, who it sells to, what its people can actually do. Then agree on what is to be delivered, and keep it as small as the question allows. And then lead the discussion. I don't think I am the one who will come up with the best ideas. They sit with the people who know the company far better than I ever will. My job is to draw them out, sort them by what is possible with the resources at hand, and make sure it ends in a choice – not in a list.

What I bring is that I have done this before: chosen a market, worked out who actually pays, built the team that was going to sell, and stayed with it for the years it takes. I have also been part of ventures that did not go to plan, and those have taught me at least as much.

But the execution is yours. It cannot be bought, from me or from anyone else. It takes someone with authority in their own organisation who stays with it over time and sets something else aside.

If you are facing a choice like this, I would be glad to talk.