Strategy Fatigue: When Everything Sounds Strategic (and Nothing Actually Is)

If everything’s a strategy, then nothing is.

“Strategic.” It’s one of those words that gets attached to everything. Strategic roadmap. Strategic alignment. Strategic initiative. After a while, it all starts to sound the same, and worse, it starts to lose meaning.

I call it strategy fatigue. It happens when the word “strategy” becomes a label instead of a lens. When teams start calling things strategic to make them sound important, not because they actually help people make better decisions.

Real strategy isn’t about how big the plan is or how long the PowerPoint deck runs. It’s about clarity. It’s the discipline of deciding what you won’t do, and the courage to stay aligned when new ideas come knocking.

You know you’re dealing with strategy fatigue when meetings sound like this:

• “We need a strategic dashboard.” (Translation: another dashboard.)

• “Let’s build a strategic workflow.” (Translation: no one’s sure what problem it solves.)

• “We need a strategy for our strategy.” (Translation: send help.)

Strong strategy simplifies. It gives people a shared north star so decisions get easier, not harder. The best strategic moments don’t happen in executive off-sites; they happen when someone in the room says, “Wait, how does this connect to what we said matters most?”

So what does being truly strategic look like in practice?

• Prioritizing outcomes before projects, and saying no to work that doesn’t connect.

• Measuring progress by decisions made, not documents created.

• Aligning success metrics with behaviors, not just deliverables.

• Revisiting strategy quarterly to adjust course, not rewrite everything.

• Empowering teams to challenge work that doesn’t support agreed goals.

• Using the same language from leadership to front line, so “strategic” actually means the same thing to everyone.

Because the goal isn’t to sound strategic.
It’s to be strategic,  in the moments that matter most.