Spending enough time on strategy is key. It helps keep an organization focused on the future and move forward. However, with time being many people’s scarcest resource and other things asking for immediate attention, many organizations spend too little time on strategy. But, how much is too little, and what is enough? The One-Hour Rule provides some help.

Why Spending Time on Strategy Is Critical
While most leaders subscribe to the idea that strategy is important for their organizations, it is non-trivial to ask why. After all, the mere fact that people think so, doesn’t make it true. Of the many reasons, four stand out:

Strategy creates coherence. Strategy is about integrating the various parts of an organization and making sure that there is alignment. If done well, it is the “glue” holding the parts together and the overarching framework making the pieces of the puzzle fit.
Strategy brings focus. Strategy involves making choices, about what to do and what not to do, and about how to do it. Without strategy, organizations tend to digress in all directions with resources, time and money spread too thinly across too many initiatives.
Strategy fosters stability. Strategy is about the long-term, or at least longer-term. As such, it helps keeping people’s eyes on the more important things, not just on their day-to-day activities. This creates a relatively stable point of reference in a fast-changing world.
Strategy engages people. Strategy, if done well, motivates and energizes people. It helps them understand why the organization does what it does, and how their own work contributes. This makes their work and life more meaningful and enjoyable.

The mere fact that strategy is critical means that spending time on it is critical too. Because, strategy does not generate itself, it cannot (yet) be generated by AI, and it does require time to generate, execute, evaluate and update it.

Why Companies Don’t Spend Enough Time on Strategy
Most organizations spend too little time on strategy. Not just at the board level, but throughout, at all levels. There are many reasons for this, with the following as some of the most important ones:

Absorbed by operational work. Many people, including managers and executives are overloaded with day-to-day short-term work.
External distractions. In today’s information society, there are many distractions that consume time and attention.
Comfort and fear. For most people it is more comforting to focus on their daily work, rather than on an uncertain future and tough choices.
All reasons are perfectly understandable. They are natural, while strategizing is not. But, this doesn’t mean strategy shouldn’t get more attention and deserves more time.

How Much Time? The One-Hour Rule of Strategy
To decide how much time one should actually be spending on strategy, here is a simple rule of thumb:

Executives should spend one hour per day on strategy;

Managers should spend one hour per week on strategy;

Employees should spend one hour per month on strategy

For obvious reasons, I call this rule “The One-Hour Rule” of strategy. It is also the core message of my new book, The One-Hour Strategy.

The idea behind this rule is that strategy is important for everyone in the organization and that everyone can also contribute to it. Not by talking high-level about the strategy as a whole, but by approaching strategy from their own unique role and perspective.

At the same time, strategy is not equally important for everyone and not everyone can or should contribute equally to the organization’s strategy. Because of their role and responsibilities, executives need to spend more time on it than managers, and managers more than employees.

Hence the rule: one hour per day for executives, one hour per week for managers, and one hour per month for employees. For those who think this is much, expressed in percentages of a 40h workweek it is 12.5% for executives, 2.5% for managers, and 0.6% for employees. This doesn’t seem an awful lot, does it? For executives maybe, but if not on strategy, what else should they be spending their time on?

How to Spend the Time?
A critical question is how to spend the time on strategy, what to actually do during the hour. After all, the mere act of spending more time on something doesn’t make it better or lead to better results. The time spent needs to be effective.

A short article like this is not the place for a comprehensive answer to this question. That answer is given in The One-Hour Strategy book. Yet, the gist of it is as follows:

Everyone works at strategy at their own level and from their own perspective. So, if one is leading a department, then the main focus is on the strategy of that department.
Strategy is made concrete, tangible and detailed through a single framework across levels. In my own work I use the Strategy Sketch or the 6M Model for this.
There is a continuous process, which focuses on the key issues and opportunities that deserve attention next in order to make the progress that one wants to make with the organization.