Part 1: What Exactly is Strategy and Operations in Tech?

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This is part of a ten-part series. Access the full series here.

What Exactly is Strategy and Operations in Tech?

Here’s the first secret about the StratOps space: very few people who say they’re doing business strategy are actually doing pure strategy. No one is hiding away in a secret room and creating a groundbreaking roadmap from scratch.

Instead, more often than not, they are working to refine or land the organization’s pre-defined strategy, and ensure it is effectively executed.

This is not a knock on the role; it also does not imply the job is easy by any means. But it does mean that we need to have realistic expectations of how strategy teams actually add value to an organization, especially since they're not the ones directly bringing in the money.

While the scope of strategy and operations work at a large tech company can seem idiosyncratic and boundless, it can often boil down to one thing: to help other people get sh*t done.

There are many levels to this, of course – but you cannot be led too far astray if you stay true to this mission statement.

OK, but what kind of work is it specifically?

Taking the liberty to oversimplify a bit: I think of the work in five buckets, via what I call the DIALS framework below:

Demystify with Data
Inspire with Insights
Accelerate with Autopilots
Lobby with Love
Steer with Structure

In the following section, we'll talk about what each bucket entails exactly, and how StratOps teams deliver outcomes accordingly.