Hey, business owner —
Picture this. It's September. Summer's over, there's that back-to-work energy that usually lasts until October. The CEO calls a leadership meeting and says: "This year we need to do real work on strategy."
Everyone nods. Someone takes notes. An offsite is booked for November. A consultant gets called in.
In 70% of cases, what happens next in that room—whether in person or on a call with the consultant—has almost nothing to do with strategy. You talk about improving sales processes, which trade show to prioritize next year, how to restructure the website. Useful stuff, legitimate stuff, but not strategy.
The problem isn't lack of will. It's that the word "strategy" stopped meaning anything precise.
The word that means everything and nothing
Over twenty years, "strategy" has suffered silent inflation. Today it describes almost everything: social strategy, pricing strategy, recruiting strategy. The result is it stopped distinguishing anything from anything else.
But a precise definition exists—the one theorists have used for fifty years, the one the best consultants apply in the field, and the one almost nobody explains to the entrepreneur before starting work together.
Strategy means choosing which arena you compete in, where you don't compete, and how to allocate resources coherently with that choice. It's not a plan. It's not a goal. It's a conscious refusal.
That second part—the refusal—is what almost always gets missed. Without it, there's no strategy. There's just optimistic planning.
Operational vs. strategic: a distinction that changes everything
The quickest way to know if you're getting strategic or operational consulting is to ask: what question are we trying to answer?
The operational consultant helps you answer: how can we do this better? How to structure the sales team, how to speed up quote turnaround, how to improve close rates. They answer assuming the direction is already right.
The strategic consultant helps you answer: should we do this at all? And if yes, why this way and not completely differently? They question the starting point. Their most useful work is often helping you recognize what you're doing that you shouldn't be doing anymore.
Neither is superior. It depends on where the company is. But confusing them—paying for one when you need the other—is one of the quietest forms of waste I see in SMEs.
Three signals you actually need strategic consulting
There are situations where operational consulting, however excellent, can't unlock growth because the problem isn't in execution—it's in direction. Here they are:
1. You're growing, but you don't know why
The company is doing well. New clients arrive. But if someone asked you to articulate why clients choose you over the competitor, the answer would be vague: "quality," "reliability," "the relationships we build." Nothing wrong with those values—but they're not strategy. They're descriptions. Until you understand the precise mechanism generating your advantage, you can't replicate it intentionally or defend it when pressure comes.
2. Opportunities seem to be everywhere
The market keeps offering new directions: an adjacent segment that looks interesting, a technology that could open a new market, a partnership that "might work." The company follows many of these threads, resources spread thinly across all directions. The result: presence in many places, dominance nowhere. No segment where you're the unequivocal first choice. This is the most subtle and dangerous signal.
3. The context has changed discontinuously
An acquisition, a generational transition, a major competitor with a completely different model, a technology that redefines the sector. When context shifts this way, the strategy that worked until yesterday might be irrelevant tomorrow—not because it was wrong, but because the playing field moved. Continuing to execute with more discipline is the wrong answer to a direction problem.
Carel Industries: growing stronger by choosing what not to do
Carel Industries started in Brugine, near Padua, in 1973. Electronic controllers for refrigeration and air-conditioning systems—devices that manage temperature, humidity, energy efficiency in supermarkets, industrial cold rooms, commercial building HVAC.
For decades it was a solid, contained company. Then, starting in the 2000s, growth began that would eventually lead to listing on the Milan Stock Exchange in 2018 and revenues exceeding 600 million euros.
What changed the trajectory? Not a revolutionary product innovation. Not a transformative acquisition. One precise strategic choice—and consistency in holding it over time.
Carel decided not to make the physical components of the systems: compressors, fans, heat pumps. It could have. It had the competence to vertically integrate. The margins looked attractive. Some competitors were doing it.
But if Carel started making compressors, it would become a competitor to Embraco, Danfoss, Bitzer—the same companies it partnered with as a technology provider. Those partners would become risk, then competitors, then adversaries.
The choice not to make the compressor was the choice that made partnership with every compressor maker in the world possible. The refusal built the advantage.
Today Carel is a global reference in control solutions for energy efficiency in HVAC/R. Not because it chased every growth opportunity. Because it deliberately rejected some—in a coherent, sustained way.
That's what strategic consulting does for an SME: not to find new opportunities, but to understand which ones to refuse—and why that refusal makes you stronger than any horizontal expansion.
How real strategic consulting works
A serious strategic process has three phases, and none of them can be skipped without paying later.
First: diagnosis. Before choosing where to go, you have to understand where you are—and why. This means analyzing honestly the positioning currently perceived by clients (not what the company thinks it has), the segments where real value gets generated, and the internal resources that distinguish the company in ways not easily replicated. Diagnosis takes time and requires listening to uncomfortable things. SMEs that want to skip it are usually afraid of what they'll hear.
Second: the choice. Given what you are, where can you actually win? And what are you willing to stop doing to concentrate resources there? This phase is politically difficult in organizations—even small ones, because every product, segment, and client has an internal champion. The consultant's work here isn't technical; it's helping the entrepreneur make the choice instead of postponing it indefinitely.
Third: alignment. A strategy exists only if it changes the organization's actual behavior. How do you respond when a client asks for something outside your perimeter? How do you evaluate an acquisition opportunity? How do you communicate to the market? The strategy has to descend from document to operational daily life—otherwise it's theory.
A serious engagement takes 3-6 months of active work. Less than three months almost always produces solutions that give the entrepreneur confidence but don't actually change organizational behavior. More than six months risks the process becoming self-serving.
How we work
At KREDO, strategic consulting never stands apart from brand identity. Because the brand—the real one, not the logo—is the external projection of internal strategic choices. A company that knows clearly where it competes and where it doesn't also has a coherent brand. A company chasing every opportunity has a vague brand, and it knows it.
We work with B2B SMEs at moments of discontinuity: generational transitions, repositioning, post-acquisitions, entries into new markets. Moments when the previous route isn't valid and you need to build something new—methodically, without romanticism, with respect for what the company has already built.
If you're in one of those moments, we can talk about it. Not to convince you of anything—but to help you understand what you're truly looking for before starting.
Write here → for a first conversation.
Until next time — choose well what not to do.
Alex
