GRAMMATICAS CONSULTING LTD
Briefing Note
By Dominic Grammaticas FCA
September 2026
| Every CEO says this. Most believe it. But here are three questions that test whether that confidence is justified. First: is your strategy genuinely coherent? A modern conservation-led tourism business has to balance commercial performance with environmental stewardship, community benefit, and guest experience. These objectives are not always naturally aligned. There are real tensions between them. If your strategy does not explicitly address how those tensions are resolved, what gets prioritised when they conflict, and what trade-offs you are willing to accept, then what you have is not a strategy. It is a wish list. Second: does your strategy cascade? A top-level vision is only useful if it translates into clear, aligned plans for every part of the business. Does your brand strategy match your marketing strategy? Does your marketing strategy align with your product development plan? Is your sales approach consistent with your pricing philosophy? Is your financial plan built to support the operational model, or is it pulling against it? If each department is working to its own logic without reference to a unifying strategic framework, you do not have one strategy. You have several, and they may be contradicting each other. Third, and this is the one that matters most: does your team know the strategy? Not your board. Not your investors. Your team. The people who deliver the product every day. If you walked into your camp kitchen tomorrow morning, or your guide briefing room, or your reservations office, and asked “what is our strategy?”, would anyone be able to answer clearly and consistently? If not, then whatever is written in your board pack is irrelevant. Your operation is running on instinct, not intent. And instinct, however good, is not scalable, not transferable, and not resilient to disruption. Strategy is not a document. It is a living discipline that connects what you believe to what you do, across every level of the business, every day. Getting it right is hard. Getting it wrong is expensive. Not having one at all is the most expensive option of all.If you would like help developing, refining, or pressure-testing your strategy, Grammaticas Consulting Ltd would welcome the conversation. |
| Dominic Grammaticas FCA Managing Director dominic@grammaticas.com www.grammaticas.com |
