Explain the Difference Between a Strategy and a Plan

Strategy and plan are used interchangeably in most professional contexts, which is why most 'strategies' are actually plans and most organisations are surprised when following the plan does not achieve the goal. The distinction is not pedantic: a plan is a sequence of actions; a strategy is a theory of why those actions will beat the competition or overcome the constraint. This makes the distinction concrete and gives you three questions to tell one from the other.

Explain the difference between a strategy and a plan to someone who has been using the words interchangeably in a professional context:

1. The conceptual distinction: what a strategy is and what a plan is, and why confusing them leads to specific problems
2. A concrete example: one real-world example where what was called a 'strategy' was actually a plan, and what would have made it a genuine strategy
3. The questions that reveal the difference: three questions you can ask of any document or decision that will quickly tell you whether you are looking at a strategy or a plan
4. How they relate: how a strategy and a plan connect to each other in practice, and which comes first
5. The failure mode of each: what goes wrong when you have a plan without a strategy, and what goes wrong when you have a strategy without a plan