Although not primarily about timescale (see Decouple strategy and timing), to be worth writing down and applying into processes, the contents of a strategy should be expected to have some useful shelf-life. They should be resilient to minor changes in circumstances.
But what about larger changes? (subjective – but consider things that change the strategic context or might change answers to the 4 key strategic questions). Resilience is not just about standing firm in the face of change but also about recognising the need to change and to adapt accordingly.
A resilient strategy contains trip-wires or tell-tales of things to look for that indicate it’s time to change things.
Too often in the strategy formulation process all that is retained is the agreed outcome. There is a lot of value in how and why certain decisions were made. When the trip-wires signal that it’s time to change, being able to see which parts of the strategy were based on certain assumptions or context is helpful in focussing activity in reforming the strategy.
A resilient strategy comprises the published strategy and also a coherent record of the rationale behind it and diagnostics to monitor if the strategy is working out as expected.