Throughout my life, and long before I had a clear idea of what it was, I have been fascinated with strategy. I think this fascination had something to do with an attraction to being able to make things happen — in essence, a kind of power.
For a long time I didn’t have a rigorous concept of what strategy was. Gradually, through my career, then as an amateur historian of a couple of specific fields of interest, and from an MBA I picked up along the way, I’ve developed some ideas of what I think strategy is. The clearer those ideas have become, the more useful and practically applicable they appear to be.
Since I think good, effective, and successful decisions need to be based on good information I think some rigour about fundamental ideas is not only useful, but necessary for success. So when I saw the following definition I felt a need to respond:
Strategy: “A general direction set for the company and its various components to achieve a desired state in the future. Strategy results from the detailed strategic planning process.”
After I read that, I rolled my eyes and picked up my pen. At its core, and what I find most offensive, is that it’s so bland, so academic, and so detached from reality as to be useless. Let alone that its logic is openly circular. Reading it puts me to sleep. I can’t do anything with a statement like that. How could I use it?
Contrast that with the following simple statement:
Strategy is the art of allocating resources to achieve a goal.
This fundamental definition isn’t about warfare, or even business. It’s simply about conscious choice. While precise, it is general enough to be applied anywhere. Strategy can be applied to a military campaign, or making breakfast. A strong idea can find a home in many places in our lives. I think that pretty much everyone uses strategy regularly, perhaps, often, just often not very well.
And I like that the definition labels strategy as an art. Sometimes, often, a situation can be so complex that it requires decision-making that stretches beyond analysis. And when we have too much information to analyze we fall back on unconscious patterns of experience, or intuition. And by that I don’t mean guessing. I believe that intuition is a body of knowledge paid for by experience so complex that it may defy conscious analysis. But it's still based on reality.
The three referents in the above definition are “resources,” “allocation,” and a “goal.” A thorough understanding of these concepts, and how they interact, could, conceivably, make one a “master strategist.”
Resources can be time, money, influence, people, contacts, bus fare, whatever.
Allocation is simply choice. It can be conscious or unconscious. I think we should prefer conscious.
Goals are what we want.
So, in simple terms, strategy is how we . . .
. . . choose how to use what we’ve got to try to get what we want.
In the words of Phillip Marlowe (think Bogart):
“I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat, and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room.”
Congrats on getting this going!