Strategy is sexy. It’s the alpha male of business functions, the one to which all others - manufacturing, operations, marketing, finance, accounting, human resources et al - bend the knee. Young management consultants want to be strategy consultants when they grow up, and who can blame them? Strategy is the architect (objectives, perhaps, are the client) and what follows are the hard hats. But if it looks sexy from afar, up close it can be demanding toil, and as many companies misconceive or misapprehend it as make it work.
Strategy is as old as war [link to ‘war and strategy’] which, if you look in a dictionary, still crops up before business in any definition. “The art of war” neatly sums up its military application, but management writers’ definitions are seldom as short. Gerry Johnson and Kevan Scholes, in their Exploring Corporate Strategy, offer: “Strategy is the direction and scope of an organisation over the long-term: which achieves advantage for the organisation through its configuration of resources within a challenging environment, to meet the needs of markets and to fulfil stakeholder expectations.” Michael Porter is more succinct, and comes from a different angle. “Strategy has to do with what will make you unique,” he told an audience at the Wharton School recently.
