What is strategy and why is it important?
Strategy can feel like an abstract concept, but at its core, it’s about direction and impact. Some see it as competition, others as a process for using resources effectively, and some as a roadmap to achieve goals. The reality? Strategy is what shapes how power flows in your organization. And if only a few people understand it, you’re limiting your potential. When everyone on your team thinks strategically, your organization moves with purpose.
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Strategy is Hard
Strategy can mean many things. It can be a plan, a process, a creative stage, or a set of guiding principles. Some see it as part of a hierarchy, while others connect it to vision and culture. But at its core, strategy is about making smart choices that shape the future. Without it, businesses drift. With it, they grow with purpose.
Strategy is part of everything we do. It shapes how we interact—whether in friendships, businesses, or global affairs. Every choice we make has an impact. By understanding different perspectives on strategy, we can make smarter decisions and create positive change in the world.
There is an essential unity to all strategic experience in all periods of history because nothing vital to the nature and function of…strategy changes. – Professor Colin Gray
Strategy as process
Strategy is a 3 stage process directing the flow of power. It is this process that brings people together as they move through the development of an idea from inspiration through manifestation. The three stages – well now that depends on the source.
Strategy as phase
Strategy is a phase in the creative process, inspired by am idea, it defines an ideal outcome that will, in an ideal world, work without fail. Except we often forget the environment, the other actors/agents/relations involved, the role of chance as a particularly particular element of strategy, and more. Or we believe we know more about them than we do…
Strategy as particulars
Strategy is often presented as a framework of particular elements. These elements have more or less influence on events depending on the stage of development.
Strategy as plan
A “plan” or perhaps plan of action. This is the dictionary definition. For our purposes let’s call it the “ideal type:”. A deep hope and belief that the desired outcome will prevail if we undertake the proposed actions. Sticking to the plan is not strategy – it is either operative or tactical thinking…
Strategy as purpose or practice
Strategy is neither purpose nor practice. It is the undercurrent delineating and presenting the choices between purpose and practice – that which we want versus that which we do. It is presented as different dialectics – intelligence versus analysis and the knowledgebase that creates; resources versus doctrine and the objectives we can set as a result; that which we can control or orchestrate versus the chance/opportunity/probability of success if we undertake the proposed operation.
Strategy as prudence
There is an inherent need of forethought, as well as in the moment thinking, when engaging strategically. One can get lost in the strategic of forethought beyond that which is prudent. And a moment may be lost as a result.