Talking about strategy » what is strategy

Stop asking ‘What is Strategy?’

Kim Warren — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 09:46:48 +0000

Online groups seem obsessed with asking what Strategy is, and what’s its value. If we don’t know, we can hardly expect others to listen to us. It’s simply setting powerful but realistic aims, and defining how to get there. It’s purpose is to create business value (NPV of future free cash flows). Because things change, these must be updated continually. (In non-commercial cases, the purpose is to achieve non-financial aims, though within financial constraints).

So, let’s stop debating this basic issue, and focus on working out, codifying, and explaining how to do strategy well, whatever the circumstances.

Short online strategy course

Kim Warren — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 13:27:01 +0000

Just launched a short course at open learning materials provider, Coggno. Its free intro on ‘what is strategy’ may be useful in any case – it makes the case, with examples, that steering strategy and performance is a larger issue that the infrequent choice of strategic ‘position’ that dominates strategy books and courses. The short course is based on the full 10-week video slide-show course used in MBA programs.

What is strategy? … and the strategy life-cycle

Kim Warren — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 18:01:31 +0000

Just working on the first chapter of the textbook 2nd edition, and thought it needed a bit more on this question – found the only way to explain to newbies was to go through an organization’s life and track what ‘strategic management’ actually does over that time-horizon. Main messages are:

The choice of strategic ‘position’ [what to provide, to whom and how, relative to rivals] is a very rare activity.
Substantial strategic initiatives [acquisition, new market entry etc] occur occasionally.
By far the majority of the task is steering [a.ka. implementing] the strategy from period to period.

So – how come the attention in all the textbooks and journals is in precisely the opposite priority?

This took me on a tour around some interesting examples – Blockbuster vs Netflix in video rental, Alibaba.com [China's eBay-beater], IKEA, etc. And also onto Michael Porter’s ‘What is Strategy?‘ article [HBR, Nov/Dec 1996], which got me really annoyed, because it totally dismisses everything except the first task – though that shouldn’t have surprised me I guess.

See a draft of this new section here [forgive the baby steps approach, but it has to work for new-comers to strategy as well as you experts!].