What is "a strategy"?

July 14, 2015 2:19 PM

At various times in my life (mostly work situations, but not always), I've been asked to come up with "a strategy" for something. Embarrassingly, I'm still not clear on what "a strategy" really is.....

I can't believe I'm asking this (so embarrassed I have to do it anonymously, less I sully my professional reputation). But the concept of "strategy" has confused me for my entire career, and even after Googling it, reading countless articles (even one titled "What is Strategy?"), I am still a bit perplexed.

It seems like when some people ask for a strategy, they mean "what is your underlying philosophy about X?"? Other people seem to mean "what are you going to do about X?" And others apparently want a detailed, scheduled out plan of how exactly something is going to happen. Isn't that latter stuff more "tactics" than strategy?

Despite this confusion, I've written several "strategy documents" and spoken about "strategy" many times at work, and no one has complained or looked askance. But I'm personally dissatisfied with my understanding (and if you looked at the totality of the strategy writing I've done, there's little to no consistency in how I do it). Maybe this is just impostor syndrome, but it's driving me nuts.

I know this is kind of a broad question, but I'm really looking for two very practical things. As applied in the US professional workplace:

1. What really is "a strategy" in common usage? Is it about what you'll do, why you'll do it, or some combination thereof?
2. Can you point me to any really high quality examples of "strategy documents" of the sort that I should be churning out when someone asks me for one?

posted by anonymous to Work & Money (25 answers total)

To me, giving a "strategy" is offering a possible solution and listing the steps to achieving it. I realize that answers neither of your questions but is one more person's definition.

I work in education where "strategy" generally refers to a specific method for teaching in the classroom. It sounds like you are being asked for something else but I thought I'd mention this nonetheless.
posted by smorgasbord at 2:29 PM on July 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

A strategy is a plan with an organizing principle behind it.
posted by ocherdraco at 2:36 PM on July 14, 2015 [23 favorites]

If you ask a dozen people to define "strategy" you'll probably get at least a half-dozen distinct answers, especially if they try to differentiate strategy and tactics, but all of them will involve a plan aimed at achieving a known goal. Whether it's a sweeping high-level plan that doesn't care about the details, or something very granular and specific will vary with individual usage.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 2:38 PM on July 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

I always understand it to mean, like, an action plan to solve some problem or obtain some end.

So this is more the latter ("tactics," as you put it) than former ("philosophy"). But I don't see why a strategy couldn't be at a higher level of generality.
posted by J. Wilson at 2:39 PM on July 14, 2015 [3 favorites]

Broadly speaking, strategy identifies a goal and a general approach to achieving it. Its companion idea, tactics, lays out specific steps. For example:

Strategy: I'm going to achieve a healthier lifestyle by exercising more and eating better.
Tactics: I'm going to join the gym down the block and commit to going 5 times a week. i'm going to hire a personal trainer to help me figure out a good workout routine. I'm going to stop eating fast food and commit to cook dinner at least 5 nights a week. I will bring my own lunch to work instead of eating out. I will only eat a piece of fruit for dessert. Etc.
posted by mkultra at 2:41 PM on July 14, 2015 [25 favorites]

To me, giving a "strategy" is offering a possible solution and listing the steps to achieving it.

Yup. Should probably also include a couple of contingent responses in case, for example, X goes wrong or Y competitor tries to offer a competing product / service. I would not think that offering "your underlying philosophy about" something really constitutes a strategy in most cases.

However, the level of detail expected is going to vary a whole lot on the specifics of the situation. "Come up with a strategy for how to design and manufacture this ASIC" is a hugely different task that "come up with a strategy for our sales pitch to Mr. Smith's company." Maybe you can email the mods and provide a little detail about what industry you're in and/or what your role is at work?
posted by Joey Buttafoucault at 2:41 PM on July 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

A strategy is a set of measurable actions to achieve a specific goal.
A tactic is a done/not done task to help complete the strategy.

For example, the goal may be increase sales by 5%.
Strategies might be: Increase sales of product x by 10%.
and Increase cold calls by 20%.

Tactics might be: hire two new salepersons or
Find and purchase the best sales training video for our company.

Most often people confuse the tactics with the strategy. If you can measure it on a chart (how much has sales gone up?) it is probably a strategy. If you can only answer yes or no (did you buy that training video yet?) It is just a tactic. And most people don't do enough measuring to write meaningful integrated strategies.

G
posted by gnossos at 2:44 PM on July 14, 2015 [6 favorites]

I work I work, "strategy" is always used basically to mean "a plan" - but there are varying degrees of effort involved in creating a strategy.

There's an informal approach, for example, where someone might say, "What's the best strategy for improving the way we do our job?" and someone might say, "Oh! We need to hire more people and increase funding my 50%." We might then hold on to that as our 'strategy' - and if asked about our strategy, that's how we'd describe it. Either we aren't ready, or we haven't decided, to move forward with it - but it's tentatively what we'd like to do or think we'd do. If this was in writing, it'd be a paragraph or two.

There's also a more formal approach where the same question as above could be asked - but the plan is a step-by-step, point-by-point method of reaching the goal. That's the bigger, mapped-out plan - usually in writing, with measurable goals and "milestones" and specifics along the way. It's almost always in writing and usually many pages. Sometimes with lovely charts and graphs! This is the thing that I would create for my boss, say, so they could approve it for action. Or what I'd use to show funders who wanted to know how I'd be spending their money within my program. It's very, very well defined.

I always ask for clarification when someone tells me, "Just email me your strategy for X" - are they looking for an overview (informal) or the bigger picture (formal).
posted by VioletU at 2:45 PM on July 14, 2015

Your strategy is just your plan. "What is your strategy?" is saying, "What is your goal that you set out to accomplish, how do you think you should approach the situation to achieve that goal, and what are the specific steps and action items within that overall approach?"
posted by AppleTurnover at 2:51 PM on July 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

I hate it when people say things like, 'our strategy to improve customer service is to offer the best products, people, and systems. That's not a strategy, its a meaningless aspiration. To me a strategy entails that you thought of three or four ways to approach your goal, and you're presenting the one that's best for you based on your specific strengths and environment. So, we will improve customer service by tapping into our established strengths in training and offering incentives that we know matter to our staff despite their low cost.
posted by Ausamor at 3:07 PM on July 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

I disagree that a strategy needs to be measurable- rather it needs to be actionable.

For instance, Apple saw the threat to their iTunes ecosystem from streaming services like Spotify. So they came up with a strategy to acquire another existing service and fold it into the Apple umbrella. Thus came the acquisition of Beats and the rebranding of their music service as Apple Music.
posted by mkultra at 3:17 PM on July 14, 2015 [3 favorites]

I think of it this way: a tactic is a tiny plan in the form of an if-then pair: "if sales go down, lower the price". A strategy is a collection of tactics that are meant to work coherently together to cover a bunch of eventualities.

So a strategy could consist of a whole bunch of alternatives to what might happen in the first "if" (if sales go up, we do this; but if instead sales go down, we do that), or later choices that happen after the "then" (if sales go down, lower the price; then if they start buying, we'll use the profits to add sparkly paint to increase sales even more), or some combination of both.
posted by xris at 3:19 PM on July 14, 2015 [4 favorites]

For me a strategy is taking a thing, and breaking it down into constituent things, and then developing a plan of action/engagement with those constituent things until they are actioned/engaged with to a point of completion/satisfaction.
posted by turbid dahlia at 3:54 PM on July 14, 2015

Strategy = how you plan to accomplish something. If my goal is to gain press for a particular project, for example, one of my strategies might be to try and hijack press for a similar project from another company in order to call attention to my own. Two strategies for studying for a test could be studying small portions of a topic week by week before a test, or cramming everything the night before. YMMV.
posted by Hermione Granger at 4:04 PM on July 14, 2015

A really good resource for learning about strategy in the general sense is "The 36 Stratagems", an ancient Chinese military text.
The ideas are about war but most carry over to any form of competition. Read and consider the situations mentioned by the editor and you'll start to get a picture.
posted by bashos_frog at 5:24 PM on July 14, 2015 [3 favorites]

The distinction between strategy and tactics in this context is a red herring because no one at your work is ever going to ask you to draft up a "tactics" document. So combine those two concepts in your head and try to suss out from whoever assigned you the task what level of granularity is expected. (Are there other "strategy documents" that have been created in the past by others in the organization? If in doubt, and if not confident enough to ask, model yours on those.)
posted by nobody at 6:04 PM on July 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

First of all, know that in a work context "strategy" can be a totally meaningless term. I have definitely heard it used by people who just want to be paid to sit there, rather than do the work ("I'm more on the strategic side... talk to Phyllis about the logistics" = "I go to meetings all day and that's it.")

But strategy can also be shorthand for "describe the approach you're going to take to solving a problem," usually with the understanding that other approaches have been weighed. "What's your strategy going to be for selling these widgets in Japan?" is different from "what's the plan?" - the plan is more granular, with the steps having been thought out and decided. The strategy is more the approach you're going to take, like "we're going to get targeted ads going" or "we're going to customize the product for the Japanese market."

With regard to your second question, if asked for a strategy doc I would find out if they want a doc that discusses what strategies have been considered; why the you've chosen a particular one; or if what they actually want is the detailed plan, and they're just using the fancier word.
posted by fingersandtoes at 6:52 PM on July 14, 2015

A strategy is:

1) a diagnosis of the situation
2) a guiding policy; and
3) a coherent set of actions to achieve the goal

Strategy is What and Why, not How. (How is tactical).

That said, some people use it to dress up the term 'plan' or 'tactic'.

"We're going to address commodification of our product by creating a true luxury variant that will be highly differentiated though of more limited interest. we'll partner with Alexander McQueen and Some other designer to do so." could be the heart of a strategy. Opening store in Soho would be a tactic.
posted by whisk(e)y neat at 8:06 PM on July 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

[Strategy] is a grand-sounding word, and it is frequently misused by laymen as a synonym for tactics. In fact, strategy has a very different and quite simple meaning that flows from just one short set of questions:

• Who are we, and what are we ultimately trying to do here?
• How will we do it, and what resources and means will we employ in doing it?

The four answers give rise to one's strategy.

-- Ricks, Thomas E. 2006. Fiasco: the American military adventure in Iraq. p 127.
posted by kadonoishi at 8:46 PM on July 14, 2015 [3 favorites]

When someone asks me for that, I take it to mean the specific set of possible things you're going to do to achieve the goal. For any goal there are going to be a lot of ideas (including stupid ideas, or good ideas that are just not practical, or ideas that are good but not essential). I could do X, Y, Z, Q, and/or W where those are all pretty well-defined courses of action, like "hire 12 more technicians" or "focus on improving technician performance in this one thing" (which necessarily means less emphasis on other things.)

My strategy is to focus on X and Y (80/20 rule), take advantage of Q when I can, and if Z happens without too much extra effort, bonus. W might work, but would piss off the union, and I'd rather not do that.
posted by ctmf at 10:11 PM on July 14, 2015

I’m a fan of Lafley & Martin’s definition from the excellent book Playing To Win, summarized in this brief article:

We believe strategy can be defined and created using a simple framework that entails answering five questions — the same five questions, no matter the type, size or context of the organization:

1. What is your winning aspiration?
2. Where will you play?
3. How will you win?
4. What capabilities must be in place?
5. What management systems are required?

The answers to these questions are the fundamental choices every leader must make to craft a successful strategy. Make no mistake about it, strategy is choice; it is a set of choices about what you will do, and what you will not do, so as to create advantage over the competition.

It’s a slight variation on Thomas Ricks above for a work context, but includes the same basic ingredients of some thing you’re trying to achieve, some trade-offs you might have to make, and resources you have available. We’ve made it into such a cargo-cult thing at my work (because nobody knows what strategy is) that I’ve printed the five questions onto mugs and I buy multiple copies of Playing To Win at a time just to hand them out to people.
posted by migurski at 11:37 PM on July 14, 2015 [3 favorites]

That Michael Porter article you link is excellent, by the way.
posted by migurski at 11:39 PM on July 14, 2015

Qualifications: Tech nerd, but I listen to business podcasts and I'm attending a strategy meeting tomorrow. I've never written a strategy document, nor read one. Terrible bona fides, but who better to illustrate common usage than the lay people?

I don't recall where I first read this, but my favored general definition is "Tactics is how; Strategy is what, when and where (And politics is who and why)." More generally, I think people think of 'strategy is defining the great results we want, and tactics is figuring out how to get them.' Wikipedia suggests that "Strategy place before the battle, tactics takes takes place during."

I also think that the delineation between the two changes as one's career progresses. For a first level technical manager, strategy might be choosing Java over Go. For a CIO it might be building a product at all versus buying a COTS solution. For the CEO, strategy might be acquiring a company who makes the COTS product. At each level, strategic decisions made below them are treated as tactical.

Which strategy you pursue depends on resources available; if you have no Go programmers on hand, Java is a reasonable option. And if you have no programmers at all, deciding to start building software is the more risky endeavor. So a good strategy document, IMO, describes your org's strengths and weaknesses; and outlines the opportunities and threats. Based on that analysis, your document should also present a set of principles -- "A not B, X not Y," and explain why each principle suits the organization. Finally, because a strategy you cannot pursue is not worth reading; your document offers some tactical suggestions.

The "A not B" formulation also defines what the organization has decided is safe to ignore. This is important! We traditionally think an organization that pursues all opportunities is one lacking a focused strategy. The Porter article you linked to for example, describes positioning as a potential heart of strategy. That means intentionally limiting your product's appeal to focus on becoming more appealing to a specific type of customer. Porter's best example is Neutrogena, which avoided perfumes and deodorants in favor of chemistry (pH balancing).

So for my meeting tomorrow, I expect the strategy meeting, to the extent it covers actual strategy, to be about what opportunities we see, which ones we want to pursue, and which we will leave to our competitors. I suspect it means we'll decide to stop supporting a particular service, and start pursuing other types of grants and contracts to replace that revenue.

Or maybe it'll be a 2 hour circ... ular discussion fest where no decisions are made, because sometimes people use the word strategy to borrow it's connotations for importance, and nobody has a concrete definition to call them out on abusing the word. Really, your best hope is to figure out what the person asking for strategy documents means. All MeFi can do is lend you some common definitions to pitch your audience.
posted by pwnguin at 12:36 AM on July 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

Former strategy consultant here. I would recommend A. G. Lafley's book "Playing to Win."

At the heart of it, strategy is about making choices. What will the organization do, and, just as importantly, what will the organization NOT do. And, how do these choices work together and allow the organization achieve what it wants to achieve (e.g., faster than market growth, entry into new markets, profitability)?

Organizations are overwhelmed by different options -- should they acquire this company or another company, should they invest in a new warehouse or outsource distribution, should they invest in a sales force or work through distributors, should they fund R&D for X new widget or Y new widget?

A clearly and simply articulated strategy helps leaders, managers and employees easily filter which of those options that they face on a monthly basis the ones that will ultimately propel the entire organization forward. A company without a strategy (or one that's badly communicated) will end up having different people in different departments make conflicting but well-intentioned choices.

For instance, if the declared company strategy is to invest in original clothing designs for the high end consumer market, with an in-house end to end manufacturing to distribution system...... then, leaders and employees know NOT to explore ways to outsource manufacturing, know NOT to create cheaper lines of clothing, know NOT to penny-and-dime the marketing budget, etc. etc. But, imagine if no one knows what the company strategy is except to increase revenues and improve profitability --- then, it means everyone is exploring options to outsource (b/c it's more profitable) or exploring options to move to the low end market (b/c it's more revenue, but would impact brand perception), etc. etc.

Almost any viable business idea can be proven viable.... but, a strategy helps people understand the "sandbox" of what are acceptable viable business ideas for their particular organization.

Creating the strategy does take a lot of work to evaluate what are those choices the organization should make based on opportunity / capability assessment, but the analysis is NOT a strategy itself. The strategy is the set of choices of what the organization will do for an extended period of time that is then communicated to the rest of the organization to operationalize.
posted by ellerhodes at 6:54 AM on July 15, 2015 [5 favorites]

In my line of work, I put together (alone or with a group of people who will be working with me on a particular project) strategic plans for every given project. We work on things that are very long term--think years-to-decades--so it's important for any successors to know what I/we were thinking, what we were doing, what we planned to do next, who would do what, and so on. Those plans end up in a very informal strategy document that we consult often and update with relevant new info, sort of like a big checklist where new data comes in and the old questions the new data answered or reframed get crossed out (but not deleted).

So, for this use, a strategy is a long term, flexible, written outline that includes relevant background info and discrete next steps, goals, and possible means to achieve those goals.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 10:11 AM on July 15, 2015 [2 favorites]