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Strategy is not X

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Re: Strategy is not X

#31

Post by toolslive »

yobbo wrote: post #24
toolslive wrote: post #18

He missed one: Strategy is not tactics. For example I see sports pundits do confuse strategy with tactics all the time. I guess you need to be a chess/go player to really understand these concepts.

Differentiating between tactics and strategy illustrates different levels and priorities in the overall game plan. It might still be valid to use these words interchangeably at some level. For example; how to set up an ambush is a tactical question, but when and why might be strategic questions. Tact is near synonymous with "how to act".

Yes. It might even be that what is tactical on one level is strategical on another. For example: an investment agency might have as a strategy: "we do arbitrage on different markets that have latency between them". A tactic might be: "We use AI to optimize our decisions". On for the people involved with the AI, the decision of AI is strategical, and the tactics are like "do we use NNs ? or statistical modelling, or both or ... ?"

Re: Strategy is not X

#32

Post by doctor_eval »

etempleton wrote: post #30

It always shocks me how many leaders struggle with what a strategy is in the business world. Typically, as the author mentions, they either present a goal, “XXX sales in Q1,” as a strategy or a checklist of tactics or actions. A strategy can be as little as a sentences or an entire plan, but it should be formalized. It is the “why” question. It answers the question of why you have people doing the things they are doi…

I agree. It’s crazy how many senior people don’t understand strategy and can’t deal with complexity.

Ex, I once worked at a company that required creation of a two sided market (buyers and sellers). I proposed that we bootstrap the market by creating a variant of our product to enter an existing, complementary market. By offering a cheaper solution in the complementary market with clear benefits for users, its likely we would have been able to establish a user base that we could then use to stimulate the seller side of the market, thereby achieving our goal of creating a brand new market.

The strategy our management consultant CEO went with was to put ads on LinkedIn.

Nobody works there any more.

Re: Strategy is not X

#33

Post by doctor_eval »

ttymck wrote: post #4

I think about this topic a lot. I think I am fairly good at tactics: devising the "checklist" and executing on it. I don't know if I am any good at strategy. I haven't tried, and I wouldn't know where the line between tactics and strategy lies. It doesn't sound like the book being reviewed answers my question. Are there such books? Is it just a matter of "doing" strategy, to know what it is and how to do it well (tri…

My take is that strategy is a set of abstract, high level goals that you specify in order to achieve an objective over a long period of time. Eg, “Create a product for market A in order to build a sufficiently large user/revenue base that will allow us to enter market B”. Think Tesla Roadster, Model S, Model X which then provided enough revenue to build the Model 3.

Tactics are a set of concrete plans and techniques used to achieve each of the strategic goals, in order. “Add these features to the product to make it desirable in market A”. Or, “offer a high volume purchasing commitment to a supplier in order to reduce the cost of batteries”.

You would typically deploy very many tactics over a long time in order to achieve the strategic goals.

The main difference between strategy and tactics is that when (if!) you get to the end of your strategy, you’ve made it; you’ve achieved what you set out to do.

Re: Strategy is not X

#34

Post by tonyedgecombe »

lordnacho wrote: post #22

Someone else mentioned Mintzberg, well worth a read. It will shatter many folk theories of what strategy is. Having said that I'll give a vague answer. Strategy is consciously deciding on one policy while sacrificing another. If we play a high line, we can't low block around the penalty area. If we press like mad, we can't conserve our energy. If we play the tall guy up front we are committing to crossing the ball, n…

So all those things sound tactical to me, they wouldn't persist from game to game or even session to session. You would need to adjust them according to your opposition.

Whereas strategic decisions would be about how you select your players or how you balance players fitness against their freedom to do what they want. Stuff that would transcend individual games or even seasons.

Re: Strategy is not X

#35

Post by tgv »

etempleton wrote: post #30

It always shocks me how many leaders struggle with what a strategy is in the business world. Typically, as the author mentions, they either present a goal, “XXX sales in Q1,” as a strategy or a checklist of tactics or actions. A strategy can be as little as a sentences or an entire plan, but it should be formalized. It is the “why” question. It answers the question of why you have people doing the things they are doi…

Isn't strategy the answer to the how question? Why is usually called "vision", even though in many cases it amounts to "making money with the tools and knowledge we have."

Re: Strategy is not X

#36

Post by blowski »

tgv wrote: post #35
etempleton wrote: post #30

It always shocks me how many leaders struggle with what a strategy is in the business world. Typically, as the author mentions, they either present a goal, “XXX sales in Q1,” as a strategy or a checklist of tactics or actions. A strategy can be as little as a sentences or an entire plan, but it should be formalized. It is the “why” question. It answers the question of why you have people doing the things they are doi…

Isn't strategy the answer to the how question? Why is usually called "vision", even though in many cases it amounts to "making money with the tools and knowledge we have."

I define strategy as how you are going to leverage your strengths and overcome your weaknesses (in comparison to competitors) in order to achieve your vision.

Re: Strategy is not X

#37

Post by mattbuilds »

doctor_eval wrote: post #32
etempleton wrote: post #30

It always shocks me how many leaders struggle with what a strategy is in the business world. Typically, as the author mentions, they either present a goal, “XXX sales in Q1,” as a strategy or a checklist of tactics or actions. A strategy can be as little as a sentences or an entire plan, but it should be formalized. It is the “why” question. It answers the question of why you have people doing the things they are doi…

I agree. It’s crazy how many senior people don’t understand strategy and can’t deal with complexity. Ex, I once worked at a company that required creation of a two sided market (buyers and sellers). I proposed that we bootstrap the market by creating a variant of our product to enter an existing, complementary market. By offering a cheaper solution in the complementary market with clear benefits for users, its likely…

My theory is that people have been trained and rewarded for being “not wrong”. Strategy requires you to take a stance and get specific. Sometimes the strategy will not work.

I think we need to do a better job of encouraging this sort of thinking. I don’t remember where I heard but it was something along the lines of “we tell kids they can be whatever they want and then actively discourage them when they take the necessary steps to do those things by operating outside the box”. So this type of thinking becomes normal. Then when it comes to strategize people try to follow “best practices” and “proven techniques” which is kind of the opposite of strategy.

Re: Strategy is not X

#38

Post by kkfx »

Strategy is not tactic. That's is. Strategy is a long term plan, these days nobody accept long term plans, long term in modern neoliberal vocabulary means 6 months, even an year sound too long.

On tactic side things aren't much better: most thing that being sheep might pay well, for success, and in case of failure "...but... It's not my fault! I've done like $name!"...

After WWII élites reason that an ideological society it's risky, at a certain point Citizens might revolt, so better a society of grown children, unable to march on their own foot at all (ideology means marching but just following someone), so we are actually in a society of stereotypical Ford-model workers NOT just at the bottom of the society but almost at any level and as a result nothing can really work.

In the end if you do not know your enemy, where you are, you are just a rabbit in a cage why thinking long term? You just expect some food at regular intervals. Why tactic? All others rabbit are equal to you, getting a bit more or a bit less of food does not change much. No books can really tech, no practice can be of help, a social change is needed, and in absence of strategies and tactics that means just waiting for a disaster. That's "the strategy" and the tactics of modern time for most...

Re: Strategy is not X

#39

Post by ajb »

m12k wrote: post #27
ajb wrote: post #10

Interesting that he's not sure what a strategy consists of after reading the book. I read the same book and it does give a definition, with three essential parts, but frustratingly doesn't then link the examples back to show how they illustrate the definition. Rumelt says good strategy consists of: "1. A diagnosis that defines or explains the nature of the challenge. A good diagnosis simplifies the often overwhelming…

Thanks for referencing that. Maybe it's semantics, but as someone coming at this from a game design perspective, 1 and 2 are clearly strategic, but I'd have said 3 is tactical rather than strategic. Tactics are the mid-level actions/subgoals that are used to implement a strategy. You can have a strategy without tactics - though usually you will need them in order for the strategy to succeed.

Rumelt is fairly keen on a strategy having actions because otherwise it doesn't get linked to what people actually do. I don't know what actions he would consider strategic, but I guess things like 'enter/exit the market for X', 'develop the capacity to do Y in house' would be fairly obviously not tactical.
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