There is an old engineer quote that appears a couple times in my newest book, where at 3Com the Microsoft LAN Manager alliance and OS/2 were considered "strategic," as was the Bridge acquisition: "Strategic" means "you don't make any money." So yeah, we were all deeply cynical about that word, because it means, all too often, the inchoate wishes that MBAs throw onto a bunch of slides. I'm all in favor of a really wel…
I’ll go deeper than that: A “strategic” choice is an otherwise-incredibly-unjustifiable choice. When a nation builds an aircraft carrier (apart from the US who has 10), they call it strategic, when a town builds an airport, they call it strategic, because no sane model would justify expending 2 or 5 times the current income. It only starts to make sense when the nation/city/enterprise has another face, and finds itse…
By way of contrast, Bill Krause at 3Com used his HP discipline to push MOST - Mission, Objectives, Strategy, Tactics. So strategy is 2 down from M and O (in case it's not obvious, I'm not holding that up as a good example).
Wrong. The word should be forbidden to top executives, since its meaning is not universally understood and often abused. You should just say why it's the driving force, and leave it at that.