What are the strategy issues to manage?

Strategy is, as many of us know, something almost everybody has an opinion about. We all have our different views on what strategy is, and what it is not. But one thing seems certain today, everybody is strategic, everybody is a strategist, and everybody is working with strategy. If it walks like a duck, sounds like a duck… In my opinion, this overuse is clearly diluting the meaning of the word.

One definition I return to more than often is Chandler’s definition from his classic work Strategy and Structure from 1962: 'strategy is the determination of the long-term goals and objectives of an enterprise and the adoption of courses of action and the allocation of resources necessary for carrying out those goals'. This clearly states that strategy includes both formulation and realization. And hence, planning does not nearly cover half of it. On that note, if I personally, was to highlight something in this definition, it is the importance of adapting and learning to be able to carry out what you decided or change your objectives as they might actually be the wrong ones. And for that to happen, formulation and realization are very tightly intertwined - if not the same thing.

But besides what it is, what are the issues that strategy typically deals with? What does the duck walk like, sound like, and look like? To try and sort that out a bit, I have developed a framework that helps me categorize strategy issues of different types. It is adapted from a book some professor friends and I wrote a couple of years back. And another professor friend wrote a great review that might help you get a sense of the book.

And so, here’s the framework.