Why Strategy Matters - Definitions

Strategy rightly commands voluminous explanations of its importance and formulation.  Without a strategy, efforts become one episodic transaction after another.  Strategy is often seen as the purview of kings and generals; if crowns and stars are absent, then the purview falls to whomever outranks you in an organization.  Nevertheless, the ability to think and execute strategically at all levels provides benefits to the entire organization.

Like vision, strategy is a necessary condition for victory.  Like vision, strategic thinking can be taught.

First come definitions.  In The Strategists: Churchill Stalin, Roosevelt, Mussolini and Hitler, How War Made Them and They Made War, Phillips Payton O'Brien focuses his attention on the strategies behind the creation and allocation of armed forces during the Second World War.  He notes:

There is widespread discussion in militaries, governments and universities that likes to see strategy as emerging from a linked process of "ends-ways-means."  In this Clausewitzian world, strategic choice is seen as the pursuit of a clear political ends through the employment of means available to a state (such as its military force) in certain well-thought-out methods (the ways). It seems logical in theory…but it's typically a mirage.

In many cases that is because strategy, grand or otherwise, has been turned into something more complex than it actually is.  A strategy is simply an implemented decision which starts a dynamic process.  For the purposes of this book, the strategic decision is the choice by the leader, with or without the opinion of advisers, of the strategic plan that the state should follow.  The implementation is the translation of that plan into action. 

The straightforward trio of "ends, means and ways" provides a useful introduction to strategic thinking.  Vision is refined into ends and specific objectives.  Available means are marshalled to achieve those ends.  The ways are then formed by the well-thought-out methods.