I have been obsessed with one major topic from childhood, and that’s strategy. As a child, I was always curious with movies where the good guy aka the underdog always rose to the occasion until they uprooted the bad guy. I always wondered, what did it take for that good guy to win? What set of things did they have to coordinate and integrate?
As I grew older and entered the workplace, I realized there’s one thing that separates organizations, and individuals, it always came down to strategy. We meet different times and seasons, we each face different threats and opportunities, but it always came down to strategy. It’s only through strategies that commoners rose to become Kings. It’s only because of strategy that market shareholders of yesterday could become extinct today.
Yet, I soon realized that strategy can’t be taught. It can be learned but it can’t be taught. And there’s a big difference between something that can be taught and something that can be learned. Simply because strategy can’t be broken down to one set of tools or rules. Strategy is a way of thinking, that must be built into the person or the organization. The way of integrating and coordinating different sets of choices and orchestrating them to move with rhythm, with a unity, that kind of thing can’t be taught. It must be learned.
I must say, eventually, every organization rises to the height of its strategy and falls to the depth of its strategy. The one thing that ultimately separates and differentiates organizations is purely strategy. All factors held constant, it’s strategy that puts the mark on a firm. And strategy is not a one-line statement. Strategy is not some plan. Strategy is not the mission and vision. Although all these constitute a strategy, they are not strategy by themselves. Strategy is not benchmarking competition; sameness is not strategy. Strategy is a set of choices and a set of trade-offs. There’s no strategy without trade-off. Yet, these specific choices that are choices, they must seamlessly integrate, they must be self-reinforcing.
Strategy boils down to awareness, of where to play (the landscape), and how to play (sets of things to do to thrive in that landscape).