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Strategic Planning

Strategy Defined

Successful companies are those that focus their efforts on the priorities that really matter. According to George Day, in Market Driven Strategy: Processes for Creating Value (1990), strategies are directional statements, not detailed step-by-step action plans. Both are important. But before action plans can be developed, there must be vision, decision and commitment. Strategy reflects the key choices that a business must make in order to engage the market place:

" A sound strategy is a directional statement —not a fixed location— that describes the array of choices a firm makes to deliver a particular value proposition to a target group of customers. It includes the distinctive configuration of activities, processes, and investments that the firm deploys to gain a competitive advantage. Everyone in the organization contributes to the strategy, which makes it difficult to condense a strategy into a few snappy shorthand phrases." (p. x)

Of the myriad choices that a business must make, there are certain key choices that will determine an enterprise's destiny. These choices are the subject of business strategy, and are the primary concern of an executive team:

• Arena — business definition, market definition, target segments
• Advantage — general strategy emphasis, target competitors, positioning theme, programs & projects, proprietary value
• Activities — appropriate scale, scope, alliances
• Access — ownership and control of channels, variety of channels, communication mix.

Strategy must be able to answer:

• What are the sources of the company's sustainable competitive advantage? What is the company's value proposition in products, services and business structure?
• How can the company position itself in the market over the long run to maintain a sustainable competitive advantage?
• What are the key strategic priorities for the enterprise?

In recent business management history there have been at least ten major schools of strategy development — as outlined in the book, Strategy Safari: A Guided Tour Through the Wilds of Strategic Management (1998) by Henry Mintzberg, Bruce Ahlstrand and Joseph Lampel. On his website, Vadim Kotelnikov, provides a brief summary of these approaches to strategic management. The overview is helpful in pushing past a narrow view of a popular strategy technique or management theory, toward a broader systems point of view:

Strategy & Tactics

Strategy describes "what," while tactics describe "how to." Tactics are the things you do to implement a strategy. Therefore, it is not that tactics are less important than strategy. Tactics link strategy and operations. Without tactics there would be no effective implementation, operations or systems development.

It is a matter of properly setting context — if you do not have a strategy in place (planning, values, decisions, view), then tactical planning and decisions will most probably be ill-conceived and misdirected in the long-term. In this way, tactics divorced from strategy is a blind force — a blunt instrument — that fosters immense societal-ethical conflicts (such as, "winning" for winnings sake without regard to social justice or fair business practice; opportunism driven solely by greed or power without regard to the social, industry or business consequences).

Strategy provides the framework which guides the choices that determine the methods, nature and direction to attain an objective.

	Strategy		Tactics
	A systematic plan of action to reach predefined goals.		A planned action or maneuver for accomplishing an end.
	Deploy resources		Engage resources
	In military science: deals with military command, and the planning and conduct of a war. Its view is long-term and deals with political as well as purely military objectives.		In military science: deals with engaging and defeating an enemy in battle. Specialized tactics (offensive and defensive) exist for many situations.
	Work focus on decision-making: information is usually incomplete and new approaches are often required		Work focus on context analysis: selection of actions plans to solve implementation problems
	In corporate science: a long-term plan, a vision for the future. It is a fundamental framework through which an organization can assert its continuity, while at the same time adapting to a changing environment. The key objective of a corporate strategy is to address stakeholders benefits and values. The goal is to achieve alignment or synergy so that an optimal flow of resources to the enterprise is achieved		In corporate science: an activity designed to achieve a desired result. It has an immediate time-frame, of what can be done practically and successfully to achieve objectives. Tactics are about method and means to achieve immediate objectives. Tactics do not focus on "why", but rely on the strategic plan to establish the context and guidance of a rational and moral compass — a commitment to meaning, purpose and social/ethical values.

Strategy & Tactics

The Planning Process