Strategy

What do you mean by Strategy?

The concept of strategy has been borrowed from the military and adapted for use in business.  A review of what noted writers about business strategy have to say suggests that adopting the concept was easy because the adaptation required has been modest.  In business, as in the military, strategy bridges the gap between policy and tactics.

Strategy is a term that comes from the Greek strategia, meaning "generalship." Strategy also refers to the means by which policy is effected.

B. H. Liddell Hart: "the art of distributing and applying military means to fulfill the ends of policy." Deleting the word "military" from Liddell Hart’s definition makes it easy to export the concept of strategy to the business world.

George Steiner: Some of the definitions in use to which Steiner pointed include the following:

• Strategy is that which top management does that is of great importance to the organization.
• Strategy refers to basic directional decisions, that is, to purposes and missions.
• Strategy consists of the important actions necessary to realize these directions.
• Strategy answers the question: What should the organization be doing?
• Strategy answers the question: What are the ends we seek and how should we achieve them?

What Is Strategy?

Strategy is all these—it is perspective, position, plan, and pattern. Strategy is the bridge between policy or high-order goals on the one hand and tactics or concrete actions on the other. Strategy and tactics together straddle the gap between ends and means. In short, strategy is a term that refers to a complex web of thoughts, ideas, insights, experiences, goals, expertise, memories, perceptions, and expectations that provides general guidance for specific actions in pursuit of particular ends

1.Strategy is a plan, a "how," a means of getting from here to there.
2.Strategy is a pattern in actions over time; for example, a company that regularly markets very expensive products is using a "high end" strategy.
3.Strategy is position; that is, it reflects decisions to offer particular products or services in particular markets.
4.Strategy is perspective, that is, vision and direction.