Strategy

We are not fit to lead an army on the march unless

we are familiar with the face of the country,

its mountains and forests, and

its precipices and swamps.

Sun Tzu

To manage a business, we need to have a knowledge framework of some basic concepts and practices, and even if we know them, it is always interesting to revise them.

We will start with Strategy, and in the next posts we will go through other fundamental concepts.

Mintzberg has an approach to Strategy with a systemic and broad vision, and we will use it.

According to Mintzberg (1), strategy requests a series of definitions and that is “one of those words that unavoidably defined in a way, but frequently we use in another. Strategy is a pattern, which means, consistence in behaviour along the time”.

The series of five definitions (The five Ps: Plan, Pattern, Position, Perspective, Ploy) of Mintzberg:

Strategy as plan (first P, Plan), that is, the intended, it is the defined strategy in agreement with a plan for the future.

The deliberate strategies are the intentions that were perfectly accomplished and the not accomplished are the unrealized strategies.

They are, still, the emergent strategies, that is, the adaptation to unexpected events, which happens when the accomplished pattern is not the intended and that with the time, converged for some pattern type or consistence.

The convergence of the deliberate strategies and the emergent strategies are the Strategy as a pattern (second P, Pattern), that is, the indeed accomplished.

The Strategy as position (third P, Position) it is the positioning of certain products in certain markets and that, in agreement with Michael Porter, (apud Mintzberg) “strategy is the creation of a unique position and valuable, involving a group of different activities”.

The Strategy as perspective (fourth P, Perspective) it is the fundamental way of an organization to do things, in agreement with Peter Drucker (apud Mintzberg) this is the “theory of the business”.

The last, and the “fifth P”, Ploy, it is the Strategy as a trick, that is the specific manoeuvres to deceive an opponent or competitor.

References:

(1) MINTZBERG, Henry; AHLSTRAND, Bruce; LAMPEL, Joseph Strategy Safari.