When you think of the word strat­egy, what comes to mind? Per­haps you think of an involved strate­gic plan­ning sys­tem. Maybe you think of direc­tors hav­ing retreats, com­ing up with the future direc­tion. One thing peo­ple rarely think of is the front line staff of the organ­i­sa­tion. Fewer still think of strate­gies as ephemeral, applicable […]

Strat­egy first entered the busi­ness world after World War Two. Lead­ers from mil­i­tary back­grounds entered the busi­ness arena, and brought with them their mil­i­tary con­cepts. Strat­egy was one of them. In broad, mod­ern terms, strat­egy defines what an organ­i­sa­tion does. Com­pare that with tac­tics, or oper­a­tional strate­gies, which refer to how the strat­egy is to be […]

I was hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion about plan­ning with a col­league the other day. We were dis­cussing how strat­egy and plan­ning inte­grate, or at least  how they should. I think Sun Tzu had it right in the quote above. To start with, a great num­ber of peo­ple don’t under­stand the dif­fer­ence between strat­egy and plan­ning. When I […]