Dada Adefolami:
“Strategy has become entangled with confusion. As a result, people who deploy strategy terms end up saying things in real life that don’t have much real meaning at all. You may recognise this is what is happening when someone says something about strategy, and you simply don’t get it. If you don’t get it, it doesn’t mean that you are stupid. It may well be that the speakers are either using ‘strategy’ as an excuse to be vague or using terms that they don’t really understand.”

Dada Adefolami.

Strategy is a high level plan to achieve one or more goals under conditions of uncertainty. In the sense of the “art of the general”, which included several subsets of skills including “tactics”, siege craft, logistics etc., the term came into use in the 6th century C.E. in East Roman terminology, and was translated into Western vernacular languages only in the 18th century. It is the ability to come up with effective plans in line with an objective within a particular economic situation. Strategic thinking helps business managers review policy issues, perform long term planning, set goals and determine priorities, and identify potential risks and opportunities.

Strategic planning is an organisation’s process of defining its strategy, or direction, and making decisions on allocating its resources to pursue this strategy. It may also extend to control mechanisms for guiding the implementation of the strategy. Strategic planning became prominent in corporations during the 1960s and remains an important aspect of strategic management. Strategy – such a simple term – has become entangled with confusion. As a result, people who deploy strategy terms end up saying things in real life that don’t have much real meaning at all. You may recognise this is what is happening when someone says something about strategy, and you simply don’t get it. If you don’t get it, it doesn’t mean that you are stupid. It may well be that the speakers are either using ‘strategy’ as an excuse to be vague or using terms that they don’t really understand. They may simply be trying to be clever or use the reference to strategy to get you to think in a particular way.
The complex and abstract language so often used in strategy is another problem. There are possibly more than 100 terms more that get talked about in discussions about strategy; some, like ‘competitive advantage’, are useful and generally clear, but others such as ‘mission’ and ‘vision’ can carry connotations that are simply too general and vague.

The number and ambiguity of these terms can make strategy hard to follow, by defining what is meant by ‘strategy’.
Here and There
Many of the possible definitions of strategy are abstract, such as ‘matching the environment’, or are concepts, such as ‘having an inimitable competitive advantage’. This kind of abstraction can quickly put people to sleep,: strategy is how you get from where you are now to where you want to be – and with real and sustainable competitive advantage.
This definition has five ingredients:
1. Knowing where you are now
2. Knowing where you want to be
3. Knowing how you will get there
4. Basing the ‘how’ on competitive advantage
5. Making this competitive advantage genuine and durable.
 
For this, you need to have a very clear idea as to where you are right now – in other words, your strategic position.
This means asking some key questions, such as:
1. What is going on in the environment around your industry/market – the economy, the technology, and so on?
2. How competitive is your market and what are its dynamics?
3. How do your customers see your business and the value that it adds relative to your key competitors?

The other aspect here is that ‘where you want to be’ takes you into the future. Strategy encourages people to think future a great deal more than they usually do. Much of what goes on in everyday management is focused on the immediate: this meeting, today’s tasks, this week. But as is often observed, the future is so important because we are going to spend the rest of our lives in it. Strategy serves a very real purpose by getting us to think about the future environment, future options, future competitive advantage and so on. Strategic thinking therefore means being able to travel imaginatively through time into the future, In this definition the strategy itself is not just the strategic goals and is very much to be found in the ‘how’ itself.

At this point you might be thinking that what is being described here is implementation, which you have always thought of as operational and tactical. But it would be very odd if it were possible to say how a strategy would be implemented without explaining something about its tangible, operational action. Strategy must be specific and tangible; otherwise, how will you achieve it and how will you know if it has actually happened?
What YOU REALLY want
Also strategy is what you really, really want. This definition gets us to imagine a future world with strategic possibilities and where we can realise an exciting dream, but through realistic actions and activities. This definition comes into its own when managers have got entrenched in their existing position and the mindset that goes with that. It encourages people to stand back and reflect on what they want in the first place, rather than get too bogged down in the problems and issues of their current strategic position.
This definition lifts expectations about what can be credibly achieved. All the things external or internal to the business that are prerequisites of success (the so-called ‘alignment factors’) must be in place.
The Cunning plan
Another definition of strategy is the ‘cunning plan’. The cunning plan:
1. Works backwards from the result
2. It is fundamentally simple
3. Achieves its goals by a combination of obvious, and not so obvious, ideas
4. It is not particularly easy to imitate.

The idea of the cunning plan is relevant as many managers seem content with more or less any kind of strategic plan at all, whether it is a cunning one or not. But it is important to stress that average plans, or even plans that are slightly above average, simply will not do. What is about the plan is that it is not obvious. It is very clever, working back from the future desired state (memory recall) rather than planning towards it to try to get somewhere. That is truly cunning.
Strategic Thinking
Strategic thinking can be defined as: the thinking processes that consider any complex situation from a variety of angles, seeking out options and evaluating them and their implications from differing perspectives in a novel way. Let’s unpack the key ingredients in this definition:
1. Thinking’ is a structured and creative process which takes into account causality, the degrees of freedom and the constraints, and weighs up the pros and cons of alternative decisions
2. Complexity’
3. Looking at things from different angles’. This can be from external and internal perspectives, over short, medium and longer term time horizons, with different sets of assumptions, etc.
4. Options’ distils possible choices into discrete and specific options.
5. Evaluating’ assesses the options on the basis of multiple criteria.
6. Implications’ looks at things like the investment required, the implementation needs, and how to influence stakeholders
7. Novelty’. The end goal is to come up with some cunning (if not stunning) ideas

If strategic thinking is contrasted with more operational thinking, the differences can be listed as shown in the panel below. What becomes clear from this is that strategic thinking is qualitatively very different to operational thinking. It is far more ambiguous and can be challenging emotionally as well as politically.

Strategic Concepts
Some of the most important strategic concepts include the following:
· Objective. A strategic objective is one of the goals of the strategy. The objective should not be confused with the strategy itself; it is an output – and a very specific one at that. Strategic objectives can and should be broken down – for example, into compound sales growth, changes in relative market share or other measures of relative competitive position, development of key capabilities and successful strategic breakthroughs.
· Mission. The mission is the overarching purpose of the organisation – the kind of organisation it wants to be, what businesses it wants to be in, and its guiding philosophy. If a mission is to be of any use it is vital that it has some grounding in robust assumptions about the present and potential strategic position and is distinctive in some way.
· Vision. The vision is a picture of either the environment (or our fit within it) or just of ourselves at some stage in the future.
· Strategic option. A strategic option is a way in which a strategy can be formulated so that it can actually be implemented. This means that the strategy needs to be sufficiently specific not only in terms that allow it to be evaluated, but also in terms that allow it to be executed.

In summary, strategy can and should be clarified, its terms defined and explained, and strategies themselves based on a number of elements, especially the cunning plan. Strategic thinking is defined as a mental or thinking process applied by an individual in the context of achieving success in a game or other endeavors. As a cognitive activity, it produces thought.

Dr. Dada Adefolami,.MBA, PhD CPF, is an Acct. Finance / Management Consultant and Certified Forensic Accountant ([email protected]; 08052043855).