Strategy is a word that gets thrown around a lot, and defined too little. Often, it is confused with the challenges of problem solving, optimizing efficiency or issue management.
The word comes from the Greek, meaning the commanding role of a general in a war. The conduct of individual engagements is tactics; the marshalling of the individual engagements into a co-ordinated, war-winning effort is strategy.
Texts from The Art of War to Clausewitz, added to the general understanding of military strategic thinking with concepts like positioning and the culminating point. Military strategy emphasizes work beyond simple planning to the adaptations that take place in response to enemy movements and changing conditions.
However, the military applications of strategy themselves define war as a subset of Grand Strategy or the organizing principals of nations, reducing even their own work to a tactic in the overall national strategy. Examples of Grand Strategy are the “Germany First” decision the Allies made in 1942, or the concept of containment during the Cold War.
While Grand Strategy is a fascinating topic, the academic work around it is not generally applicable. Study of grand strategy often focuses on the historical choices or current options facing international relations, rather than how to theoretically optimize strategy at its highest level.
One of the best definitions of strategy comes from business theory, and Harvard Professor Michael Porter. He argued that the essence of strategy was “choosing to perform activities differently than rivals do. Otherwise, a strategy is nothing more than a marketing slogan that will not withstand competition.”
The argument he makes is that strategy is about building a sustainable competitive advantage, ideally one that is virtuous and builds on itself constantly.
It must be something that competitors cannot mimic easily, otherwise it is not sustainable. It must be something that provides a real edge in differentiating your offering from others, or it is not a sufficient advantage to matter.
Perhaps most importantly, a good strategy is about trade-offs, and picking what you will and will not do. There will be excellent tactics offered up that could bring temporary gains, even great ones, but if they do not reinforce your sustainable competitive advantage, they may not be the right tactics.
A great example is Wal-Mart. Their low prices lead to market share, which gives them the ability to squeeze suppliers, which leads to lower prices, and so on. Each move Wal-Mart makes a decision increases its virtuous circle, whether it is a new IT system to link suppliers directly to their inventory system or an advertising campaign. The clarity of their strategic vision makes decision making more simple at a tactical level, and it makes it very difficult for rivals to catch up to their low price-market share-squeezed suppliers advantage.
Strategy as sustainable competitive advantage is a definition that can be translated to different settings. Just as there is no one “perfect” strategy for a nation state, the realities of a political campaign or business must be grounded in the resources available, the position of the organization on the competitive terrain, and the actions of the competitors themselves, finding a niche that builds and sustains a competitive advantage.
Applying this definition to politics, you can see that federal Liberals received a catastrophic thumping in this year’s election due to the loss of any sustainable competitive advantage.
Liberals are foremost the “party of power,” an organization whose ability to broker consensus among competing interests keeps them in office for long periods of time. However, the advantages of ideological flexibility, incrementalism and moderation become disadvantages in opposition, where clarity, boldness of vision and consistency are typical virtues.
