Whenever a conversation about careers is had and I mention that I am a Chief Strategy Officer, it often piques one’s interest, and they become curious. More often than not, any profession with the word strategy in it tends to be perceived as one of some importance. I often joke and say, “When the company is doing well, the CEO is praised, when it is not, I get the blame.”

Every leader wants to be recognised as strategic not operational.

We talk about delivering on strategy or how we have a strategy that will take us to the next level. I tend to agree with the general opinion that strategy
is one of the most misused and misunderstood words in business.

Business leaders talk about doubling their revenue or share price within the next five years as their strategy, some refer to becoming number one or number two in their industry as their most strategic
move, while others believe their strategy of launching 2000 nanosatellites into space in two years.

It’s important to understand what strategy is. The term is often misunderstood when in actuality what they’re referring to is a goal, vision, or plan. These misunderstanding makes it difficult to
implement and communicate strategy to employees or volunteers effectively.

These upcoming articles/blog pieces are a reflection, and share my experiences of my time working in strategy. I have 20 years of experience as both a Strategy Consultant and Chief Strategy
Officer. During that time I gained an understanding of the importance of having a clear strategy that can be implemented to achieve organisational goals.

This particular article defines strategy as a concept and theory and answer the question: What is strategy?

Strategy is not a goal

The examples I gave above about increasing revenue and launching nanosatellites are goals that a particular organization would like to achieve, are not a strategy. A goal or an objective is what an
organization aims to achieve in a particular timeframe. It is popularly practised that goals should meet the SMART principle which stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time-bound. The role of strategy is to help achieve the desired goal. Strategy is not a goal, it is a means to achieve the goal.

Strategy is not a vision

A vision is about where an organization wants to be or become, it is a preferred destination. The most quoted vision is the one by former US President Kennedy of, “Get a man to the moon and back in a decade”. The essence of vision is inspiration and aspiration, something that appears impossible to reach, yet attainable. It inspires people and mobilises resources. People should be motivated by a vision and committed to taking action. Someone said a vision is the greatest weapon of a leader, a leader needs a vision. Furthermore, a leader needs a vision and strategy. The Holy Scriptures states that, “Where there is no vision, people perish”. – Provers 29:18 A vision is key for any organisation to know where it aspires to be, otherwise, it will ‘perish’, failing to reach the desired vision/goal. Strategy tells how to achieve that vision.

Strategy is not a mission or purpose

Purpose defines an organisation’s reason for existence. The ‘why’? The mission states the ‘how’. Both mission and purpose are sometimes used interchangeably, referring to what an organisation is all about and/or identifies with, however, they are not the same. One Telcos’ (ORANGE) purpose is simply stated as, ‘to connect the unconnected’. Vodacom’s purpose is, ‘connecting for a better future’ and Telkom’s is ‘seamlessly connecting our customers to a better life’. Whilst MTN’s purpose is ‘to enable the benefits of a modern connected life to everyone’. These telco companies are purpose-driven and seem not to use the word mission.

On the other hand, Blue Label Telecoms’ mission is, ‘to provide products and services required by the middle and lower tiers of the world’s economic pyramid. We focus on diversifying the range of products and services we offer while expanding our distribution footprint through organic and acquisitive growth.’ Sentech’s mission is ‘to provide reliable digital infrastructure that connects people and machines to enable smart and connected environments‘. The mission of these companies sheds light on what the mission is about. It is more detailed on how to achieve said goals. Whilst purpose, as indicated by other Telcos, is concise, clearly stating their reason for existence. Both purpose and mission are not strategy. They require a strategy to be realised.

Strategy is not a plan

Organisations spend a lot of resources and time to develop a Strategic Plan. They organize a ‘bosberaad’ somewhere in some exclusive venue for about two to three days. In the public sector, it’s required that public entities and government departments develop their strategic plan every five years following a new government after elections. But yearly, public entities and departments submit
their three-year Corporate Plans and Annual Performance Plans. Failure to submit such documents on time goes against the law. The same applies to private sector companies, the fastchanging
landscape companies review their strategic plans regularly as well.

I have facilitated, attended and organised some of these strategic planning sessions in my 20 years’ work of experience in Strategy. What usually happens is a rehash of the previous strategic plan
which is influenced by evaluating the latest trends and then tweaking the vision, mission, goals and plans accordingly.
Deep strategic analysis and scenario planning are conducted. All these will be compiled into the 2025 Strategic Plan. What normally lacks in these plans is ‘strategic thinking’, because the focus is often on ‘strategic planning.’ Strategy is not a plan, it’s an integral part of planning. It comes before planning and should be translated into the plan. The famous quote by Mike Tyson “Everyone has a plan ‘till they get punched in the mouth.” summarises the static nature of a plan. One needs a strategy to win. So now back to the main question: What is Strategy?

Strategy is a choice

If strategy is not a goal, a vision, a purpose, a mission and a plan. What then is strategy? There are endless definitions of strategy as there are many writers on the subject including practitioners. You can read about this in Lawrence Freedman’s book ‘Strategy: A History’. From the Bible, Sun Tzu, Machiavelli, Clausewitz, Napoleon Bonaparte, Alexander the Great, Karl Marx to Michael Porter’s Five Competitive Forces, Ansoff Matrix, Blue Ocean, and recent strategy theories, one common thing is that strategy is about choice.

It is about the choice of where to focus your resources. It is a choice of where to play and compete. It is about choosing the path where you have more chances of winning rather than losing. Below are some definitions of strategy:

• Having a strategy suggests an ability to look away from the short term and the trivial to see the long term and the essential, to address causes rather than symptoms, to see woods rather than trees (Lawrence Freedman)
• God created strategy by allowing choice because he wanted people to choose obedience through an act of will rather than because they were programmed to do so. (Lawrence Freedman)
• Strategy decides where to act; logistics brings the troops to this point; grand tactics decide the manner of execution and the employment of troops (Lawrence Freedman). Strategy is all about positioning (Michael Porter)
• Strategy is about making specific choices to win in the marketplace (AG Lafley & Roger L. Martin) Strategy is an integrated set of choices that uniquely positions the firm in its industry to create sustainable advantage and superior value relative to the competition (AG Lafley & Roger L. Martin)
• Strategy is a coordinated and integrated set of five choices: a winning aspiration, where to play, how to win, core capabilities and management systems (AG Lafley & Roger L. Martin)
• A strategy is a coherent set of analyses, concepts, policies, argument and actions that respond to a high-stake challenge (Richard Rumelt).

I can summarise strategy as choices or options an organisation has to take and make. These choices are informed by the organisation’s vision, mission, purpose and goals. Moreover, are based on the resources the organisation possesses financially, via human resources and technical. Externally there should be a good understanding of the environment and competition under which the organisation operates. The choices should at the end aid the organisation to compete and win in its market.

The satellite or space industry, for instance, used to be dominated by satellite giants like Intelsat, Eutelsat, SES and other Geostationary (GEO) satellite companies. However, with the advent of Space X’s Starlink and Amazon’s Project Kuiper, the satellite industry has experienced disruption. Starlink decided to launch the Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites. These are constellations of small satellites orbiting at around 135km to 500km above the Earth, compared to the GEO ones at 35000 km. The advantage of LEO is the low latency required for internet broadband connectivity and data quality. Through its strategic choice backed by its massive resources, Space X, decided to focus on LEO rather than GEO and it is now much bigger than all the GEO stationery satellite companies combined. This emphasises strategy as a choice that enables organizations to win. This strategy would be refer as a blue ocean, as it creates new markets away from the bloody red ocean.

In this article my focus was to start this series by defining what strategy is and what it is not. Series Two will look at how to develop strategy followed by the next series on how to execute strategy and the fourth series will be on the role of a strategist.