A starter guide to strategy when there are so many strategies

In my travels, I’ve been equally confused and inspired by strategy. By strategy, I mean:

• Roles and departments with the word “strategy” in them
• The need and ask from organisations/leaders for a “strategy”
• Strategies of all kinds – brand strategy, marketing strategy, design strategy, experience strategy, corporate strategy, technology strategy, social strategy, product strategy, operations strategy, content strategy, and so on.

There’s probably more, but the above items are a good start.

For strategy to be effective, it helps for more people to understand it. This might include people who have no reason to know about, care for, let alone be involved in strategy. This will always be the case as we will always have a diverse cast of people.

In extension, for people who are new to strategy and want to know more, anything to do with strategy is not always accessible, clear, or understandable. I think this could be better. Strategy affects all of us, and we should find ways to make it easier to understand.

This is my stab at it.

Strategy is all about advantages

Strategy exists because of advantages. If you don’t need advantages, you don’t really need strategy. But if we are thinking about advantages and of ways to get it, then that thinking and the ways to get it, is the basis of strategy.

Strategy is everywhere

Since many of us are thinking about advantages and figuring out how to get it, strategy is everywhere. It is both implicit in things like how we make decisions and why. It drives us towards things. But to most people, it is mostly understood or perceived in the formal forms of corporate strategy, business strategy, technology strategy, and so on. But when you peel away the labels, you realise that strategy is alive and everywhere.

Strategy is about creating, gaining but also giving advantages

In business, strategy operates as an internal device — strategy is expressed as a way for an organisation to create and enable advantages for the business.

In design where I work, this can often seem a bit upside down because we often begin with users first then work backwards from that in…