This article is written by Adam Parr, former Oxford Blavatnik School lecturer and chief executive of the Williams Formula One team.
Strategy is something I’ve learned about throughout my career. Running a Formula One team was a “crash” course in strategy, and I also got to think about it as a barrister, while running a charity, running large and small businesses, and studying a PhD on the history of strategy. So below I can share what I’ve experienced, learned, and studied about strategy over the years.
91 definitions of strategy
The word “strategy” is relatively new. In modern European languages it dates back to about 1770, towards the end of the Enlightenment, and, not surprisingly, it became more commonly used during the First and Second World Wars. In the 1960s, with many business leaders having served in the World War, then demobilising and going back into business, suddenly strategy started being used in a business context.
Though we now commonly use the word “strategy,” paradoxically there’s not a common understanding of what the word means. As one former civil servant, now a colleague at Apolitical put it, “It took me two years to realise that my boss and I had different ideas about what strategy means.”
Let’s see what you think. In your own mind, take 20 seconds and finish this sentence: “Strategy is...”
Chances are you thought of words like these: vision, plan, objectives. In fact, a 2012 study* found that there have been 91 distinctive definitions of strategy in academic research since the 1960s.
Strategy is a process
Even these influential definitions of strategy don’t agree on what strategy is.
In 1962, the pioneering business historian Alfred Chandler defined strategy as:
“The determination of the basic long-term goals and objectives of an enterprise, and the adoption of courses of action and the allocating of resources necessary for carrying out these goals.”
In 2018, the US Department of Defence defined strategy as:
“A prudent idea or set of ideas for employing the instruments of national power in a synchronised and integrated fashion to achieve theatre, national, and/or multinational objectives.”
The second definition says strategy is an idea. But unfortunately, you can’t just come up with an idea and call it a strategy. The first definition focuses on goals. It implies strategy is a process but doesn’t explicitly say so.
So what do I think strategy is?
I like how psychologist (and Apolitical advisor) Steven Pinker defines intelligence. He says:
“If we are intelligent then we must have goals. Intelligence, then, is the ability to attain goals in the face of obstacles, by means of decisions based on rational rules.”
The important thing here is obstacles. Strategy would be very simple if there weren’t any obstacles. If there were no other teams, we could have nailed all those Formula One races.
Here’s what I think strategy is:
Strategy is the process through which we overcome obstacles to achieve our goals.
We all have goals. We all face obstacles. Strategy is the process to deal with those things. In other words, strategy is how people attain goals. It’s the method we use to shape the world around us.
The key word here is process. You can think of strategy as a word like leadership, and in fact the word “strategy” was created in ancient Athens to mean “military leadership”. You would never say: “this is a leadership” or “here’s a document setting out my leadership.” I would argue you can’t say this for strategy either. Instead, strategy is a process, just as leadership is a process.
Strategy is thinking and acting
To be a strategic thinker, you need to think about process not just content. It is about doing stuff well and thinking about how you do it. This is a form of metacognition.** Metacognition is thinking about thinking - anticipating the problems you are going to face and planning how you are going to deal with them, in advance. It’s understanding the obstacles and how to use your resources.
Metacognition requires knowing yourself, knowing your tasks, and knowing your strategies. About the same time that Socrates was talking about strategy in Athens, the legendary Chinese general and author of The Art of War, Sunzi is recorded as saying: “If you know the other, and you know yourself, then in 100 battles there is no danger.”
So strategy is a process that iterates between thinking and acting. You think before you take an action. Then after you take an action, reflect on what you did. Ask yourself: Did I do that well? Could I have done that differently?
Most people spend their time thinking about content: the problem. And they don’t spend nearly enough time thinking about process. An example I use is a pitch -- whether for a business venture or a policy idea. The presenter has an hour and they will spend that hour explaining why their idea is important. But what they need to do is to spend most of the hour learning about their audience, what they think, how they make decisions, what issues they have. Then framing up the next steps so that they can move forward.
In my next article, we will discuss how you might apply strategy to your own work.
*Ronda-Pupo, et al. “Dynamics of the evolution of the strategy concept 1962–2008: a co-word analysis” Strategic Management Journal 33.2 (2012): 162-188.
**As evidence for this approach, metacognition in education is regarded by the Education Endowment Foundation as one of the most effective methods of improving outcomes for students. Should we be surprised that students thinking strategically about why they are studying, the problems they may face for example in doing homework or equations and how they will overcome them is one of the best ways to improve their performance? See more here
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