5th Element: the
strategy
The term strategy
was born in the military field and derived from the Greek strategos (who
lead the army). In the army strategy is referred to the moving troops
before the battle and more generally to everything preceding the
battle that can influence the battle result. In the management was
adapted but not so much. The company strategy the how and the mean to
reach a final target: a kind of synthesis among the vision, the
external situation and the internal. There are a lot of strategy
analysis techniques (SWOT, market segmentation, critical success
factors, Ansoff's matrix ...), all of them aim to answer questions
like: who are we?, what are we doing?, what product are we going to
offer? to which customer? where? with which technologies? etcetera.
Essentially the strategy single out the values, the mission, the
middle objectives, the kind of path fitted to reach the objectives,
the activities portfolio and the general planning.
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Quotes
- Strategy
is a plan, a "how," a
means of getting from here to there. (Henry Mintzberg)
- Plans
are nothing, planning is
everything.
(Dwight
D. Eisenhower)
- There
is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be
done at all. (Peter Drucker
- Strategy
answers the question: What
are the ends we
seek and how should we achieve them?. (George Steiner)
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