Strategy

A strategy is a long term plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal, as differentiated from tactics or immediate actions with resources at hand.

Sourced

• Do you think that mere words are strategy and power for war?
  • The Bible: 2 Kings, 18:20

• To win by strategy is no less the role of a general than to win by arms.
  • Julius Caesar [Gaius Julius Caesar] (100–44 B.C.), Roman general, statesman. The Civil War, 1.72

• There webs were spread of more than common size,
  And half-starved spiders prey'd on half-starved flies.
  • Charles Churchill, The Prophecy of Famine: A Scots Pastoral (1763), line 327.

• Business strategy is a battle plan for a better future.
  • Patrick Dixon Building a Better Business (2005)

• You can have the greatest strategy in the world but what is the point if no one cares?
  • Patrick Dixon Building a Better Business (2005)

• Change is the (occasionally) skilful redirecting, renewing, and reconnecting of stuff (like time, money, things, jokes, knowledge, hopes, passion, and dreams) into something better for us, for someone, even for everyone.
  • Max Mckeown, '2007, Management Issues' - www.unshrink.org

• All strategy is executed through "common" people. If they don't work with the strategy then it will fail however clever, visionary, or insightful. When people work to make a strategy a success then it may succeed even if it is flawed.
  • Max Mckeown, '2006, Management Issues'

• Those oft are stratagems which errors seem,
  Nor is it Homer nods, but we that dream.
  • Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism (1709), Part I, line 177.

• implementation, not strategy, is what usually separates winners from losers in most industries, and generally explains the difference between success and failure
  • Bob Sutton, Strategy Is For Amateurs, Logistics Are For Professionals (2010)

• In real life, strategy is actually very straightforward. You pick a general direction and implement like hell.
  • Jack Welch, Winning (2005)

• For her own breakfast she'll project a scheme,
  Nor take her tea without a stratagem.
  • Edward Young, Love of Fame (1725-28), Satire VI, line 187.

Unsourced

• Crises are short term, they last months, and at the end we survive them; businesses are long term, they last a whole life, and they require strategic management.
  • Alberto Calva, (2009)

• Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight.
  • Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

• Strategy is about changing unfavorable circumstances into a favorable situation.
  • Nader Sabry, (2005)

See Also

• Management
• Plans