What is Opposite of Strategy?

What is a "great" strategy? Is it one that helps the organization get a step closer to its vision? Maintaining its core purpose, but gaining competitive advantage in the market? Better ensuring long-term sustainability of the business? Ensuring all key/strategic stakeholders expectations are balanced and met? And based on these criteria, what are opposites of strategy?
Opposite of strategy = ad hoc, reactionary, unplanned. Each new project reinvents the wheel. Lessons are unlearned. Processes change on a whim: "let's shake things up." Simply put, strategy is how you plan to win. Strategy is about defining an overarching way to differentiate your plan of differentiators against your opponents to increase your ability to achieve your goal.
Being strategic is about “WHY” & “WHAT,” Being tactic is about “HOW”: Being "strategic" as being centered around "what" and "why," and being backed by a roadmap and plan of action that are informed by and have a solid grasp on the lay of the land to guide the perceived journey end-to-end. The "tactics" as being more centered around the "how," the individual steps and mechanics involved in the execution. Generally speaking, strategic decisions are why we do something, how we achieve the strategy through the choice of which methods is a tactical decision. Strategy: improve conversion of existing visitors. whether to use highly developed documentation or ethnographic research are tactical decisions. Choosing to move faster than competitors by iterating faster speed or "failing fast" is a strategic choice. But how do you do it through less documentation, use of whiteboards - is tactical. Being “strategic” and “tactic” is not necessarily opposite, but complementary with each other.
A strategy to compete for winning; while a "best practice"isn’t about winning, but trying not to get left behind. It is almost the antithesis of differentiation. The use of best practices is a tactical approach to solving a problem. When unique research data or user testing is not available, the application of best practices can confidently provide a stable, and common interaction experience for a user. Comparably, a strategic approach involving research, observation, heuristics and testing is what defines best practices and guides their implementation. Best practices are like heuristics, if you leave them out, you repeat known mistakes. When following a strategy, you would still need best practices to avoid being wrong just because you wanted to be different.
Is "standard" being opposed to "strategic"? Or is short term view opposite to long term strategic view? It is not "one size fits all," nor it asks to deviate from best practices.Therefore, a "one-size fits all" approach would be considered a lack of strategy because there is no differentiation. Or to put another way, strategy needs to strike the right balance between creativity and standardization. Standardization improves business efficiency and manageability from operational perspective, but creativity helps differentiate your business from competitors and drive winning position for long term strategic perspective.
Overall speaking, the absence of strategy is chaos, this is not necessarily always negative, how complex is your strategy depends on the nature of your business, and in which point you are on the business life cycle; to some startups, they may avoid over-complex strategy documentation management, because they are unlike traditional business, have little legacy and rigid process. But still, no matter you are a large industry bellwether, or a nimble startup, a good strategy is not always complex, regardless where you are, a comprehensive, but simple enough (not simpler) strategy will help you navigate through the journey, from chaos to order, avoid those negative opposite, also evolve the complementary factors,  and reach your vision steadily.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on July 17, 2015 23:52
No comments have been added yet.