What makes a strategy, a strategy?
As a previous global director who worked with leading strategists in ad and branding agencies since 2007; in my view, strategy exists to solve obvious and non-obvious problems. However, as a recent historian the word ‘strategy’ changed its meaning based on the era of interest, and the century. Noticing the commonality though, has always been associated with either leadership, or general set of behaviors, aka human-behaviors. Therefore the common misconception of strategy was a generational built, if I want to describe it in short.
The word originated from Greek word strategos; meaning general early 17th century, or generalship from strategia; according to Oxford languages. But whether problems were defined through strategy or not, defining strategy as a start may be a good first step, especially if its been given within 3-minutes window, to a stranger, in an elevator, starting with an example such as the American Breakfast in a Bun. Noticing its strategic message (invented by Herb Peterson with his McDonald’s Egg McMuffin), that communicated a goal (the market share) to their existing customers and/or the new ones (the morning eaters), derived from a strategic positioning (the strategy), resulted to further growth and expansion (the revenue), through set of activities (the plan), supporting a transition (the invention of the American Breakfast in a Bun), supported by intellectual framework coming from the vision (overarching philosophy), shaping how decisions are made.
Therefore the Egg McMuffin is not a departure of McDonald’s position, it’s the extension of it, and the implementation (which is another term for operational management), consists of efficiency and patterns (the process) combining communication and production of existing facilities and ingredients to achieve their plan within the budget and timeline agreed on. Therefore, strategy impacts doing less by aligning, others might have mistaken it with laziness, therefore defining strategy allows intuitive thinking for less confusion. Conscious leadership understands such, and therefore invest in training their team.
Another example would be how the food is being delivered (the brand consistency); introducing a bun as part of the breakfast didn’t help McDonald enter the morning field, but also reinforced what customers expected of the brand as a fast food company, such consistency for lunch and dinner family-of-products, is a strategic coherence. Michael Porter defined strategy as the creation of a unique and valuable position, involving different set of activities. While I find this true, it is sort of incomplete because the impact of such creation revolve around the conscious awareness of mindsets behind these creations that made it possible in the first place. The level of confidence, knowledge, and risk taking that feeds to leadership style, is not always encouraged by either rigid structural policies nor management, therefore rivals and young leaders lack role models as much as facing layers of difficulty leading. Therefore policies that do not understand generational subconsciousness would struggle in defining strategy, and/or recognizing to need one. Which might be out of their scope, in most cases, Hence policies and activities that are meant to reinforce one another might ignore this reality. Another note that is worth thinking over period of times is, when health educators promoted breakfast and lunch while dinner fell out of favor, did sales get affected? McDonald is a fast food company, therefore healthy meals isn’t a priority and their customers are aware of that, therefore McDonald’s recognition in addressing health trends as much as 9-5 workers’ behaviors, they respond through recognizing an opportunity, so inventing products to align with such conscious served their expansion. It’s not only the result of operational efficiencies but also as much as leadership-awareness from intellectual framework they created and set in place.
