I used to do quite a bit of public speaking. Ostensibly as an exercise in drumming up business for my agency, I found that I quite enjoyed the challenge. Without a doubt I massively overprepared, you can make up for a lot if your materials are bling.

One of the talks I gave was about strategy, a subject I always fancied being good at (I always thought it sounded impressive), but one that it is demonstrably difficult to learn, or at least to learn to do well.  I dug out the slides, which are here:

Since doing that series of talks I have spent some proportion of my time Doing Strategy, and it is now a major part of my work. I've read a lot more books on it, I've done some coaching in it and I am now doing a much more in-depth training course. I thought this would be an opportunity to go back and review what I presented back in 2017 and see how my thoughts have changed.

There is an old saw that the correct way to answer any exam question in the humanities is to start with an introduction about why the question is impossible to answer. Similarly, one of the things most books about strategy have in common is their first chapter, almost without fail, is "What is Strategy?" and it ends rather inconclusively. This isn't the fault of the books, rather than in my view Strategy has come to mean far too many things in far too many fields, so much so that it is somewhat useless.

I think I failed to answer this question in 2017 - going back over the slides I dive from "lol strategy" (which is honestly fair) and then down into the operational details, what might the moving parts of a strategy look like in different domains. In my defence I was trying to be interesting and the answer is perhaps rather dry, but also I don't think I really understood it then, but perhaps can make a better fist of it now.

So, the characteristics of strategy I would say now are:

Strategies concern matters of significance

Strategies concern questions of significance to those involved. The outcome of a strategy matters because its impact is broad, or deep or both. Strategies prompt major decisions that may well be irreversible.

Strategies are epistemic in nature

Strategies are epistemic and not ontological in nature. By this I means that your strategy is not so much about something as it is a communication device to explain your strategy. Your communication about your strategy is itself your strategy. This is because:

1. Strategies only take effect through the people to whom you communicate them
2. Your permission to enact the strategy is a key part of your communication

This is related to the next point.

Strategies are concerned with boundaries, values and goals

Strategies contain implicit or explicit boundary decisions for themselves. Even if these are imposed in the decision to strategize, there is opportunity to challenge it. They have permission to select or change their goals. Strategies can act in all directions, including upwards. When asked to produce a strategy for X, it is valid to respond with NOT X, as long as you can justify it.

Typically these goals will involve complex trade-offs and some will be one-way doors, but those can occur in non-strategic decision making too.

So in some sense strategies are self-justifying and self-permitting, if they are sufficiently persuasive.

Strategies consider other people and their choices

Strategies always involve people and these people have agency. Every strategy will to some extent contain, either explicitly or implicitly, the actions of others and how they will behave in response to the strategy itself.

The whole field of game theory is sometimes claimed to be the essence of strategy because of this point, although I think there is a lot more to strategy than game theory.

Similarly whole fields of business strategy are concerned with partnerships and negotiation because these are key strategic tools in business, but again you can form partnerships and negotiate without it being specifically strategic.