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Strategy, what is it?

We are not fit to lead an army on the march unless we are familiar with
the face of the country, its mountains and forests,
its pitfalls and precipices, its marshes and swamps.
Sun Tzu

To manage a business, we need to have a knowledge framework of some basic concepts and
practices, and even if we know them, it is always interesting to revise them.

We will start with Strategy, and in the next articles we will go through other fundamental concepts.

Mintzberg has an approach to Strategy with a systemic and broad vision, and we will use it.

According to Mintzberg (1), strategy requests a series of definitions and that is “one of those words that
unavoidably defined in a way, but frequently we use in another. Strategy is a pattern, which means,
consistence in behaviour along the time”.

The series of five definitions (The five Ps: Plan, Pattern, Position, Perspective, Ploy) of Mintzberg:

Strategy as plan (first P, Plan), that is, the intended, it is the defined strategy in agreement with a plan
for the future.

The deliberate strategies are the intentions that were perfectly accomplished and the not accomplished
are the unrealized strategies.

They are, still, the emergent strategies, that is, the adaptation to unexpected events, which happens
when the accomplished pattern is not the intended and that with the time, converged for some pattern
type or consistence.

The convergence of the deliberate strategies and the emergent strategies are the Strategy as a pattern
(second P, Pattern), that is, the indeed accomplished.

The Strategy as position (third P, Position) it is the positioning of certain products in certain markets and
that, in agreement with Michael Porter, (apud Mintzberg) “strategy is the creation of a unique position
and valuable, involving a group of different activities”.

The Strategy as perspective (fourth P, Perspective) it is the fundamental way of an organization to do


things, in agreement with Peter Drucker (apud Mintzberg) this is the “theory of the business”.

The last, and the “fifth P”, Ploy, it is the Strategy as a trick, that is the specific manoeuvres to deceive
an opponent or competitor.

References:
(1) MINTZBERG, Henry; AHLSTRAND, Bruce; LAMPEL, Joseph Strategy Safari.

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