Improvements: Strategy

                                                      A picture above is a "latticework"

An excerpt from:

Strategy is not a plan

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Strategy definition:
Victory is achieved in the way of conflict by ascertaining the rhythm of each opponent, by attacking with a rhythm not anticipated by the opponent, and by the use of knowledge of the rhythm of the abstract. - Miyamoto Musashi, samurai strategist, 17th century Japan

Strategy isn’t beating the competition, it’s shaping and  serving the customer’s real needs. – Kenich Ohmae, Managing Director, McKinsey & Co, Tokyo Office

MY DEFINITION: "strategy: is a pattern to a course of action." 

Plan definition:
A plan is an intention about how to get from where we are now to where we want to be in the future.

Boyd’s views strategy as a tapestry of mental models–models produced through a constant cycle of destruction and creation and via the building of snowmobiles,

Strategy is a mental tapestry of changing intentions for harmonizing and focusing our efforts as a basis for realizing some aim or purpose in an unfolding and often unforeseen world of many bewildering events and many contending interests.

Charlie Munger, Vice-Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway and Warren Buffett’s partner, recognized the same need for strategy to consist of multiple mental models utilizing a latticework metaphor as opposed to Boyd’s tapestry.

You’ve got to have models in your head. And you’ve got to array your experience—both vicarious and direct—on this latticework of models. You may have noticed students who just try to remember and pound back what is remembered. Well, they fail in school and in life. You’ve got to hang experience on a latticework of models in your head.
What are the models? Well, the first rule is that you’ve got to have multiple models—because if you just have one or two that you’re using, the nature of human psychology is such that you’ll torture reality so that it fits your models, or at least you’ll think it does.

What this is all highlighting is the relationship between strategy and a plan. Plans of some kind or another will always be necessary, but they are a lower-order good than strategy. Strategy guides the plan, it shapes it to better match an ever-changing reality, it modifies it, discards it (a key part leaders seem to forget).  But, alas, they are not the same thing…not even close.

 

There are many kind of strategies, just as there are many kinds of patterns. 

 
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An excerpt from:

Strategy, The Art of Everything Else 

It's like the deer that you spot in the field behind your house when you're a kid. You want so badly to run right up to it, yet if you do so you'll quickly scare it away. So you begin walking, slowly, quietly...tangentially. You walk in circle that imperceptibly decreases in its diameter over time. You stalk, painstakingly aware of your own presence and all of the unintended consequences it brings to the situation, its foreignness. Your every move has the potential to shatter a fragile ecosystem. Of course, the deer inevitably runs, it always does. You step on a twig, the wind changes direction and the creature catches your scent, reality changes before you can lock the moment in time. But there is always a brief instant before the deer escapes that both of you freeze and lock eyes, the hair stands on both of your necks and you know that you've gotten closer than you were supposed to get...a little closer than the last time.

When devising strategy one is chasing after a constantly-changing reality. We live in a state of, as Boyd put it, perpetual novelty. The world around us provides us with an infinite amount of data or inputs that we must try to filter in some sort of intelligent manner. To do so we create mental models or paradigms through which we filter the world in an effort to provide a coherent narrative. "What's going on here?" is often an incredibly difficult question to answer when posed at a global or even national level. Like the deer in the field, the perfect answer to that question, or a completely perfect match to reality is impossible to pin down -- the second you try, reality changes, making some part of your strategy irrelevant. All one can hope for is to get a little closer than the last time.

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"In his book 'Naval Strategy: Compared and Contrasted with the Principles and Practice of Military Operations on Land,' published in 1911, Mahan compared naval officers to artists. He wrote that artists had to learn certain techniques, mediums and certain skills, but that wasn't what made their artwork great. In the end 'art, out of materials which it finds about, creates new forms in endless variety,' artists take those foundation basics and then mix and match them based on inspiration and experience to create a masterpiece. History helps us understand that frequently there are no right answers to military questions of strategy or leadership. There are only 'sound conclusions,' which are drawn from understanding basics and history."

Approaching strategy in an indirect fashion, as more of an art than science may make some uneasy, specifically those who find safe haven in the concreteness of checklists and formulas. Yet, the nature of strategy reflects the nature of the world. It is infinitely complex, it is always changing and it is filled with humans that often do irrational things. Literature (see Charles Hill) and psychology have as much of a place at the strategy table as military history...as do mathematics, physics, political science and technology. So, when asking, "what must one study to be a great strategist?" the answer seems to be, "everything else."