What is a strategy?

We explain what a strategy is, what types exist and in what areas it is used. Strategy and tactics Strategy and competitiveness.

1. What is a strategy?

The word strategy comes from the Greek strategy , composed of stratós (“army”) and ago (“direct”). That is to say that from its very origin it contains a meaning linked to planning, tactics, taking advantages over the adversary.

Today, we understand by it the action and discipline of coordinating efforts and managing resources , through optimal decision making in the process .

In the business world, for example, there is talk of strategy (or business strategy) to refer to the conduct of the company or organization to manage resources and coordinate efforts, in the face of a specific scenario or before a particular rival. From there also come strategic planning, strategic management and among other terms.

However, the concept of strategy can be applied to practically any area , from the love conquest to marketing , as long as it is about the implementation of a plan, designed to take advantage of the conditions and resources as much as possible. dices.

2. Types of strategy

The strategies can be classified according to different criteria, such as their area of ​​application (military, business, advertising, sports strategies, etc.), their positioning in front of the adversary (offensive, defensive, mixed strategies) or their area of ​​application in a given process (general and specific strategies).

Another possible and very frequent classification in the corporate world distinguishes between:

• Functional strategies . Focused on the specific objective of a business or a department within an organization, they determine the specific approaches and tasks that must be undertaken to succeed locally.
• Operational strategies . For their part, they focus on the operability of a company or organization, that is, its daily and continuous activities, that is, its protocol and its procedures.
• Organizational strategies . Similarly, they focus on the organization of the company, that is, its hierarchy, its subdivisions, its internal distribution, etc.
• Advertising strategies . Those concerning, of course, advertising and the world of marketing, and everything that has to do with the public projection of the organization.

3. Strategy Examples

Some examples of strategy can be:

• The type of advertising campaigns that a company assumes to make its product visible in a given market scenario.
• The military planning that an army assumes before a battle, taking into account its forces, those of the enemy and the terrain on which the combat will take place.
• The criteria that a shareholder of the financial stock market uses to know when it is convenient to sell and when to buy shares , according to a specific risk profile.
• The mechanisms to which a football team goes in its attack and defense when facing an opponent in an international championship, taking into account the possible weaknesses of the opposing team and their own.

4. Tactic and strategy

These two concepts are often used interchangeably, so they should be explained separately. On the one hand, the strategy consists of a planning and administration of resources and forces to design a plan with greater probabilities of success. That is, the strategy starts from a macroscopic view of the set of elements available for planning.

Instead, the tactic consists of a specific method, a methodology , which is applied in the face of a specific situation to obtain a desired result. That is, while the strategies are comprehensive and general, the tactics are unique and specific .

While a strategy can be medium and long term, a tactic is a path to relatively immediate results. Thus, one strategy may consist in the use of certain types of tactics instead of others, for example.

5. Strategy and competitiveness

The competitiveness of an organization or a team depends on its ability to face its rivals successfully . It is said, thus, that a company, an institution or a football team are competitive, when they offer their opponents a challenge, that is, when they are not easy to beat. And this often involves the management of strategies.

Most often, a disorganized initiative, devoid of strategies, fails to be very competitive, while one endowed with good strategies and hard planning does. This is something that obviously applies to any field of human action.