We explain what a strategy is, what types exist and in which areas it is used. Strategy and tactics. Strategy and competitiveness.
A good strategy allows you to use available resources to achieve your objectives.What is a strategy?
The word strategy comes from the Greek strategy, composed by stratos ("Army") and Aug ("steer"). That is to say that from its very origin it contains a meaning linked to the planning, the tactic, taking advantage of the adversary.
Today, we understand by it the action and the discipline coordinate efforts and manage resources, through the decision making optimal in the process.
In the business world, for example, we speak of strategy (or business strategy) to refer to the conduct of the business or organization to manage resources and coordinate efforts, in the face of a specific scenario or a specific 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 lovemaking to marketing, as long as it is the implementation of a plan, designed to take the greatest possible advantage of the given conditions and resources.
Strategy types
Strategies can be classified according to different criteria, such as their area of application (military, business, advertising, sports strategies, etc.), their positioning against 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 objective specific to a business or department within an organization, determine the specific approaches and tasks that must be undertaken to be successful locally.
- Operational strategies. For their part, they focus on the operation of a company or organization, that is, their daily and continuous activities, that is, their 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 referring, of course, to the advertising and the world of marketing, and everything that has to do with the organization's public projection.
Strategy examples
Some examples of strategy can be:
- The type of advertising campaigns that a company undertakes 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 in which the combat will take place.
- The criteria that a shareholder of the financial exchange uses to know when it is convenient to sell and when to buy shares, according to a profile of risks determined.
- The mechanisms used by a team of football in their attack and defense when facing a rival in an international championship, taking into account the possible weaknesses of the opposing team and their own.
Tactic and strategy
These two concepts are often used interchangeably, so they should be explained separately. On the one hand, the strategy consists of planning and managing resources and forces to design a plan with a greater probability of success. In other words, the strategy starts from a macroscopic vision of the set of elements available for planning.
Instead, the tactic consists of a specific method, a methodology, which is applied in front 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 to long term, a tactic is a path to relatively immediate results. Thus, a strategy may consist of using certain types of tactics instead of others, for example.
Strategy and competitiveness
The competitiveness of an organization or a team depends on its ability to face its rivals successfully. Thus, it is said that a company, a institution or a soccer team is competitive, when they offer their opponents a challenge, that is, when they are not easy to beat. And this often involves managing strategies.
More often than not, a disorganized initiative, lacking in 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.