We need to be revisiting what strategy is.

“Strategy is rather like love: you cannot see it, but in the future you would notice its absence, if not tomorrow then the day after.”

Strategies should be kept simple. Simplicity does not guarantee success, but complexity begs for failure. There is a chain of causes and effects among policy, strategy, and operations, to political outcomes. Because a chain is as strong as its weakest link, the more links in the chain, the higher the odds that something will go wrong.”

Strategic effect is existential. It is reality, and it is expressed in thought and behaviour.”

“The imagination needed for strategy cannot reliably be taught.”

Good strategists are good with words.

“The word ‘strategy’ has acquired a universality which has robbed it of meaning, and left it only with banalities. Governments have strategies to tackle the problems of education, public health, pensions and inner-city housing. Advertising companies have strategies to sell cosmetics or clothes. Strategic studies flourish more verdantly in schools... See more

The strategist’s core duty is to develop... plans that are predictions and intentions... The strategist’s plans purport to explain how desired end states will be achieved.

Strategy is about the purposes of action while tactics are about actually performing the actions in question”