Rickerism

Brad Feld’s post on Strategy vs. Fundamentals has educed more than one response. Here is mine.

The problem is not strategy but rather people’s concept of strategy. People treat strategy as something ethereal, intangible and detached rather than something practical.

Dr. Michael Mazarr is a professor at the National War College. He taught me that:

Strategy is the process of matching means to ends.

In the light of this definition, strategy is something very fundamental. The strategy of a company is the answer to the following questions:

1. What is the end we want to achieve? That is, what does the state of the world look like once we have succeeded?
2. What is the current state of things?
3. What means do we have to transform the state of things?
4. What are the incremental steps that must occur to transform the current state of the world into our desired end state?

If the strategy does not directly answer these questions, then it is not a strategy.

Looking at Feld’s tennis example, the end is to win the tennis match. The means is a tennis racket. The strategy is how you are going to use the tennis racket to win the tennis match. Anything else is bullshit.

Strategy is philosophy. Thinking philosophically includes being able to know what is bullshit. Unfortunately, Americans are deliberately taught not to think philosophically, thanks in part to John Dewey. We will have to discuss that some other day.