What is Strategy

The word “strategy” is derived from the Greek word “stratçgos”; stratus (meaning army) and “ago”
(meaning leading/moving).

Strategy is an action that managers take to attain one or more of the organization’s goals. Strategy can
also be defined as “A general direction set for the company and its various components to achieve a
desired state in the future. Strategy results from the detailed strategic planning process”.

A strategy is all about integrating organizational activities and utilizing and allocating the scarce
resources within the organizational environment so as to meet the present objectives. While planning a
strategy it is essential to consider that decisions are not taken in a vacuum and that any act taken by a
firm is likely to be met by a reaction from those affected, competitors, customers, employees or
suppliers.

Strategy can also be defined as knowledge of the goals, the uncertainty of events and the need to take
into consideration the likely or actual behavior of others. Strategy is the blueprint of decisions in an
organization that shows its objectives and goals, reduces the key policies, and plans for achieving these
goals, and defines the business the company is to carry on, the type of economic and human
organization it wants to be, and the contribution it plans to make to its shareholders, customers and
society at large. https://www.managementstudyguide.com/strategy-definition.htm

What is Strategic Management

The term ‘strategic management’ is used to denote a branch of management that is concerned with the
development of strategic vision, setting out objectives, formulating and implementing strategies and
introducing corrective measures for the deviations (if any) to reach the organization’s strategic intent. It
has two-fold objectives:

 To gain competitive advantage, with an aim of outperforming the competitors, to achieve

dominance over the market.

 To act as a guide to the organization to help in surviving the changes in the business
environment.

Here, changes refer to changes in the internal environment, i.e. within the organization, introduced by
the managers such as the change in business policies, procedures etc. and changes in the external
environment as in changes in the government rules that can affect business, competitors move, change
in customer’s tastes and preferences and so forth.

https://businessjargons.com/strategic-management.html

Meaning of Strategic Thinking

strategic thinking is defined as a mental or thinking process applied by an individual in the context of
achieving a goal or set of goals in a game or other endeavor. As a cognitive activity, it produces thought.
When applied in an organizational strategic management process, strategic thinking involves the
generation and application of unique business insights and opportunities intended to create competitive
advantage for a firm or organization. It can be done individually, as well as collaboratively among key
people who can positively alter an organization's future. Group strategic thinking may create more value
by enabling a proactive and creative dialogue, where individuals gain other people's perspectives on
critical and complex issues. This is regarded as a benefit in highly competitive and fast-changing business
landscapes.

Strategic thinking includes finding and developing a strategic foresight capacity for an organization, by
exploring all possible organizational futures, and challenging conventional thinking to foster decision
making today. Recent strategic thought points ever more clearly towards the conclusion that the critical
strategic question is not the conventional "What?", but "Why?" or "How?". The work of Henry
Mintzberg and other authors, further support the conclusion; and also draw a clear distinction between
strategic thinking and strategic planning, another important strategic management thought process.

General Andre Beaufre wrote in 1963 that strategic thinking "is a mental process, at once abstract and
rational, which must be capable of synthesizing both psychological and material data. The strategist
must have a great capacity for both analysis and synthesis; analysis is necessary to assemble the data on
which he makes his diagnosis, synthesis in order to produce from these data the diagnosis itself—and
the diagnosis in fact amounts to a choice between alternative courses of action."

There is no generally accepted definition for strategic thinking, no common agreement as to its role or
importance, and no standardized list of key competencies of strategic thinkers. There is also no
consensus on whether strategic thinking is an uncommon ideal or a common and observable property of
strategy. Most agree that traditional models of strategy making, which are primarily based on strategic
planning, are not working. Strategy in today's competitive business landscape is moving away from the
basic ‘strategic planning’ to more of ‘strategic thinking’ in order to remain competitive. However, both
thought processes must work hand-in-hand in order to reap maximum benefit.[6] It has been argued
that the real heart of strategy is the 'strategist'; and for a better strategy execution requires a strategic
thinker who can discover novel, imaginative strategies which can re-write the rules of the competitive
game; and set in motion the chain of events that will shape and "define the future".

There are many tools and techniques to promote and discipline strategic thinking. The flowchart to the
right provides a process for classifying a phenomenon as a scenario in the intuitive logics’ tradition, and
how it differs from a number of other planning approaches.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_thinking

Different terms of Strategy