Notes of the day:

What's going on with me lately? Here's some of it.

As usual the time of year it is has me unhappy and unsettled. Coping with that consists of staying indoors, acting irritable, lazy, and generally unpleasant.

This year because of work I'm applying my unsettled unhappiness toward work. The rationale is that I need to not rot in a hole at work if I'm going to have a happy and productive life. Whether my current employer is able to provide the growth opportunities I need or not remains to be seen, but I haven't felt confident in my own abilities lately and that is the first obstacle to overcome.

My strategy is to 1. get a strategy. 2. figure out what to do after that.

I just googled "stratgy" after encountering several poor definitions of the term in a CISA book. Strategy is sometimes defined according to the superficial characteristics of its implementation. Strategy is "an elaborate and systematic plan of action," for example. It turns out this is etymologically appropriate, as the word comes from the words "stratos" (army) and "agos" (leader), or "strategos" and "strategia", (general of the army, or office of the general). So "what generals do" is legitimately considered strategy.

This definition falls short of usefulness in admitting such meanings as "if the general loses a tooth then the loss of the tooth is "strategic". To the point it is not clear enough. The idea of strategy occurs in several areas most notably: in military language, in business, in politics, and in game theory. Game theory employs the idea as "a course of action chosen by a player in response to the range of possibilities given by the conditions of the game." In politics strategy is employed to win an office or to pass legislation. It consists of coordinated activities designed to mobilize support, neutralize opposition, build alliances, and so forth. Business strategy is similar but aims at ensuring continued profitability and growth. Military strategy provides perhaps the clearest definition: "a course of action aimed at achieving an overall objective," as differentiated from tactics, which are courses of action chosen to achieve a specific objective in pursuit of a strategic objective. The strategic spectrum covers a wide range of human activities, with some commonality and some differentiation in meaning.

What is needed for a good general definition then is a sense of how I can think of strategy clearly and usefully. In all examples above there is the sense of strategy having the qualities of a "thing," although intangible. People create strategies or choose them in order to achieve an objective. The objective is one kind of thing, achievement of it is the verb, strategy the subject. Strategy consists of a plan or plans, scenarios of actions with a particular condition or conditions the desired result. This pattern appears common to the military, the business, the political, and the game theory realms.

While exploring the syntactic aspect of the definition may seem excessive it does a lot to clarify the meaning to identify what kind of a word it is. With strategy this is made complex by another convention: strategy, though a noun, always refers to actions, whether planning or execution. Strategy expresses an intent to do something, and possibly to something complex or to do it in a complex way. It does not make sense to develop a strategy for drinking the cup of coffee in front of me. It may make sense to strategize the timing of my coffee-drinking to ensure some other objective, such as getting enough sleep at night, or to maintain alertness and productivity at specific times. In those cases the coffee could be thought of as "strategic" but only in the sense that when I drink it makes a difference. I wouldn't stockpile coffee as a "strategic asset" unless I had a somewhat different objective involving mass distribution, security against coffee-less conditions, or some kind of research and development. So the objective gives a strategy its shape and form.

More than that, it could be argued that strategy, rather than being simply "what the general does," requires reference to an objective. An objective can exist without any strategy, but a strategy cannot exist without an objective. To see this we may need to think about what makes us consider a general good at his position. Often we make judgments based on appearance and demeanor, but the credentials that traditionally are the mark of military virtue are a history of winning at conflicts, both on the battlefield and in the chain of command. A general who achieves the objectives of his command is a well-respected general, and consistent with this is the post-hoc commendation of the strategies employed by that general in earning the respect of others.

Likewise, when we see outcomes we dislike we tend to condemn the strategies uniquely associated to those outcomes. For example, people who oppose corporate control of global resources tend to view corporate strategies in a sinister light. The corporation building a factory near your community is obviously doing it to pollute your air and water, thereby damaging your health and that of your children, whether already born or yet-to-be. This tactic, so the thinking goes, might be part of an overall strategy to weaken and defeat "we the people" who might oppose corporate theft of "our" resources. The corporate objective, in this scenario, is ultimately to control resources, and polluting, failing to protect the health of the surrounding communities, and so forth are tactics aimed at an overall strategy of monetizing all possible natural resources for the benefit of ever-increasing corporate profits.

Those more neutral about corporate activities may see environmental problems resulting from the pursuit of business objectives as side-effects, and the health consequences the unfortunate result of either human limitations or callous indifference on the part of businesspeople. In neither the case of opposition to corporate activity or that of neutrality toward it do the stakeholders participate in the strategy, and the corporate objective may be unknown or not a concern to those stakeholders. If the profit to be made does not benefit someone, most likely they will not share in the objective at hand nor be a strategic participant.

For those participating in achieving an objective, understanding the strategy and how it is intended to achieve the objective is important. Knowing every aspect of it may not be important, but understanding and agreeing with one's own role in that achievement can make the difference between supporting the objectives and strategies and pursuing a contrary agenda.

What, then, is strategy? Strategy consists of complex activity, in that it entails pursuit of an objective requiring intermediate activity to attain fulfillment. Strategy can be said to be "a course of action" or "a plan," that is, strategy refers to things intended to be done, and encompasses the doing of those things. In most senses it is more than simply actions undertaken for a purpose (i.e. I'm stopping at the gas station to fill my tank so I don't run out of gas). Strategy seems to imply some organized, rational forethought. Strategies are developed to achieve high-level aims; strategy is the business of leaders, or of generals.

It is not enough to state that whatever the officious big-shot does constitutes strategy. Strategies are often posited where there is no particular objective, and the activity resulting unsurprisingly produces no particular result. In these cases there is often something going on, unseen, that fits the pattern of strategies in pursuit of objectives: ritualized "strategic planning" activity by people in charge of an resource base within an already-effective organization maintains the status quo by failing to find innovative alternative uses for the resources already employed profitable enterprise. But to define strategy clearly and usefully, so that one might plan the real achievement of a more distinct objective, constrains the definition to the rational and intentional rather than the behavioral field.

Strategy, then, is a course of action chosen for the purpose of achieving a unifying or overarching objective. A plan to win.

So to develop a strategy, I first need to understand my objective. What game am I playing, and what constitutes winning? Then, how do I win? What are the terms of the competition? What will maximize my competitive advantage? What are the two dimensions and the four necessary scenarios (in the GBN format) that must determine the parameters of the game and what "playing to win" might mean.