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Small Business Strategies for Growth

Strategy is many things: plan, pattern, position, ploy and perspective . As plan , strategy relates how we intend realizing our goals. As pattern , strategy is the "rhyme and reason" that emerges in the course of making the endless decisions that reconcile the reality we encounter with the aims we hold dear. As position , strategy is the stance we take: to literally take the high ground, to be the low-cost provider, to compete on the basis of value, to price to what the market will bear, to match or beat the price offered by any competitor, to let no threat go unmet. As ploy , strategy is a ruse, it relies on secrecy and often on deception: "Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth." As perspective , strategy is part vantage point and part the view from that vantage point, particularly the way this view shapes and guides decisions and actions.

Strategy is ubiquitous . It can be found at the highest levels of corporate, governmental, military and organizational endeavor and in small, medium and large units. It is used to define the basis for competition and it can give rise to collaboration and cooperation. It can even be found guiding and explaining individual initiative. It is everywhere.

Strategy is an abstraction, a construct . It has no concrete form or substance. At best it can be communicated in words and diagrams. But, just as "the map is not the territory," the words and diagrams used to communicate strategy are not the strategy they convey. 

Strategy is the art of the general. It is broad, long range and far reaching. In part, it is about the preparations made before battle, before the enemy is engaged. But it is also about avoiding battle and making combat unnecessary. It is as much about destroying the enemy's will to fight as it is about destroying the enemy in a fight. If that sounds too militaristic for you, consider the business parallel: a firm that raises such formidable barriers to entry that would-be competitors throw up their hands and walk away. Destroying the will to compete differs little from destroying the will to fight.

Strategy is a general plan of attack , an approach to a problem, the first step in linking the means or resources at our disposal with the ends or results we hold in view. Tactics, of course, is the second step. Together, strategy and tactics bridge the gap between ends and means. Strategy is concerned with deploying resources and tactics is concerned with employing them. Without some goal, some end in view, there can be no strategy and tactics will consist of aimless flailing about-action for the sake of action. Strategy, then, is relative, which is to say that it exists only in relation to some goal, end or objective. If someone asks you, "What is your strategy?" be sure to reply, "In relation to what?"

Strategy is direction and destination. At one and the same time strategy says, "We are headed there - by this path ." Yet, as noted earlier, it is also ruse and deception; that is, our strategy takes us down a path with many branches and only we know our destination and the choices we will make as we are confronted with them. In short, strategy is a way of confounding our enemies or, in less warlike terms, our competitors.  

Strategy is a set of decisions made. What business are we in? What products and services will we offer? To whom? At what prices? On what terms? Against which competitors? On what basis will we compete?