![]() Why do we need a strategy in the first place? Clausewitz gives us the answer. In fact, the essence of strategy is stunningly simple, and therein lies its power. More than any other business discipline, it suffers from crippling confusion and over-complication. Strategy is frequently misunderstood and therefore misapplied. His ideas remain widely taught in military schools, and are, more than ever, essential to the modern strategist. ![]() Published in 1832, a year after his death, On War is regarded by military experts even today as the definitive study of warfare. From this crucible the great military thinkers honed the fundamental principles of strategy, and few among those thinkers are quite so revered as von Clausewitz.Ĭlausewitz, a Prussian general who fought against Napoleon, quite literally wrote the book on war. That is precisely the challenge the military has faced through the ages as it contended with the changing terrain, chaotic elements, and unexpected opportunities of warfare. Organizations must also have a winning strategy to achieve competitive advantage and the ability to renew that strategy as the environment shifts. In today’s turbulent marketplace this kind of ritualistic planning is no longer enough. And in many companies these sterile forecasting methods have remained essentially unchanged. But for most organizations, this was just a rebranding exercise for existing routines, not a change in behavior. Then business gurus began borrowing “strategy” - a much sexier term - from the military. ![]() The common term in business before the 1970s was “long-term planning” - the practice of forecasting numbers to map the future. The concept, derived from the Greek strategia - a compound of stratos, meaning “army,” and agein, meaning “to lead” - was instead born in the military. Yet for much of modern history the word “strategy” seldom appeared in the business vernacular. War, wrote the famed nineteenth-century military strategist Carl von Clausewitz, should not be compared to art, but rather to commerce, “which is also a conflict of human interests and activities.”
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