The history of strategy, from its military origins to its application in politics and business, reveals a recurring pattern of overconfidence in its ability to control events, ultimately highlighting its role as a tool for navigating uncertainty rather than eliminating it.
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Anyone who believes in indefinite growth
on a physically finite planet is either
mad or an economist. We don't want to
focus politics on a notion that involves
the rejection of principles around which
a large majority of our fellow citizens
or organize their lives. We are not as
endlessly manipulable and as predictable
Strategy. The word itself goes back to
the Greek strategist, the art of the
general. It hadn't really been used, at
least in the Western world, until the
end of the 18th century, partly because
of the enlightenment and an interest in
how to describe ideas and practice that
would allow you to uh show that reason
can be important even in that most
unruly of human affairs, war. It came
into being but then I think was given a
tremendous push by by Napoleon by the
Napoleonic wars and the sense something
big and and different was going on and
this military genius Napoleon seemed to
understand it better than anybody else
and that needed to be explained in the
principles behind that could give you a
clue uh as to how uh future military
campaigns should be organized. There
were laws, there were principles at work
uh that guided strategy. Not long after
um this Napoleonic period, professional
revolutionaries who came into being in the
the
1830s looked back at some of these
ideas, read the literature that had
gener been generated around Napoleonic
strategy and started to try to apply it
to revolutionary strategy. So you have
another strand that comes in from about
that period and those of you who are
familiar with um radical politics know a
lot of the arguments that were set in
motion uh at that period haven't
stopped. And then you have the the third
wave which comes in much later when
really not until the early 1960s do you
find business leaders um and those
writing for them starting to talk about
the need for a strategy. And actually at
that point the
literature on strategy takes off.
There's a sort of exponential curve of
books on strategy. And then of course
this then moves into all aspects of
life. There's no human activity, however
intimate now, that doesn't seem to need
a strategy of some sort. So that you can
have child rearing strategies,
strategies uh for finding partners,
strategies for your tax returns. And one
of the interesting questions for me is
is how do you put bounds on that? How do
you describe strategic activity in a way
that it's not just a simple way of
talking about thinking far ahead or
working out what I need to do next? Do
you dignify every deliberation as a
strategy? Each of these aspects bring in
some aspect of my life. Most of my
working life has been spent on uh
military issues. Um I started on on
nuclear strategy which is in some ways
the the hardest strategic discussion of
all. Uh but before that as an
undergraduate and even as little bit as
a graduate I I was very engaged in the
radical political debates of the late
1960s when these issues seemed terribly
important. And being a pragmatic sort of
chap, I worried
continuously about how it could ever be
that these wonderful ideas that my
colleagues were espousing and went to
the streets to demonstrate about could
ever be turned into practice and then as
happens in a life uh I end up as part of
senior management in a university um and
ending up with strategy in my title. So
actually as a matter of practice have
had to try to work out how an organization
organization
uh develops a strategy and in all of
these different areas skepticism about
what strategy could do for you had crept
in quite quickly with the with the on
the revolutionary side uh but perhaps
more gradually on the other side. In
each of the areas I've described, the
surge of interest in strategy reflected
a belief that somehow this was a way by
which bright, intelligent, well-informed
leaders could control events. how they
could face all sorts of challenges and
adversity and come out on top because
somehow these unders these people
understood what needed to be done, what
could be done better than others. I
mentioned already the Napoleonic
um strategies. uh the first great
interpreter of strategy, not Clausivit
who came a little afterwards but
Germany, the Swiss Germany who was with
the French never really throughout a
very long life moved away from the view
that if the certain principles were
followed then the clever general the
general of genius could get to the
decisive victory which would win the
war. It was a theory of battle and and
decisive battles, but it was based on
optimism uh that an enemy could be
defeated and once the enemy was defeated
then uh the state the enemy state could
be subjugated.
Clausvitz who was uh probably still the
the greatest theorist of war was a
little bit more skeptical but still he
too was taken by this idea of the
possibility of the decisive battle and
you can see this idea not uh withering
during the 19th century but getting more
and more of a hold as particularly the
Prussian general staff who were towards
the end of the century more and more
successful ful could not really think in
any other terms but how they would win
the war quickly because they knew a long
war would be to their disadvantage by
having a clever strategic
plan. Yet by this time by the end of the
19th century all the reasons why we know
it is difficult for a clever strategic
plan always to succeed had become
apparent. They'd become apparent even uh
by the time of the fall of Napoleon.
They'd become apparent in the in the
peninsula campaign as uh militias
appeared which kept on interrupting the
work of of the French armies in in Spain
and eventually were with Wellington to
have their defeat there. They were very
evident in the Boradino campaign about
which Toltoy wrote not wholly accurately
but it's noteworthy that tool to Toltoy
used Boradino uh as essentially to
challenge the whole idea of the
possibility of strategy. Claus of
appears in in war and peace in a not
wholly flattering light. Um and there's
great skepticism about these German
ideas of a science of strategy uh as to
what they could achieve. Boredino
demonstrated um the problems uh that
Napoleon faced first with not fight not
fighting when he wanted to fight, having
to go right into Russia to meet the
Russian army, defeating the Russian
army, but not sufficiently for it to
have to plead for mercy. The Russian
army could fight another day. And then
he goes to Moscow, the capital city, the
the symbol o of of the state. he can
take Moscow but he can't stay there
because it's on fire and the population
has left so he has to go home and we
know what happened and then during the
course of the 19th century um you have
the example uh of the um American civil
war which demonstrates how these things
can turn into quite bloody battles of
attrition even before the first world
war which undermined forever the
possibility or the or confidence that
with the right strategy uh you could be
sure of victory right up to this period
but and to some extent beyond this idea
of the possibility of understanding
strategy would allow you to control
events and not get yourself into mess uh
still h had a hold and you may have seen
even recently um uh in in the press uh
indeed one of my colleagues Oxford
University Hugh Stro has been arguing
the problem is is a lack of strategic
thinking if only we had better
strategies Iraq and Afghanistan wouldn't
have happened the way they did But you
know, one can question whether the
strategy was at fault uh or whether
actually the strategies themselves um
were always going to be difficult to
implement. Uh with revolutionary
strategy again there was a an optimism
that you can see in Markx uh and and his
followers about what the masses were
going to be able to do. the
inevitability of their growing strength
uh and seriousness of purpose, the
polarization that was going to come and
the question was what was going to be
the role uh of of the intellectuals and
the professional revolutionaries when
the moment came. The revolution was the
equivalent of the decisive battle. It
was going to be the same stunning moment
when you have a transformation from one
order to another.
Everything was going to be different
after the revolution, come the
revolution. But uh again, the experience
eventually told that there were other
ways by which the masses might try to
meet their objectives. Um the
reformists, the social democrats uh saw
the virtues of elections, lost interest
in revolutions lest they appear too
dangerous. Again, the first world war uh
undermined the whole notion of a of a
class interest superseding a national
interest when all the socialist parties
of the second international went back
and supported their own nations at war.
And then with business strategy too, a
lot of the original business strategy
was based actually on the needs of the
big American corporations in particular
General Motors. It was about how these
big corporations which had almost
reached the limits of their market share
because of antitrust legislation
uh how do they continue to be profitable
and it was pushed strategic thinking
inwards. It was about the organization
of the enterprise as much about as about
how you deal with the external
environment. You can trace a lot of the
origins of thinking about business
before they actually business strategy
before they actually used the word
strategy to a different set of problems
which relates to my the previous
discussion. It was about how to deal
with the labor unions whether it's sort
of tailorism um and time in motion
studies which started before the first
world war or the inter war discussions
uh about of the human relations school.
It was really about how you deal with
labor unrest. But by the 50s that didn't
seem to be the issue anymore. It was
about how the corporation could grow.
And it didn't really even deal with the
issues of competition. It was only as uh
American corporations started to be
unnerved by the uh arrival of serious
competition from Europe, from Germany,
but most of all from Japan that the
literature began to change and turn and
try to address this new set of problems.
And that confidence about the ability to
control events from the perspective of
corporate America of the 1950s is
gradually eroded. But what you have
again is uh a series of um authors
coming forward with propositions about
this is the way forward. And I think
business strategy more so than military
strategy or political strategy has
suffered uh from
uh what's often called the gurus uh th
those uh who come up with the big new
idea that will revolutionize the way you
do business and ensure growth and and
seeing off your all your uh competitors.
Peter Duker, who was sort of the first
great business strategists, said to him,
uh, what about the gurus? He was
sometimes described as the first guru,
said they use the word guru because
charlatans too long to fit on a
headline. uh uh and I discovered there's
a whole academic literature about fads
and fashions in strategy which uh goes
through the speed with which um these uh
are taken up uh and eventually dropped
and ask the question why do serious
executives who are not stupid fall for
this each time to which one answer is
you rarely lose your job by following a
fashion and indeed if you're seen to be
bucking the trend um going against the
trend uh you can lose your job. So being
part of a crowd in that sense could be
helpful. So in all these areas actually
strategy um never quite fulfills its
original promise. And what I'm trying to
do I think is to point out
um that maybe we need to think about
what strategy can do for you. Ask that
question in a slightly different way.
The word strategy now to be strategic
tends to mean to be long-term to have a
keen sense of objectives. Uh to have a
clear sense of how you get from where
you are at the moment to where you
really would like to
be. And that sort of thinking can be
very valuable. But in practice, it's
also very difficult and flawed for a
number of reasons. A strategy is not
synonymous with a plan. Plans can be
very useful, especially in those things
you can control. But when you're dealing
with other human beings who are willful
in their own way, who have their own
needs, their own objectives, even if
they're not on your side, even if
they're your employees, but certainly if
they're your competitors or your
enemies, um then it's going to be highly
unlikely that a plan is a sequence of
events that takes you from one point to
another point in a very uh predictable
process. uh is going to be realized.
Something is going to happen. The great
Prussian strategist
um who believed in plans nonetheless
said von Malta
uh no no plan survives contact with the
enemy. My much more favorite quote from
this which comes from Mike Tyson,
everybody's got a plan until they get
punched in the
mouth which it's it's the same basic
theme. Eisenhower once remarked that um
plans are useless, planning is
essential. And I think that's true. The
process of thinking ahead is highly
useful. But my uh suggestion is that
actually most good strategy is based not
on some notional endpoint but on the
problem at hand. What actually is the
problem you're trying to solve? In
answering that question, you may want to
think about where you where you would
like to be.
But a lot of the problem at hand is a
pretty defensive one because somebody
else has taken the initiative in war. Uh
if you've been attacked, uh victory may
seem a good idea, but a better idea is
survival. That's the first priority.
Then you may be able to start to think
about where else you you you'd like to
go. So just as a matter of practice, I
think good strategy starts with the here
and now. And it's about getting to the
next stage. And I think it's important
to keep that in mind because actually
the idea of an end point which is
captured by the idea of of the decisive
battle or the revolution is that that's
it. You know the problem solved. You
you've won your battle. You you've had
your revolution. But actually a whole
set of new problems are starting. And
how you've got to that point will affect
uh how you deal with the aftermath. You
defeat your opponent, but then you've
got to run somebody else's state. You
win an election, you've got to govern
the country. U you have a you you have a
revolution, you've got to implement the
new order. You've managed to take over,
you've got to merge two companies. And
unless you've thought those things
through or prepared for the next set of
questions you're going to face, you're
going to be at a bit of a loss. So the
idea of the end point, the ultimate
objective is always misleading. In this
sense, I would see um strategy which has
its own links with drama. You can think
of it as a sort of a story written in
the future tense about how things might
develop. It's not a three-act play. It's
a soap opera. Uh one thing follows
another. And if you view it in those
terms, then strategy becomes a continual
process of updating and responding to
events. Now, the thing that makes for
the the easiest and most successful
strategy is simply being stronger than
everybody else. It's an obvious point.
Um, but it often gets missed. If you've
got more resources, then you really
ought to win. Um, and if you don't,
you've probably screwed up pretty badly.
There's this great line from
Ecclesiastes about the race doesn't
always go to the most swift or the fight
doesn't always go to the most strong,
but Damon Renan uh had the important
rider. They're the ones to bet on. Uh
most of the time uh the race does go to
the most swift um and and the battle uh
does go to the most strong, but it's not
very interesting. It's there's there's
not much intellectual effort in working
out how to apply superior resource. So
in practice a lot of the interesting
strategy which is why revolutionary
strategy so interesting if often so
futile is the underdog the weakest
party. How can the the weakest party
gain strength? Um which is why I think
SunSu um is so beloved of contemporary
strategists, this Chinese sage from 500
BC who wrote on the art of war in uh
with great apherisms. It's it's it's
certainly worth reading, but it's
basically about being cleverer than your
opponent. If you can't outfight them,
you can outwit them. Who's not going to
enjoy the idea that that they're going
to be cleverer than everybody else? and
and uh and prove this in in some great
contest or other. And it's fine until
you meet somebody else who's also read
SunSu. But it's basically if you're
weaker, you want to appear stronger. If
you're stronger, you want to appear
weaker. If you're going on the attack,
you must make it look like you're going
on the defensive. If you're going on the
defensive, make it look like you're
going on the attack. You get the idea?
Well, if everybody's got this same idea,
you can never engage at all. There's a
role for deception and craftiness and
keen intelligence and being smart in all
of this. Uh but to my mind, if you look
back as to the basis of a lot of success
when you're not starting from strength,
it's coalition building, finding a
partner, finding an ally. It may be
difficult. Um it may involve awkward
compromises, but actually that's as
often as not the best way uh to go about
things. So to conclude, the history of
strategy is to some extent a history of
disillusionment. It's a history of
attempts to set up scientific ways of
thinking about the future that will
guarantee certain sorts of results that
have always fallen short. But in the
process, a lot of very interesting ideas
come out and it focuses your mind on
onto issues of agency and context and so
on. in ways that if you not thinking
strategically, you may never come
across. If you're aware of that, then
your strate be being a good strategist
will get you somewhere. Um, as long as
you don't think it's going to solve all
your problems. The relationship between
the notion of strategy and the notion of
uncertainty. Sometimes we see strategy
as a way of coping with uncertainty as
it were living with uncertainty and
sometimes we see it as a way of
resolving uncertainty, removing
uncertainty. It sounds to me as though
you're a supporter of the former rather
than the latter view. I think we
conceptualize this issue more clearly
now than we did in the past. But this
was a way by which you could remove
uncertainty from your calculations was
always one of the hopes and it's very
strong if you read some of the
literature around the managerial
revolution of the 50s and 60s um that
we've now got a way of achieving a sort
of stability in our operations that has
eluded those in the past in the same way
former chancellors have talked about
ending the boom and bust cycle that
somehow we've cracked a problem that
that has eluded people in the past and
they haven't because uh in the end
things happen that you're not prepared
for uh and you get caught out or there's
a complacency develops that sews the
seeds of its uh of its own destruction.
So definitely uh it's um about coping
with uncertainty, recognizing
uncertainty but in no sense overcoming it.
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