Strategy in a 'Structural Break'

This excellent article, found by SCUP staffer Phyllis Grummon, is blurbed, "During hard times a structural break in the economy is an opportunity in disguise. To survive—and eventually, to flourish—companies must learn to exploit it." To read the full article requires site registration:

There is nothing like a crisis to clarify the mind. In suddenly volatile and different times, you must have a strategy. I don't mean most of the things people call strategy—mission statements, audacious goals, three- to five-year budget plans. I mean a real strategy. . . . For many managers, the word has become a verbal tic. Business lingo has transformed marketing into marketing strategy, data processing into IT strategy, acquisitions into growth strategy. Cut prices and you have a low-price strategy. Equating strategy with success, audacity, or ambition creates still more confusion. A lot of people label anything that bears the CEO's signature as strategic—a definition based on the decider's pay grade, not the decision. . . . By strategy, I mean a cohesive response to a challenge. A real strategy is neither a document nor a forecast but rather an overall approach based on a diagnosis of a challenge. The most important element of a strategy is a coherent viewpoint about the forces at work, not a plan.