TABLE OF CONTENTS What business strategy is all about what distinguishes it from all other kinds of business planning is, in a word, competitive advantage. Without competitors there would be no need for a strategy . . . Corporate strategy thus implies an attempt to alter a company s strength relative to that of its competitors in the most efficient way.
Kenichi Ohmae, The Mind of the Strategist
(McGraw Hill, 1982)
For me, Ohmae s understanding of strategy is as absolute and complete as any writings I have come across. What is more, he manages to show both the simplicity and complexity of strategy. I have never seen such a simple and clear definition of strategy as this but its implications for HR strategy are even more profound.
It is probably quite obvious to most business leaders that the reason they need a strategy is to beat their competitors. In fact it is their competing strategies, more than their operational efficiencies, that will determine who will win the war . But where does this business strategy come from?
We are not going to spend too long looking at what constitutes a business strategy and how it is formulated. Search on Amazon.com using the words business strategy and you will find nearly 2000 titles using those key words. That is already a well-covered subject. What we are concerned with here, primarily, is acknowledging when there is a business strategy in place. This business strategy can then be used as a...
