STANDING OUT A MASTER STRATEGY.

A Master Strategy often boils down to premeditation, the anticipation of others’ behaviours and the purposeful and articulated design of coordinated actions to be executed in time and space. When the need for on-the-spot adaptation and improvisation arises, it is moderated by a prior guidance, design or plan. The trap sprung for the Roman Army by Hannibal in Cannae, in 216 BC, was made more effective by the behaviour of the Roman Legion, which was anticipated in the design of the entrapment strategy. The history, traditions, doctrines and standards of an organisation together with the motivations and biases of its leaders are frequently helpful in predicting or anticipating the behaviour of such an organisation.

The essentials of a Master Strategy leans more towards designs than decisions. The master strategist is a designer.

Seeking for a higher performance entails considering more interactions and coordinating the parts into a whole.

A Master Strategy delivers a competitive punch by coordinating policies across activities.

Performance is determined by capability and clever design. Getting more performance out of a system means integrating its components and subsystems more cleverly and more tightly. Improvements in capabilities or technologies reduce the need for a tighter, clever integration. This trade-off or compensatory way of thinking is the core of a Master Strategy.

A Master strategy secures advantages to an organisation by configuring resources and actions. The higher the quality of resources, the lesser the need for the tight integration of resources and actions. Fewer resources mean one thing: clever and tighter integration of resources and actions. A great challenge highlights the need for a good, coherent, well-designed strategy.