Evolution of the strategy

The origins of the strategy

In ancient Greece and Rome, Thucydides, Xenophon and Julius Caesar, respectively, were clear exponents of strategy. Later, Machiavelli, Fernández de Cordoba and Hernán Cortés also deserve special attention. 

We could follow in the footsteps of the great masters, since those who have stood out through the ages have been numerous, but modern strategy dates its birth to the Age of Enlightenment, when European military thinkers were sensitive to the progress of armaments and the reforms they forced on armies. At the same time, the philosophers of the time, also driven by their rationalist ambition, tried to influence the rules of the Art of War.

French ideas were set out with great methodical vigour in Guibert's General Essay on Tactics (1772), which later became the reference book of Frederick II and which Napoleon regarded as the best manual for training great generals.

The supremacy of German thought emerged in 1810, when the Potsdam Military Academy was founded. Its founder Scharnhost reacted against the abstract definitions of the French theorists by going directly to the study of concrete cases from past wars: Scharnhorst's ideas received a decisive impetus from Clausewitz, who headed the Kriegsaka-demie from 1818 until his death in 1831. His masterpiece On War is both a summation of the military knowledge of the time and a philosophical reflection that assimilates the Art of War to the highest creations of the mind. Von Moltke made this conception triumph in the Prussian General Staff on the eve of the 1870s and contributed to forging a true mystique of war that would later inspire Schlieffen before the First World War and then Von Seekt in the 1920s and 30s. 

Traditionally considered a ‘military matter’, strategy has now become one of the most important aspects of our economic, social and political life.

It seems that the earliest known treatise on strategy was Sun-Tzu's ‘Rules of Military Art’, of which Mao Tse Tung claimed to be a disciple and which dates back to the 6th century BC

The term strategy comes from the Greek strategós from stratós, ‘army’ and ago, ‘to lead’, so it ranges from devising plans to leading an army. It is a matter of conceiving first and leading afterwards. The Art of Distance therefore excludes contact as a matter of strategic knowledge. Strategy is only possible when there is an empty space between the contenders that makes reflection possible. Strategy is in the conception of operational plans and its content is evident in the conduct of armies towards their objectives. 

Strategy is nothing more than a game of intelligence and will, a mixture of imagination and reflection, an analysis of possibilities, a discrimination of probabilities that must lead to a general combination followed by a combination of means. 

Business strategy

However, if we are confident that changes of all kinds are accelerating at the present time, we can say that the end of strategic business thinking based on the top-down military paradigm is near.

A revolutionary strategic approach is taking hold around the world. In an increasingly turbulent, global and competitive environment, it is no longer enough to have a good idea, capitalise on a market opportunity and try to maximise short-term profits. 

Strategy has nowadays become one of the most important aspects of our economic, social and political life

Opportunistic businesses need to become sustainable organisations that are well-structured by means of final and instrumental values that give them orientation and meaning beyond generating short-term economic benefits for their owners. 

The strategic attitude is characterised by an attitude that is open to change, an attitude that is critical of one's own management conception and practice, which implies the ability to question everything, to step outside the framework of routine in order to discover and implement new solutions. 

The essence of strategy lies in deciding what not to do. A strategic position is not sustainable without giving up others. To put it simply, in order to have more of one thing, it is necessary to have less of others. But wanting to have both can lead to inefficiencies. We must decide to be everything for someone, otherwise we will be nothing for everyone. In the markets we must be different, but never indifferent. When we talk about strategy, it is essential to differentiate the concepts of Theatre of Operations, the market where the ‘confrontation’ takes place, and the Scenario, which is the market plus ‘the set of circumstances’ surrounding the event. 

This new world has been called VUCA (Volatily, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity). Some variants have appeared around the VUCA concept, such as TUNA (Turbulence, Uncertainty, Novelty, Ambiguity) and BANI (Brittle, Anxious, Non-linear, Incomprehensible), among others. 

But, finally, reality has led us to evolve it to a new concept called VI3RCA2S, where four more variables have had to be incorporated; Immediacy, insecurity, noise and acceleration. What characterises this new era?

In today's environment of uncertainty and complexity, some of the questions that every organisation asks itself are: is it worth planning, does it make sense to stick to plans in such a changing environment, can we be predictable and proactive, what is the right time dimension?

The increasing uncertainty of the environment and certain aspects of geo-strategy raise the following questions: how to plan in these conditions; how useful is it to stick to pre-established plans; what is the point of sticking to what is planned; what is the validity of the plans that are finally elaborated; where should we be long term and where is it much more useful to be short term; where should we be vigilant not to deviate and where should we practice total flexibility? At the very least, any strategy must answer these seven questions: 

Strategic decisions

Strategic Planning aims to achieve the following objectives: 

• Define the medium/long-term direction. Establish the desired positioning, i.e. which markets we want to go to and how we want to be perceived.
• Make a diagnosis of the market and new trends, which places the organisation at a realistic and challenging starting point: high competition and market instability require a sense of smell, radical innovation and agile responses. Rapid decision-making is a valuable competitive advantage.
• Mutual adjustment between business and environment. Adapting the organisation to new challenges. Knowing with whom we are going to compete.
• Identify new business trends and learn from innovation in other sectors by analysing case studies. Strategic foresight will be very useful. 
• Identify, generate and prioritise new business opportunities. 
  Identify and enhance the new competencies needed.
• To make the company more competitive in a sustainable way. Seek differentiation. 
• Identify and manage risks. To have a risk map as a control and forecasting tool. 

Strategic foresight

Foresight is the definition of plausible futures through the application of methodologies, with the aim of establishing probabilities of occurrence, combining qualitative and quantitative logics, in order to understand the future and with the ultimate objective of influencing the variables necessary to create the most favourable scenario for our interests. Foresight is a part of strategic analysis that facilitates decision-making and constitutes an imaginary space in which the possible is combined with the desirable.

Methodologies

There is no standard methodology; there is a range of tools that can be used, the choice of which will depend on the issue to be addressed: 

• Analysis of Foresight Think Tank Information
• Analysis of intelligence information
• Pestele Analysis
• Cross and evolved Dafo. Interaction Matrices
• Environmental Sacninig/ Horizon Scanning
• Trend Analysis and Evolution
• Impact and Influence/ Dependency Matrixes
• Probabilistic Cross Impacts (Simic-Prob-Expert)
• Expert Panels (Multipol, Delphi, Abaco de Reginier)
• Creativity techniques: brainstorming, starbusting, mind-mapping, 6 thinking hats
• Variables and actors analysis: mic-maz, mactor, morphological analysis (morphol)
• Scenarios, ACH (Analysis Competitive Hypothesis)
• Radars (Future Platform)
• Wild Cars, Game Changers, Whatalf, (dystopias, utopias and uchronias)

High competition and market instability require a sense of smell, radical innovation and agile responses

A new word order  

The pandemic, the war in Ukraine and the Israel/Hamas/Palestine conflict, as well as other impacts such as climate change, cyber-risks, etc - have brought home to us the extreme vulnerabilities of our economic model and we are witnessing the birth of a New World Order, what I have called the Age of Reorder. New economic and geostrategic actors are seeking their place in this New Order, challenging the current status quo. Globalisation is not dead, but it is mutating and the world is likely to fragment into two large blocs, led by the US and China. We will also be familiar with concepts such as: BRICS, Strategic Pivots, Wooed States, ‘Eagles Countries’, ‘Mariachi Countries’,...

To the updated four horsemen of the apocalypse: Pandemics, Wars, Climate Change and Demography; initially, we incorporate Natural Disasters, to have to add a sixth horseman: Artificial Intelligence.

We could highlight five of the conclusions of the DAVOS Forum: until now, the economy conditioned Geopolitics, but in the coming years, Geopolitics will condition the economy, the concepts of Polycrisis, Permacrisis and Desriking and the fight against Disinformation. The survival and progress of an organisation will depend on its ability to ‘read’ and ‘interpret’ the environment in order to ‘adapt’ to it dynamically.

Many of the paradigms on which our decisions were based have disappeared. 

What will characterise this new era?

• The deterioration of relations between the United States and China Is Thucydides' “Pax Sinica” coming to pass, and are we witnessing the birth of the “Pax Sinica”?
• The world is fragmenting into blocs: the globalisation vs. offshoring vs. localisation debate
• Gap in supply chains
• Raw materials as a strategic factor
• Increase in cyber-attacks
• High probability of new pandemics: Marburg, Nipah?
• Demographic divergence Will the mid-21st century be the age of Africa?
• Hypervigilant world: security vs. privacy debate
• Huge increase in debt
• Impoverishment of the middle classes and weakening of social cohesion. Rise of populism and nationalism and prominence of ‘anti-establishment’ political parties.
• Growing inequality within and between countries.
• The ‘Democracy’ model at risk. Rise of ‘Autocracies’.
• Changes in the global energy landscape and their geopolitical and geo-economic implications.
• Food insecurity
• Climate governance continues to rise in a disorganised world.
• Urbanised world
• Social hypochondria
• The climate change debate and biodiversity loss
• Technology as a geo-strategic and geo-economic factor

Understanding the keys to the future will be essential to survive and succeed in these new scenarios.