Everyone human knows how to strategise — and hence there’s always a strategy when we see someone attempting to deal with a problem. Hence the value of understanding strategy is to know how to make a good one and see through bad ones.
The three pillars of a good strategy
A good strategy brings you the win. You win when you have the best understanding of the people and the environment you are playing your games in. So I believe the first major pillar of making a good strategy is to have the best knowledge on the players and the environment.
- Knowledge of the players and the environment
Once somebody is aware of what the players and environment will be bringing to the table, the next part is to understand one’s own capabilities and tools available to create leverage. So the second pillar becomes,
- Ability to understand one’s own capabilities and skill over use of tools to create leverage
The third pillar is about implementation and delivery - I believe this pillar is most susceptible to lack of experience.
- Ability to bring knowledge and capabilities together and have them work in fruition to achieve the goal
The third pillar is going to be very subjective with the goal - meaning an army general will be able to deliver battle success but may not be able to deliver business success. However the army general can be equally good to anyone else in the first and second pillars for a business goal.
A bad strategy would be weak on either one or many of these pillars. And since its a 3 pillar system, any one weak pillar will bring down the foundations.