This is the third part of the fifth post in a series – start here.
Definition of Strategy (as a skill or activity):
Strategy is the practice of making, implementing and reviewing big-picture plans (strategies) with the intention of increasing the chances or speed at which you’ll achieve your major goals.
The second creation
Planning may seem humdrum but it’s intensely creative.
Steven Covey wrote that everything is created twice: in the imagination (the creative vision) and in the world. But the second creation occurs in the planning – even if it’s intuitive or tacit knowledge. Plans are the bridge, the scaffold, the mould in which the imaginary becomes material and ideas take concrete form.
Generating ideas can be mere dreaming, playing, idling. Creation means changing reality. When we want to bring ideas out of our heads and into the world, planning is the midwife.
Planning may seem abstract but it’s intensely practical.
When we plan we ask what the pieces are, how we’ll get them and how we’ll put them together. We make the thing in our minds. We see what it will take; we spot mistakes and pitfalls; we see better ways forward.
Vision is the first creation of the end; planning is the first creation of the process.