What is strategy?

Strategy is essentially setting goals and priorities, determining actions to achieve the goals, and deploying resources to execute the actions. A strategy describes how the ends (goals) will be achieved by the means (resources). ... It involves activities such as strategic planning and strategic thinking.

I want you to think about your favorite basketball team. The end goal is that they may want to win a championship. The strategy is the plan that outlines the how and by using what resources. Before your favorite basketball team begins to outline the how and allocate or acquire the resources, they have to do what? 

You guessed it. Look externally at their competition. They are looking at the magnitude of threats from their competition. They may also look internally at their own strengths and weaknesses. Does your favorite basketball team have the right talent on the team to help them win? If not, then this is how we plan to acquire the resources needed to empower our strategy. 

The strategy essentially details the tactics and initiatives that we need to take to reach our ultimate goal and whether we are talking about basketball or your employer…. The goals will likely be the same. To win. 

But strategy doesn’t just occur at the top or in a silo. There are 3 levels of strategy. They are known as organizational, business units and functional level strategy.

Let’s assume that Google’s organizational strategy is to develop new products, continue improving existing products while acquiring more customers from current client base 

Software Business Unit Strategy: Empower new product development through close customer engagement and encouraging product innovation among developers 

Sales Business Unit Strategy: Proactively engage current and potential client base by bundling products and services. 

Functional Unit Strategy:  (In support of sales) Your HR functional strategy may be to develop a competitive compensation structure to incentivize your sales workforce for selling to more customer 

(In support of software) Your HR functional strategy may be to diversify your recruiting and attraction efforts to ensure you are able to attract and retain the best software engineering talent.