How Top Consulting Firms Do Strategy
Some say strategy is vision, others say strategy is process and tactic. It’s one of those things everyone has a different take on.
To pin down what strategy is, I started by looking at how today’s thought leaders — McKinsey, Harvard Business Review, and Monitor Deloitte — see strategy, and I’d like to share those insights with you.
McKinsey’s Take on Strategy
Strategy is…
1. An integrated set of actions to create a sustainable competitive advantage over competitors.
2. A way of thinking, not a procedural exercise or a set of frameworks.
The 4 Lenses Framework
McKinsey believes a firm should look at strategy from four lenses: financial, market, competitive advantage, operating model.
Through the financial lens, we benchmark our financial performance against peers. It’s an objective baseline for us to assess and prioritize new initiatives, and to understand what the future looks like if we follow our current trajectory.
