From theory to action: the story of one strategy 265 attention to the ‘artifacts’ I created along the way and share those as well. In general, I will keep the theoretical discussion to a minimum, as the primary goal is to explore the ideas in action. The final section of the paper is a discussion on key takeaways from the experience and ideas for future research. My underlying theoretical assumption is that strategy (and ‘strategizing’) is alive and well (Whittington and Cailluet, 2008). In fact, crafting strat- egy is one of the most prominent management tools in use today (Rigby, 2005). Of course, there are theories that posit much more of an ‘emergent’ versus ‘deliberate’ philosophy (Mintzberg, 1987), but for this essay, the goal is to explore strategy formulation, realizing of course that changes and iterations will occur as the strategy is implemented (Sull, 2007). So what is strategy? A good starting point for a definition is from one of the top selling strategy textbooks in the country, Strategic Management – Concepts and Cases . The goal of strategic competitiveness is for a firm to ‘successfully formulate and implement a value creating strategy; and a strategy is an integrated and coordinated set of commitments and actions designed to exploit core competencies and gain a competitive advantage’ (Hitt et al., 2009, p. 4). My interpretation of this guidance is that I need to do the right activities that will result in an advantage over competitors. Strategy rules also apply to non-profit entities, with an obvious difference in performance metrics (e.g. more about behaviors, satisfaction assess- ments and efficiency measures). The focus on the set of activities, not only of the employees in the organ- ization, but also of the strategist, has increasingly become a priority topic for strategy researchers. This is operationalized as ‘strategy process’ or ‘strategy as practice’. Strategy process literature recognizes that strategy is a dynamic process and best realized by studying the actions of employees with the organization and in particular the activities of strategy actors at the functional, business unit and corporate levels (Chakravarthy et al., 2003). Strategy as practice, which in my mind may be a subset of strategy process, also focuses on the activities of strategy actors, rather than an ‘organizational property’: examining what is done, how and by whom (Whittington and Cailluet, 2008). As both the process and practice litera- ture seem to agree that the ‘strategy process’ is best focused on decisions and actions, I will attempt to describe these in detail in the application sections of this essay. The literature also warns against excessive rigidity in strategy research and suggests an open mind to context specific actions and the benefits of reviewing strategy ‘artifacts’ used in the strategy Theory
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