The devil is in the implementation

Strategy. Without strategy, there is individual reaction and ambiguity; with strategy, there are clearer definitions of what the business is achieving and all tactics flow from it.

Right. That happens. Must do. Somewhere.

Strategy is difficult enough to create because of two key problems. First, people are not exactly sure what a strategy looks like, how much details it includes and how it relates to other management statements of vision, mission, corporate responsibility, job appraisals, disciplinary procedures, health and safety statements ...

Second, management responsible for creating strategy want to get on, so settle for ambiguity in language. This is not an intention and is seldom recognised: it is simply that words are used that everyone can agree constitute a strategy, without exposing the differences as to what those words mean in practice.

Now, if that's difficult, the implementation of strategy often proves to be impossible. Any attempt at implementation immediately hits a number of barriers, the most obvious of which is that the ambiguities of language are exposed. Often, different parts of the business, charged with implementing the strategy, interpret the new direction as either being consistent with the old one, so that nothing is changed in practice at all, or as addressing a long-held want or enmity that changes the relationship with the rest of the business - but was not intended by central management.

Without communications understanding, the unrolling of strategy is frequently followed by an unravelling of the business, which is never blamed on the originators of the strategy!

Nietzsche wrote his unique style, it seems to me, because he wanted to convey his message without ambiguity, so writing in theoretical and aphoristic/illustrative modes, covering different angles to light his subject as fully as possible. And then you get people like Gilles Deleuze who find ambiguity in Nietzsche and manage to destroy all the original messages.

You can never avoid ambiguity. So the problem for strategy is not simply to state it; it is to reiterate, rephrase and reinforce its essence as language changes its meaning in the face of circumstances and resistence.