“Our wills and fates do so contrary run
That our devices still are overthrown;
Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.”
Shakespeare
Strategy is not a plan. Roger Martin defines strategy as “an integrated set of choices to win”. His famous definition is quite clear. And I do agree. Partially.
First of all, before making choices, the strategist is trying to make sense of the context. You try to understand what is going on, what your options are, where the risks lie… And, more importantly, you are imagining new possibilities, exploring different alternatives. So, the strategic process begins before making decisions.
Second, right after deciding, true strategists must remain responsible for making it happen - execution, implementation, or whatever you may call it. Thus, for me, you are a strategist when executing just as much as when formulating. (Roger himself argues that execution has much the same nature as formulation.)
It's not only this before-and-after structure that suggests that we are dealing with a discipline that encompasses decision-making but goes beyond it. There is also an inner-and-outer dimension, a twofold perspective: what we see (the objective process - making choices to win) and what we do not see (the subjective process - ???). The “set of integrated choices to win” reveals the existence of strategy. Where do they come from?
Look, the key word of Martin's definition is “integrated". A bunch of incoherent decisions don't make a (good) strategy.
We have got to think about what generates them. You may call it the logic behind…, the thread that gives cohesion…, the semantics that gives meaning… There is a cognitive premise underlying them: consciousness, of course. The opposite would be an unconscious, instinctive or spontaneous process.
So, the choices are the phenomenon; the noumenon is the conscious effort to win. That's why you can generalise it as the discipline of victory, because every conscious effort to win is an expression of the strategic genius inherent in us as human beings.