What constitutes strategy in F 500?

happypantsmcgeeGenerally there are 3 'types' (this is obviously very very general) you have

1) Corp Strat - This is large, long term decisioning to best position the company for the next 3, 5, 10, etc. years. This could be anything from analyzing trends in the particular business to analyzing competitors products, looking at possible new products, etc. Corp Strat is really really broad and the majority of the work is based on conjecture (don't let anyone tell you otherwise, its true) and trying to catch trends. Its incredibly interesting and a very very good place to be from and, arguably, an even better place to be 'at'.

2) Business Strat - This is current product and marketing strategy. How can you refine and/or better target your current offerings to mazimize profit or response by customers. This could be something as small as making your product more inline with competitors offerings to something as large as reworking or starting an entire marketing campaign to drive up responses to a particular product.

3) Operations Strat - This is day to day efficiency and infrastructure work. You could do anything from altering the way in which an order from a customer is processed to where your data centers/offshore vendors are located geographically. This also, usually, includes work around incentive structures for any third party organization that your company contracts with (if you have people trying to sell dryers that work for franchised stores, for example, you have to set guidelines for how their commissions/incentives are paid out).

A lot of strat work isn't nearly as finance heavy as most people would think. Its a lot of statistical analysis and similar math based work. There is certainly an element of financial acumen that goes into it, particularly in the last 2, but a solid math/stat base is equally helpful.

Really interesting... thanks for the breakdown.