{"id":7223,"date":"2025-08-27T16:38:46","date_gmt":"2025-08-27T16:38:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aomtodayprod.wpenginepowered.com\/?p=7223"},"modified":"2025-08-27T20:38:49","modified_gmt":"2025-08-27T20:38:49","slug":"strategy-questions-plague-ceos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/strategy-questions-plague-ceos\/","title":{"rendered":"Strategy Questions Plague CEOs"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Daniel Butcher<\/a><\/p>\n

Many people struggle to even define strategy or come up with a good one for their own career development, much less create an effective one for their team, department, or organization.<\/p>\n

Academy of Management Scholar Donald Hambrick<\/a> of Pennsylvania State University, who published an article in Academy of Management Perspectives<\/em><\/a> on this topic, said that people ask him about strategy more than any other subject that he\u2019s researched and written about.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of companies have used the framework in that paper, and a lot of professors teach it as well,\u201d Hambrick said. \u201cThe article was motivated by my work with senior [leadership] teams out of recognition that they weren\u2019t really sure of what a strategy even is.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a word that rolls easily off their tongue, but sometimes they would assume that it\u2019s a one-line slogan or it\u2019s something about achieving superior shareholder returns or this or that, but it\u2019s none of those things exactly\u2014it\u2019s no one decision,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a host of decisions that have to form a whole, and that\u2019s where the five elements of the diamonds come into play.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Hambrick and coauthor James Fredrickson of the University of Texas at Austin, the five major elements of strategy are:<\/p>\n