Title: The essence of strategy: The what, the why and the how
Headings: The essence of strategy
The essence of strategy
The what, the why and the how

Content: What makes a decision strategic is not only that the decision is important for you and/or your environment, but also that there is no silver bullet solution that ticks all the boxes. Instead, different options will score high on some criteria and low on others. If this was not the case, the choice would have been obvious. When this one obvious choice does not exist, you ultimately need to make trade-offs between different strategic options — a concept, which is central to strategic choice. For example, a job opportunity to build up the sales force for your company in an emerging economy might provide a high salary and excitement, but will be challenging from a family perspective. Staying with the current job that you have been in for the last 15 years might be safe and practical for the family, but the thought of continuing the same old routine for years to come, without much prospect for development and salary increase, is also daunting. And what makes this choice so complicated is that it really is a choice—meaning: you can't take both jobs, and, once you've taken one job, you can't easily revert your decision. Strategic decisions in management are similar. For instance, investing in a new product line or moving into a new geographic region also entails trade-offs to be made around expected future growth and profitability, and required investments and risk.