![]() Their behavior is merely a gambit, a trick, a ploy-admirable in its riskiness, perhaps, but fundamentally without substance. ![]() We decry those who, like Satan, act without a strategy. Tired and stressed? Hone your work/life strategy. Don’t just open a Twitter account-adopt a social media strategy. Don’t just plan-develop a strategic plan. Strategy seems to have attached itself, barnaclelike, to everything. We’re awash in books on the topic, too: Amazon lists 672 hardcover business titles with the keyword “strategy” published this year, up from 637 in 2012, 446 in 2003, 250 in 1993, and 55 in 1983. The 1960s saw the rise of consultants who sell us their strategic services, and they’ve proliferated in the years since. MBA programs have been teaching strategy to future executives since Harvard’s Graduate School of Business Administration opened its doors, in 1908. Its publication provides us with an opportunity to step back and think about how the idea and practice of strategy have affected-and increasingly infiltrated-our lives. It belongs to Lawrence Freedman, a professor of war studies at King’s College, London, and the author of a new doorstop of a book, Strategy: A History. Satan-as-failed-strategist is not my idea. When he began his rebellion, he was already doomed. He neglected to develop a framework for understanding the world that would help guide him and his followers, and he conveniently forgot that he was, after all, fighting the Almighty. And he is, throughout John Milton’s Paradise Lost, by far the most interesting character, a vivid contrast to the pedantic, boring God the Father.īut Satan didn’t think things through. He was cunning enough to trick the ever-vigilant guardians of Heaven, sneak into the Garden of Eden, and corrupt humanity. He was sage enough to persuade his captains to continue the fight using his plan. He was charismatic enough to raise his troops’ morale in the face of their first defeat. Satan was rhetorically gifted enough to persuade a third of the angels to turn against God.
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