Strategic policy and execution

Strategy can be defined as a detailed plan of action to achieve a particular goal. In military terms, strategy differs from tactics as macroeconomics does from micro. At a large Turkish holding company, the chairman and board of directors decide what business sectors to invest in, then it's up to the chief executive to succeed in any given venture. The chairman outlines the basic strategy, and the managers decide on tactics to execute the plan.

The problem lies in human nature, for your basic chief executive wants to be like the chairman. The first thing he or she does is hire a consultant, a nice expensive strategy consultant. A good consultant knows to charge higher than the average fee, for business leaders are just like art connoisseurs or intelligence agency heads: The more they pay for something the more they value it, especially an intangible good like information.

Your run-of-the-mill division managers want to be like the CEO, too, but they don't have the budget for consultants, so they make do with what they have, hiring and firing people, complaining when the coffee is not hot or the BlackBerry battery charger has gone missing. They want to make some strategic decisions, but it's practically against the law, and the farther down the chain you go the more submissive the workers become.

Consider the sad life of corporate public relations (PR) representatives; not only do they have no say over basic strategy, they have to brag about the policies outlined and executed by their superiors.

Here is where strategy meets marketing, for PR is a branch of marketing. Now your PR rep on the move understands the way the system works, understands the zing of the boardroom lingo. He or she comes up with the notion of strategic PR, getting ahead of the curve, shaping the story. This excites and pleases the managers, for they think here, finally, is a PR person who understands them.

Everyone feels good, but the job still is managing the spin, not the policy. Often you will find the same mental gymnastics being played among the intelligentsia, the intellectuals who talk and write about heady stuff like nation building and spreading democracy.

I found one such example in the current issue of Foreign Policy magazine, where two political science professors, Peter Katzenstein of Cornell and Jeffrey W. Legro of the University of Virginia, published an article called “Think Again: America's Image.”

The two academicians summarize a recent study that explores the reputation of the United States among foreign people. The subhead says, “U.S. standing in the world matters, Americans care about it and a weakened stature continues to hamper U.S. policy” -- the latter a veiled reference to the sad legacy of President George W. Bush, whose war on Iraq alienated many people. The subhead also promises that the authors will “clear away the underbrush of misunderstanding.”

Here is an excerpt: “Managing standing requires using different tools for different jobs. Standing is a nuanced phenomenon that varies across regions, between foreign elites and the publics, and between partisans in the United States. Policymakers must attend to those distinctions in specific ways. And the United States must heed the bond between power and standing by providing public goods through effective leadership that coordinates other states and shares costs.”

Such nonsense obscures meaning rather than making it clear. They might as well wave a banner that says, “We don't know.” After a whole article full of linguistic contortions, here is their punchy conclusion: “Improving standing requires moving beyond public diplomacy. The problem is not just communication but policy execution.”