Strategy

Strategy is not a PowerPoint slide. It is a discipline of thinking, a way to steady a group through currents of change. A leader practicing strategy is not simply reacting to events — they are shaping them, and the group’s actions, with clarity of aim and economy of means.

Few leaders lived more strategically than Queen Elizabeth I. When she took the throne in 1558, she was just 25 years old — unmarried, untested, and surrounded by danger. Her kingdom was small and divided, riven by religious conflict. Her cousin Mary, Queen of Scots, was a living rival. Powerful Catholic states, especially Spain, looked on her Protestant rule with hostility. At home, she faced plots, spies, and courtiers who tried to manipulate her. Many believed a woman could not rule. Most expected her to marry — quickly — and surrender her power.

She did not. Elizabeth chose, instead, to live a strategic life. She tested people slowly. She made few promises. She cultivated an identity — the Virgin Queen, married to her country — that gave her symbolic strength in a world built to doubt her. She spoke carefully but boldly, and acted only when conditions favored her. Over time, through caution and boldness in measure, she unified her realm, steered England through war and upheaval, and built the foundation of a rising global power.

As one scholar noted, Elizabeth “made herself the most visible person in the kingdom and the most unknowable.”

That’s the paradox of strategy: it is both transparent and concealed, simple and complex. It gives a group confidence and direction while shielding its calculations and risks. Strategy is not mere cunning — it is clarity of goals, sustained over time and adapting to shifting reality. In steady hands, strategy becomes the deliberate, shaping force by which groups achieve great purposes.