The Function of Strategy: Lessons from Colin S. Gray
At the start of the 16th century, Bayezid II, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, called for designs to bridge the Golden Horn, a major waterway dividing the European side of Istanbul. Bayezid “the Just” was known for his particular focus on smooth management of domestic politics and for a series of successful campaigns to consolidate his empire, one of the largest and most powerful at the time, encompassing much of southeastern Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa.
In 1502, Leonardo da Vinci submitted his design. At nearly 1,000 feet, it would have been the longest bridge in the world and have represented one of the great engineering achievements of the Renaissance. In the letter that accompanied his design submission, he wrote:
I, your faithful servant, know how to do it. I will erect it as high as an arch, so that no-one will wish to contest it… [and] that a ship under full sail could sail underneath it
Unfortunately, da Vinci’s design was not built, and the Golden Horn was not bridged for several hundred years. Historical records vary, but two theories are that the proposal was either declined by nervous advisors or simply lost due to administrative error within the Sultan’s bureaucracy.
Like many da Vinci designs, it was innovative and ahead of its time. It used a compressive design to self-stabilize, which MIT researchers recently confirmed would have not only worked in general but also specifically in Istanbul’s seismically unstable region.
This bridge, and its fate, happens to be an apt metaphor for the function of strategy. As I explain in my post on The Meaning of Strategy, great strategy is typically defined by a set of hard-to-reverse choices, made in the face of uncertainty, to build or leverage competitive advantage, to create and capture disproportionate value. While this may be the meaning of strategy, it is not the function of it. Effective strategy must do more than set direction. As Rolls-Royce CEO Tufan Erginbilgiç said in his first investor Q&A in 2023 at the start of his tenure (before Rolls-Royce’s stock became the one of the highest performing across all major indices in 2023) and further explained in this 2024 interview:
Beyond strategic clarity, a granular strategy will be an effective alignment and performance management tool as well as changing the culture. A clear strategy supported by the right performance management can be cascaded down and used as a powerful engagement tool to align the whole organisation.
Strategy crafted well is thus more than a direction, or a narrative, or a set of choices. The function of great strategy is to enable the shift of an organization’s direction, pace, and/or approach towards its most important goals, and Erginbilgiç is not the only one to see the value of strategy in this way. As the late, great strategy theorist Colin S. Gray put it:
The function of strategy is to bridge the gap between purpose and action
Gray was one of the most important strategy theorists of the last few decades, and although he did not focus on business strategy, strategy executives can learn a great deal from him.
Professor Gray
Gray (1943–2020) was a British-American strategy theorist and academic. As an advisor to both UK and US governments and a professor of International Relations and Strategic Studies at the University of Reading, Gray produced over 30 books and 300 articles that systematically explored the theory, practice, and history of strategy, primarily related to national security concerns, such as nuclear deterrence, geopolitics, and military affairs.
Gray had major impacts, including:
- Reviving the study of geopolitics in the 1970’s with his 1977 book The Geopolitics of the Nuclear Era, the first book with “geopolitics” in its title since 1945
- Pioneered the modern study of “strategic culture” in 1981, critical to understanding the motives and dynamics of adversaries as strategic context
- Developing the concept of “strategic history” that bridges theory and practical application, rejecting purely scientific or reductionist approaches
- Developing strategy theory for its practice, focusing on strategy as a practical art informed by theory, history, and context
- Strongly influencing U.S. nuclear strategy and policy, particularly regarding strategic missile defense, and advocating for resilient and adaptable solutions in the face of uncertainty
- Anticipating in 1999 “world politics two to three decades hence will be increasingly organized around the rival poles of U.S. and Chinese Power,” and Russia’s return as a politico-military challenge to the West which “immediately would threaten independent Ukraine”
- Educating and influencing generations of scholars and practitioners. General Jim Mattis, considered one of the deepest-read military leaders alive today, referred to Gray in 2018 as “the most near-faultless strategist alive today.” One of Gray’s final acts was to be Mattis’s advisor while he was U.S. Secretary of Defense.
What makes Gray’s work particularly valuable is his ability to extract timeless principles from strategic history while acknowledging the ever-changing character of strategic challenges. His work was deeply practical and well-written, focusing on the real-world application of strategic thinking to solve complex problems. In a world where business strategists are often looking for new strategic frameworks or methodologies, Gray’s emphasis on the enduring fundamentals of strategy offers a refreshingly steadying perspective.
In what follows, I’ll explore my favorite contribution of Gray’s: strategy’s core function as a bridge.
Strategy’s function
Gray first introduced the definition of strategy as a bridge between purpose and power in his 1999 book Modern Strategy as an adaptation from the famous strategy theorist Carl von Clausewitz. He goes on in the book to introduce seventeen strategic dimensions that “encompass most of what contributes to the making and execution of strategy.”
Gray iterates on these dimensions and the concept of strategy as a bridge with his 2010 book The Strategy Bridge: Theory for Practice and further elaborates on it in his 2015 The Future of Strategy, explaining:
Strategy should be thought of as glue that holds together the purposeful activities of state. It is the great enabler… Strategy interconnects all of the different behaviours and capabilities that a security community commands… Strategy only has value when it serves as a bridge between purpose and action.
Essentially, Gray believed that strategy done well is an active, dynamic mechanism that translates political intentions into practical actions (always requiring plans, though that plans are not always strategies). His bridge metaphor underscores strategy’s vital integrative function, connecting the abstract world of policy or political objectives with the concrete realm of implementation. As Gray emphasized:
The strategy bridge, however, is not passive, at least it should not be. The strategists who hold the bridge are tasked with the generally inordinately complex and difficult mission of translating political purpose, or policy, into feasible military, and other, plans.
This positions strategy as the essential effort of alignment and adaptation that gives meaning and direction to execution. Without strategy acting as a bridge, tactical activities become disconnected from higher purposes, and political ambitions remain unrealized aspirations with no pathway to achievement. In business terms, when strategy doesn’t act as a bridge, it can result in what we call a “hairy back” of failed “hockey stick” outcomes.
Last year I helped lead a refresh of McKinsey’s core Strategy Method, in which we took a step back on the many ways we practice strategy — in transformations, M&A, business building, digital, and many other fields — to articulate the fundamental building blocks that they all shared. Our Strategy Method contains 12 building blocks across three phases — design, mobilization, and execution of strategy — that powerfully resonate with Gray’s thinking, in its embrace of strategy’s function as a bridge, its focus on the practical, essential elements strategy requires (a hallmark of Gray’s theories), and its grounding in the human and social sides of strategy (Gray believed strategy was a fundamentally human affair).
Our recent research on strategy capabilities and practices — previewed in our recent webinar — has underpinned Gray’s belief that “strategy only has value when it serves as a bridge” (and Andrew Marshall’s quip that strategy only matters if it survives one’s system): mobilization strengths most differentiate companies truly great at strategy outcomes along our power curve of economic profit. Furthermore, Gray argued that:
a genuine major weakness in any one of the seventeen dimensions [of strategy] can prove fatal to the whole enterprise of strategy.
Indeed, our recent research also showed strengths in every one of the three phases, 12 building blocks, and 28 underlying capabilities of our Strategy Method matter.
The role of the strategist
Gray’s practical orientation meant he had plenty to say about the role of the practicing strategist, and not just about the theory of strategy. His Strategy Bridge includes 21 “dicta” of strategy, my favorite of which is the first under “Executing Strategy”:
Dictum 13. The strategy bridge must be held by competent strategists
Earlier in Bridge, Gray explains:
By his command performance, it is the strategist above all others who must ‘join up the dots’ from political intention, back to political achievement, via the centralized direction of varied effort in conflict. This is the function of the strategist, and it is why his bridge needs to be kept in good enough repair for the two-way strategic traffic to flow
Strategists are uniquely positioned, among all other executive functions, to be able to see and assess the entirety of their organization’s strategy bridge, even if they cannot influence all of it. They know what has gone into the design and decision-making of strategies, of course. But they often also see where strategy succeeds and fails to reach execution, such as in detailed planning, resource re-allocation, budgeting, and change management, to name a few key activities, as well as in actually driving execution and enabling learning and adaptation. And, some of the best strategy functions I have worked with have the mandates, capabilities, talent, and networks to be able to keep their organizations’ strategy bridges in good repair, even though they are only directly responsible for a few parts.
While Gray may have had high expectations for the role of strategists, he was clear-eyed about the challenges they face:
The beginning of wisdom for an approach to the understanding of strategy should be recognition of the sheer difficulty of the enterprise.
This challenge is reflected in our own research. In 2022 we found that nearly half of strategy executives were struggling to have the impact they wanted. It can be a very hard role. But in my experience, it’s only made easier by understanding strategy’s fundamental role as a bridge, not a map or signpost.
Build the bridge
Leonardo da Vinci’s bold design for the Golden Horn bridge, with its innovative self-stabilizing compression approach centuries ahead of its time, ultimately failed to span the waterway and expand Istanbul’s reach. It remained a brilliant concept on paper, unrealized due to bureaucratic error or a failure of nerve, enduring issues we recognize today.
This brings us full circle to Gray’s enduring insight: the craft of strategy is about more than brilliant design; it is the active effort of building and maintaining connections between purpose and action. As Gray wrote in The Strategy Bridge:
Strategy and strategists, and bureaucratic routines to produce strategies are not strictly essential. There is no law of strategic history that mandates strategic competence, let alone excellence, as a necessary condition for strategic success. However, the gods of war [or competition] are not to be mocked with impunity.
The most enduringly successful organizations invest in building and maintaining their strategy bridges, or in our view (born out by our Strategy Champion research), their strategy capabilities across design, mobilization, and execution. As Gray noted, “the potential for friction abounds in all aspects of strategy-making and at all levels of execution.” The bridge must withstand pressures from both sides: policy shifts from above, operational realities from below, and competitive and environmental dynamics from without, in addition to the natural degradation of capabilities and systems that comes with time and growth.
Gray reminds us that “strategic competence is not a panacea,” but it is “always a major, and sometimes a decisive, benefit.” Indeed, our research recently showed that companies that excel at strategy outcomes are twice as likely to invest significantly in their strategy capabilities and have full executive team support in doing so. Treating the strategy bridge as something to maintain and reinforce matters, especially as shifts in uncertainty and complexity put new tensions on it.
Had Leonardo’s bridge been built, it would have transformed Istanbul, creating economic and social connections that might have altered the course of history. Similarly, well-constructed strategy bridges can transform organizations, connecting vision to reality in ways that create lasting competitive advantage.
As Gray might have advised business leaders today: design your strategy bridge with care, build it with skill, watch it with vigilance, and be prepared to repair and adapt it continuously. For in strategy, as with bridges, the true measure of success is not the elegance or innovation of the design, but the strength of the connection it enables and sustains.
To go deeper on Colin S. Gray:
- Listen to this excellent Talking Strategy podcast episode
- Read this set of remembrances from leading scholars
- Read his books
