A literature survey on strategy, be it personal, group, or institutional, has been attempted multiple times since the period when such literature was first recognised to exist. Various schools of thought have been marked, debated, and accepted or rejected. This has given rise to various schools of thought, from the passivist approach to the activist approach. Indeed, to have a strategy is considered basic to the act of survival, and everyone practices some strategy at some level, irrespective of the size of the institution or the stature of the individual. This is not the place to get into the lengthy literature survey of what is available, as such an effort would literally take thousands of man-hours.
There are additionally regional differences in the quality of analysis from one region to another, reflecting various schools of thought according to languages, according to regions, and according to times.
An illustration may help. Going by the time dimension, human history is divided into ancient times, medieval times, and modern times. Such distinctions are useful, but once one starts analysing problems, issues can and do arise. Ancient times obviously begin with time immemorial, but it takes on a literature survey only when issues of periodisation are solved. There can be no beginning of history unless some evidence is there to mark the times. The marking of the times can be architectural, linguistic, or indeed any traces which the people of the time left behind for posterity to find and analyse.
Obviously, all human beings spoke, and since time immemorial, there must have been a language; otherwise, no community of Homo sapiens could have survived. They needed to talk to each other and relate to one another. However, spoken language leaves no tracks, and for language to survive, it must have a script; without a script, no traces can be found. One of the oldest languages in the world is the language used by the Egyptians.
They used it in their active commerce, rigorous warfare, running of the state, and commercial activities, and for everything else which human beings need to communicate over to keep the civilization going. The script which they used has been called hieroglyphs. Hieroglyphs have been deciphered, and Egyptian writing on walls, pillars, and elsewhere can be deciphered to know about the times. It was largely pictorial, and later on, the study of languages shows that these scripts evolved; pictures gave way to simplified presentations, and static alphabets evolved into flowing alphabets linked with each other. That is another story.
The number of scripts across the world is huge. There is the Roman, the Devanagari, the Chinese, the Arabic, and the list goes on. Each of these mother scripts had its own dominant language; illustratively, the Roman script was known for its Latin and Greek languages. Devanagari was known for its Sanskrit and Pali texts, and this list also goes on with variations of languages which came to be written in scripts such as Arabic or Chinese.Modern-day Urdu, for example, has a strong influence from the Arabic script, and unlike Roman or Devanagari, which is written from left to right, it follows the right to left flow typical of the Arabic script.
The difference in flow from left to right and right to left is so obvious that it needs no further explanation or elaboration. Similarly, the Chinese script has its own characters, and unlike the Roman or the Devanagari scripts, it has its alphabets in a discrete manner and does not have the flow which the Roman or the Devanagari texts have.
Be that as it may, ultimately, language generated its own typologies, and civilizations were fathered also according to linguistic delimitation or differentiation.The languages and the sub-languages which arose are too many to relate in the limited space of this text. Soon enough, civilizations started communicating on linguistic overtones.
There were authors who saw language as a distinctive force across cultural boundaries, and a noted British author even attempted what he called the "History of English-speaking People." The interesting dimension of this history was that ethnically it included Americans, Africans, Asians, Australians. Even though English was written in Roman script, other languages attained prominence using the Roman script while having a different identity of their own. Interesting references can be found by going through the narratives in French, Portuguese, German, and the list can be long. The Slavonic script is pervasive in Russian and other similar languages, creating even more varieties in human typology.
Be that as it may, the long and short of the matter is that as the scripts multiplied, so did the languages, and so did the strategies. The quest for success became a subject matter in its own right, and even literature surveys reflected the amount of thought devoted to the concept of success, along with the growing number of strategic options that emerged.
In this medley of competitive success strategies, one thing that has skipped much attention is that it is the urge to be successful has led to all these schools of thought. Indeed, not too much attention has been paid to being simple and straightforward for achieving success.
Since nobody is expected to be simple or straightforward, perhaps being simple and straightforward gives rise to the greatest amount of success stories. This has rarely been studied in sufficient academic depth. It has not even created, with sufficient vigour, its own school of thought. Yet the truth is that when comparative strategy formulation begins, being simple and direct, succeeds as nothing else can.
Perhaps the time has come to take a look at this point of view and realise that not only is honesty the best policy, but being simple and straightforward has the potential of being one of the best strategies. At least, as long as few people see it as a possibility, for being successful in life, being simple is worth a try. The matter needs careful thought and must be explored for due action.
The writer is a well-known management consultant of international repute
