Strategy Is Plural in Practice: Why Businesses Need a Network of Aligned Strategies

In universities and textbooks, students are often taught that an organisation has one strategy: the overarching master plan that drives the business. It’s a neat concept, tidy enough for exam papers and models.

But in practice, experienced business leaders know something different. Strategy is rarely singular. Instead, it is plural in practice – a network of aligned strategies across the organisation.

The Textbook View: One Strategy

Professors often describe “the strategy” as the organisation’s overriding approach to competing and winning. This makes sense in an academic setting where clarity and simplicity are needed. Students can more easily understand frameworks like Porter’s Generic Strategies or Ansoff’s Matrix when strategy is positioned as a single, guiding plan.

The Real-World View: Many Aligned Strategies

In business, however, things are more complex. The corporate strategy (the top-level plan) cascades into aligned strategies across different divisions and functions:

• Corporate Strategy – sets the overall direction.

• Business Unit Strategies – tailored approaches for divisions, regions, or product lines.

• Functional Strategies – marketing, sales, operations, finance, HR.

• Sub-strategies – within marketing alone: content, demand generation, PR, digital, and more.

This creates a strategic hierarchy where all strategies are aligned with the top-level vision but customised for their area of execution.

Why Strategy Must Be Plural

1. Complex organisations need specialised approaches – A marketing team’s priorities won’t be the same as the finance team’s.

2. Alignment creates coherence – Multiple strategies don’t mean chaos. When aligned, they reinforce each other.

3. Agility in practice – Markets change quickly. Functional and sub-strategies allow businesses to adapt without losing sight of the corporate vision.

Strategy vs Strategic

It’s also useful to separate strategy from strategic. Strategy is the plan. Strategic describes the decisions and actions that turn that plan into reality.

For example:

• Strategy: Grow UK market share by 15% over three years.

• Strategic choices: Focus on three core sectors and double down on customer experience.

• Tactics: Run LinkedIn campaigns, host sector events, and launch personalised content.

Bridging the Gap Between Theory and Practice

At Hargreaves Marketing, we believe in multiple aligned strategies. This reflects the real-world experience of the businesses we work with, rather than the single-strategy approach often taught in classrooms.

Yes, there’s value in simplicity when learning theory. But when building success in the real world, recognising that strategy is plural in practice can make all the difference.