You probably haven't noticed but more and more of the job titles in the workplace are not to do with things or processes. They are for intangibles. There was a time of course when an employee did everything. Before they were specialised. And when they were the departments usually corresponded to bits of the production process. But now there are all sorts of non productive job titles. Which are really important. Because quality and extra value comes from the intangibles so we need people who can do that.  Sttrategy is one of them. 50 years ago the only companies who had people with strategy in their job title were large oil companies who used them to work out where to find the next batch of oil. And which companies to buy next. Marketing departments had managers not strategists. Now there are strategists everywhere.

I have already commented on the problem with the strategy word. Intellectual, abstract and often used by people who don't mean it - who have no intention of focussin on onething but want to sound important. So there are people with strategy in their title who don't do strategy at all. There are a lot who don't have strategy who are brilliant strategists. As I said its about the intangibles. Being effective is more difficult thani it has ever been because if your job is about intangibles you can't judge your performance by the number of widgets you produced because chances are that was in somebody else's job description and you need to prove you made a difference over and above their contribution. Tough eh?  I just want to encourage you that the fact that strategy is going everywhere to all sorts of companies is a sign that it is needed. It isn't just a sales function to bamboozle customers into buying. It is there because management has enough to think about without having the pressure of working out what the strategy is and sticking to it. There's a company to run.

But if you are reading this and are interested in the idea behind waggledancers you will also be aware that I think there is a lot more to this than choosing the right strategy. You have to take everybody else with you. Because strategy is an intangible job and strategies almost always leaving something out which people would really rather was left in when you say what you think there are going to be those who don't understand and those who actually disagree. That's when your job as a waggledancer begins.

This first week has been a bit of ground clearing to explain about strategy. Next week we start to turn towards waggledancing proper. And start to look at Location the first big skill. - you have to find the good stuff before you have a hope of persuading anybody else that they might want to go and get some too.