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.

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.