Henry Mintzberg is an internationally acclaimed academician and author on business and management. He is currently the Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies in Montreal, Canada where he is been teaching since 1968.  A strategy is defined as a method or a plan chosen to bring about a desired output. Henry Mintzberg suggests there are five factors to be viewed in term of strategy. This perspective of Mintzberg is famously known as ‘5Ps for Strategy’. Strategy can mean a plan, a ploy, a pattern, a position or a perspective.

Strategy as Plan:

Mintzberg notes in this definition that a strategy is an envisioned, or deliberately followed path of action. The strategy is made in advance of its implementation and is followed up by actual implementation and development. Organizations follow a scientific plan or path after designing a strategy.

For example, in its strategic Alliance with Etihad Airways, Jet Airways enhanced its synergies with partners by expanding its codeshare partnership, which has a 24% stake in Jet Airways. The overall codeshare traffic witnessed growth of 28% from 416,816 passengers carried from the third quarter of 14-15 to 534,104 passengers in third quarter of 15-16. The traffic grew by almost 86%. Jet Airways, together with Etihad Airways, now has the largest market share in Indian international traffic. With this strategic alliance, Jet Airways will get more benefits on costs as the financial situation improves and will be able to negotiate better terms on contracts along with Etihad Airways group of airlines.

Strategy as Ploy:

A ploy is a sly plan or action designed to turn a situation to one’s own advantage. A ‘ploy’ is usually a move in a competition or a game, one that is taken to beat the competitor. A ploy takes advantage of opportunities that arise. Business organizations design ploys to undertake or to dissuade competitors from entering the market. But sometimes new entrants come with a ploy    by building new facilities with plenty capacity, or lowering prices.

Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali Ayurveda has assessed the scope of the FMCG market in India, it entered the segment by offering products at cheaper prices and using the franchise outlets to gain the reach in far flung markets. Currently, over 4,000 outlets operate and sell Patanjali products.   Going by the popularity of the products, Reliance Retail store, Reliance Fresh entered into agreement with Patanjali and have offered exclusive kiosks for selling it products. And now, the company aims to expand sales to online and bring it on e-commerce majors like Amazon.

Patanjali has grown into a big corporation; it now competes with HUL, P&G, Emami Ltd., Marico Industries Ltd., Pepsi Co. and other such global FMCG giants. The most important factor for the high profits is minimum marketing expenses.  This organization has a strong brand ambassador in Baba Ramdev who enjoys big following.  Their brand ambassador echoes brand’s authenticity and relevance and that’s enough to draw people to adopt the products. The products entered the scene as ‘healthy’ substitutes and are offered at cheaper prices. The brand is entirely pushed into market by baba’s popularity.

Strategy as Pattern:

The way strategies are planned bring out strategic consequences.  While strategies are planned, the outcomes cannot be. The results can be positive or negative. Organizations cannot always be accurate in their plans because the business atmosphere is full of complexities. In some cases it may be possible to look back at what has happened, and describe a company’s strategy in terms of a pattern that emerged.

The merger of Air India and Indian Airlines brought together two unequal entities and created a mayhem; a bloated headcount of 30517 employees, failed leadership, disintegrated human resource practices, poor operations, leaky financials, the problems are too many to list. With Air India grappling with financial crisis, the Supreme Court rapped the government for giving “profitable routes” to private carriers and asked it to plan a turnaround in the national carrier saying it will face extinction if things continued like this. The merger caused more chaos than before. One lesson the government needs to learn from the Air India-Indian Airlines merger fiasco is that combining two sick entities ends up making them sicker than before. The ministry of aviation failed miserably due to lack of leadership.

Strategy as Position:

Strategies are planned for locating or fit a business within its environment, and deciding on what position to adopt; e.g. market position, brand position, product portfolio etc. A position may be a niche, providing low cost or distinctive products, or by exploiting competences to prevent others entering in the market.

Packaged consumer goods firm Hindustan Unilever Ltd (HUL) recently acquired Kerala-based hair oil brand Indulekha for Rs.330 crore for marking a comeback to the segment which it had exited in 2006 by selling its coconut oil brand ‘Nihar’ to Marico. HUL signed the agreement with Kannur-based Mosons Extractions Pvt. Ltd to acquire Indulekha hair oil brand. The acquisition of Indulekha adds a premium brand to HUL’s portfolio. HUL aims at making their presence felt in the hair care category. Indulekha enjoys strong loyalty among consumers. HUL sees an opportunity in leveraging its ‘naturals’ and therapeutic positioning. This move is in line with HUL’s strategy to take on competition in the hair care segment.

Strategy as Perspective:

Understanding the significance of a business’s strategic perspective invariably encourages business leaders to create a stronger strategic perspective in hopes of making better decisions. Strategy can be defined in terms of a firm’s corporate personality and culture a company has adopted over time. Strategy is the way a company views itself in the world, through the eyes of its stakeholders – its management and employees. This can refer to organization culture.

ITC – the Indian multi business conglomerate has transformed itself from a leading cigarette manufacturer to an umbrella group that offers a diversified product mix to enhance its brand image and reduce dependency on tobacco related products. It has forayed into various segments such as the hospitality service industry, FMCG, lifestyle etc. It has become a major player in the hotels segment. Its position in the FMCG business is also on a growth curve; especially its confectionery and biscuits which are slated to achieve the top ranks among its peers. It has made heavy investments to strengthen its information technology segment and to compete with the big players like Infosys and Wipro. Although the ITC group is marketing its image as an ideal corporate citizen and a company that takes its social responsibility seriously, it still earns 80% of revenues from selling cigarettes and other tobacco related products. Its corporate strategy is aimed at creating multiple avenues of growth based on its core competencies. In line with this strategy, ITC’s diverse strengths are leveraged across three product groups – Lifestyle Retailing, Greeting Cards & Gifts and Branded Packaged Foods. The company aimed at generating 40 percent of its total revenues from such diversified businesses. The corporation is pro employee and maintains a healthy employee culture.

Conclusion: Mintzberg’s 5Ps are not mutually exclusive. However, they can and often do complement each other. Each P’s definition adds important elements to our understanding of strategy. The 5 Ps help us to address fundamental questions about organization culture in general. As plan, strategies deal with how leaders try to establish direction for organizations, to set them on determined courses of action. As ploy, strategy takes dive into the realm of direct competition, where competitor’s weaknesses and other maneuvers are employed to gain advantage. As pattern, strategy focuses on action. As position, strategy encourages us to look at organization’s position in context, specifically in their competitive environments. And finally as perspective, strategy raises exciting questions about intention and behavior in a collective context.

In our society we are tremendously obsessed with academic qualifications; as a result, we check qualifications of the bride and groom before finalizing matrimony, before giving membership in a club, an association, a forum, in a sports club, while applying for a job, qualifications are checked. A person’s aptitude, ability and skill are judged by his/her academic qualifications. Any bio-data résumé or curriculum vitae are deplorable without the inclusion of education qualifications. Therefore it is an impromptu rule of both the corporate world and the social world that a man’s academic qualification is a key to his entry to a coveted position in society.

Education does help add finesse to life; it helps developing moral, civic values. It prepares us with good manners, proper behavior, hygienic living. Aacademic education gives people an encompassing experience of life, with lots of opportunities to meet people from different walks of life and to consider the importance in life of values and culture. These are necessary for a person’s growth. Educated citizens help in building a civilized nation. It uplifts our morals and ethics by exposing us to the great thinkers of the past. It makes us aware of our rights and liberties, and helps establish a liberal democracy with active citizens and an active media.

But when we spend twelve years of our life in schooling, and several more years of our precious life in college on graduation and often post graduation, and then one fine day it strikes us that our degrees are not required for success; why because Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Dhirubhai Ambani and many other rich people were schools dropouts and they built great fortunes!! Unfortunately the materialistic world has changed the concept of success.

We are also a fixated society about grades in qualifications. We have a wrong notion that grades alone can help getting success in life. If success and opportunities were measured by grades then the corporate world and potential marriage partners would not ask for bio-data, where other credentials are also mentioned. Nor would they interview the candidates in order to find out what they are like as people. Education helps us modify our people skills, our thinking, our character and our inventiveness. It prepares us for life life’s success. IT helps in honing our physical characteristics, personality, and a willingness to work hard. Grades are really irrelevant.

We have somewhere misinterpreted grades/marks in education. We attach so much importance to marks that it has become a rat-race where every student chases grades and therefore the entire perception of success and affluence has changed. Rather than studying to reach one’s full potential, children simply mug up for examinations. Further, they get frustrated when they don’t get jobs. More time is spent in job hunting than in education. Many people find themselves in the wrong profession and lacking job satisfaction. The business atmosphere is highly politicized, favoritism plays key role, and we see wrong people in big positions. In short, our idea of education has got mistaken, our idea of prosperity is mistaken, and our definition of success is changed. With so many years of education finally we misread that if anyone is able to save his/her job then he/she is successful!

If we look at some very successful people in the world, who are doctors, engineers, researchers and IT, professionals, many of them are employed by people like Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Ambani who have built empires devoid of formal educational qualifications.

Does education corrupt minds? I think yes, because by going to schools and college students do rote learning and taking multiple examinations. It forces people to learn and think like millions of other graduates. This spoils chances of some brilliant minds which can come up with the truly mould-breaking insights and “disruptive” ideas on which successful innovations and new business models are built. Our education is not outcome based; today’s students cannot implement and apply what they have learned, they are not capable of putting their knowledge into practice in an increasingly complex and challenging environment. The emphasis, therefore, should be on practical, sensible, workable learning — rather than simply accumulating information which becomes outmoded in shorter span.

And what about those fake degrees sold by thriving illegal rackets in the market? So many dubious agents are selling degrees and people are buying them. Nexus between state universities, education intermediaries and private/public educational institutions are flouting norms, often jeopardizing the careers of students by conferring on them a degree, which may not be legitimate. And, if such students get trapped, he/she loses job, reputation and chances of making a decent living thereafter.

Another question is raised against academic qualification – that is whether it can stop us from becoming a civilization of drunkards, rapists, war-mongers, immoral money launders, criminals, and villains. If you look at countries where the largest numbers of people have higher academic qualifications, they are the ones most affected by social breakdown. Can we call America a successful nation for its wars on Iraq and Afghanistan? Can we call it superior by any chance? Can we call Russia a mighty nation for creating the Crimean crisis? Can we call some fluent Indian and Pakistani politicians wise for not solving the Kashmir issue? Are the “educated” politicians of India and Pakistan solving problems of the innocent Kasmiris?  India and Pakistan have fought at least three wars over Kashmir, but still the problem is not resolved.  Does education teach us to delay and drag important decisions?

Academic qualifications may not be enough on their own to ensure success, but they indicate that their possessor has got courage, daring, moral values to speak out against any kind of injustice. I think it’s high time we bring in changes in our education system. Today’s academic qualifications have no real relevance to the jobs graduates are employed to do. A few decades ago employers in areas such as banking, engineering, management and government service recruited people straight from school at the age of 15 or 16, trained them on the job and promoted them to higher levels of responsibility according to their ability. And, those people contributed to the growth of businesses and society.  Today none of these jobs has changed very much, but all of them require applicants with university degrees. Why has this changed? One reason is that the upper and middle classes are trying to protect their own jobs – demanding new recruits have expensive academic qualifications.

Our nation needs an education system that excites and stimulates children, providing them with the learning they need and be worthy of to accomplish their potential.  This means we need a curriculum of practical and vocational learning alongside theoretical study. This need for change has become more and more critical.  Let’s except a simple fact that the world has changed whereas our education system has not changed. The gap is very big. Indeed, it is largely based on a system developed over a century ago. Our assessment standards need change, our pedagogies need change, and we need to educate teachers first. Let’s not make our schools and colleges mere factories churning out graduates – where children are placed on a learning conveyor belt, then sorted, packaged and labeled with degrees.

And finally please understand this – academic qualifications are futile if they are not helping you to lead a happy and peaceful life.