Strategy (Greek "στρατηγία" - stratēgia, "art of troop leader; office of general, command, generalship") is a high level plan to achieve one or more goals under conditions of uncertainty.

Strategy becomes ever necessary when it is known or suspected there are insufficient resources to achieve these goals.

Strategy is also about attaining and maintaining a position of advantage over adversaries through the successive exploitation of known or emergent possibilities rather than committing to any specific fixed plan designed at the outset.

Henry Mintzberg from McGill University defined strategy as "a pattern in a stream of decisions" to contrast with a view of strategy as planning while Max McKeown (2011) argues that "strategy is about shaping the future" and is the human attempt to get to "desirable ends with available means".