This post is the third in a series about the various schools and models of making organizational strategy. It is excerpted from The Portable Guide to Leading Organizations, available now from LeaderLab Press.

Strategy is an analytical process.

The positioning school is most closely associated with its undisputed champion, Harvard professor Michael Porter. In the 1980s, the positioning school somewhat displaced the planning school. The positioning school favored a focus on the actual content of the strategy, rather then the formal process of developing it. The school draws its name from its emphasis that only a few key strategic positions within the marketplace were worth pursuing. While this school did argue that a formal planning process was needed, it was only viewed as worthwhile after the preferred strategy was selected by senior managers.

This school of strategy is promoted heavily by consultants and academics, who have been able to build lucrative careers creating literature on and promoting the practice of market analysis. In this way, strategy is not creative; it is simply a matter of analysis. Perhaps because of this, the positioning school remains a clear presence in teaching and in practice.