Idea 70: The art of being a leader-in-chief
There are many paths to the top of the mountain, but the view is always the same.
Chinese proverb
Strategy (strategia in Greek) originally meant strategic leadership – the art of being a commander-in-chief.
Strategy is in fact made up of two ancient Greek words. The first part comes from stratos, which means an army spread out as in camp, and thus a large body of people. The second part, -egy, comes from the Greek verb ‘to lead’. There is a rough breathing mark in the Greek giving an h sound, which explains the spelling of the English word hegemony – meaning the leadership of one nation over others – which is derived from it.
It was Athens, rivaled only by Sparta, which claimed the hegemony of the Greek ...
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