In his classic Harvard Business Review paper, "Good managers don't make policy decisions", H. E. Wrapp explained why looking for constraints and waiting for conflicts to resolve with non-objectionable decisions works almost all the time. Strategic management applies when it doesn't: when external constraints leave open too many options, complacency has overcome competitive urge, conflicts aren't about anything important enough to wait for. It's the big stuff, the changes in direction, the disruptions that cost a lot and most people are afraid of.

It's the rightful domain of CEOs and a few trusted handpicked people playing any role in the company (some janitors have strategic insights), or outsiders whose perspective the company desperately needs. It's a big risk to make strategic management decisions, so the CEO by definition is betting his or her job on it. Entrepreneurs, whether they know it or not, are making strategic management decisions every day. Founders get so used to doing so that they often need to be removed from the company when it gets so large that Wrapp's principle applies.

What decisions are strategic? That depends. Categories mislead. The most respected schools of strategic management, such as Harvard, rely mostly on case-by-case analysis with as little preface and categorizing as possible. Still, one can say that major competitive decisions like mergers and acquisitions or an entirely new line of services are strategic by definition, as much so as the decision to start the company in the first place. Changing the name of the company may be strategic but not if it's already widely known, say, by the name of its product or service. If the board of directors starts accepting CEO resumes after a bad decision, then the decision was strategic. CEOs by definition can always inspect and usually interfere in almost any decision, but aren't obligated to do so. CEO attention can make something routine into something strategic: everyone including the board will then take notice of success or failure. Another way to define a strategic decision is one that seriously affects stock price, on announcement at least, and also usually on evidence of either success or failure.

Yet another way to define a strategic decision is one that can only be undone with great expense and contrition. Customers can make a strategic decision any time by refusing to patronize a company. Good managers never forget that fact. Coca-Cola decided in the

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