Close's Tactics Work In Lots of Ways
Chuck Close, early on in his career, didn't really have a technique. He just painted. Things came out like blobs. They weren't reproducible. Then he discovered how to make art work better for him. You can see it today in most of his work. He put a grid over his source sketch (Burstein, 5), drawing, painting, or photograph. Then, working block by block, he reproduced each section of the source material on his large canvasses. The Museum of Modern Art in New York has an early Close self-portrait. The curly hair, the glasses, it is all there. So is the grid. After a bit, you don't notice the grid as it blends back into the painting, but it is still there. This technique isn't new. Painters have been using it since, certainly, the Middle Ages. There is some evidence that the Egyptians used it four thousand years ago, to great success. The painting holds together if you look at it closely. It holds together if you stand back to take it all in. The scale matters, yes, but it doesn't interfere whether you look at the painting close up, or from afar.
The point is that the methodology doesn't matter. The results do. Whatever strategic process you use can work if you work at it. Close still uses his grid forty years later. Some people use Sun Tzu as a model for their strategy, others Von Clauswitz. Or Porter. Or Collins. The source of the methodology doesn't matter. The results do.
Reference
Burstein, Julie. Spark. How Creativity Works. New York: HarperCollins Publishers. 2011.
Close, Chuck. Museum of Modern Art. http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/1998/close/