LISTEN TO THIS BLOG POST
This morning I was browsing a LinkedIn corporate strategy forum and came across a discussion where the question was posed, “When is a strategy, not a strategy?” I found that the group member fascinatingly stated the question. I think most would ask, “What makes a strategy a strategy?” I can only assume the group member delivered the question inversely to avoid foiling good strategies against poor ones.
Ironically, many of the respondents articulated their views on a good strategy versus a poor one. One interesting comment I read stated, “It’s not a strategy if the organization doesn’t reach their goal.” Unfortunately, that is not entirely true. Simply because there are good strategies and poor strategies, but they are both strategies nonetheless. Furthermore, an organization may have a good strategy, but their execution is poor; VERY COMMON.
Anyways back to the crux of the matter; let’s ground ourselves on what is a strategy. After researching insights on strategy provided by Kaplan & Norton, Porter, Quinn, Chandler, Hofer and Schendel, Thompson and Strickland, the most robust definition of a strategy has been articulated by Johnson & Scholes.
“A strategy is the direction and scope of an organization over the long-term, which achieves advantage for the organization through its configuration of resources within a changing environment to fulfill stakeholder expectations.” (Johnson and Scholes, 2002: 10, emphasis original)
Therefore it’s NOT a strategy when:
The plan/activity is NOT designed to meet a clear objective.
It does NOT address the accelerators and resistors in the environment that affect the achievement of the objective. In other words, it does not identify and address key environmental factors.
It does NOT present a solution set that addresses what is necessary and will sufficiently capitalize on accelerators and overcome resistors in the environment.
It does NOT explicitly prioritize and configure resources being deployed to satisfy the necessary areas of achievement.
It does NOT have controls and a feedback loop where one can track and measure their ability to achieve their desired outcome.
All other subsequent tasks in organizational processes are defined as tactics and activities required to manifest the strategy.
To avoid any confusion, I would like to continue the rest of this post by framing it up as “what makes a strategy a strategy.”
Understandably, some might claim that a strategy may or may not possess the above five points when inversely stated. They may say the above five points differentiates a good strategy from a poor one. I see that position to be the same as saying that two slices of bread without anything in the middle is a sandwich. I would argue that the above is a checklist of what makes a strategy a strategy. When the provided definition is disaggregated, you will see how the 5 points satisfy the statement.
What people often observe are the deliverables derived from attempting to satisfy the above five points. That observation may be perceived as good or bad. It is often that observation that drives people to make such statements as “It’s not a strategy if the organization doesn’t reach their goal.”
The truth is that many factors affect the deliverables, and it’s equally as important to be clear if the discussion is around Strategy, Strategy Planning, or Strategy Implementation. As you can imagine, the conversation can quickly spin off in many different directions. So before I spin-off in another direction, I will conclude this post. I hope you comment and share your ideas; I’d love to tackle them in another blog post.
Comentarios