There are four levers you can pull: People, Process, Concepts and Frameworks.
- People. Involve the right mix of experiences, perspectives and skills. Include someone who knows the market, someone who knows the company, someone who is a wild thinker and the pragmatist who is responsible for implementation
- Process. Customised, of course, to the people and the situation. Do you need to manage conflict – or encourage it? Do you need to push people to make a decision - or hold them back before they rush to implement a half baked plan?
- Concepts. A powerful concept – such as “competitive advantage” or “attractive markets” or “re-framing” can drive your thinking. Make sure you are using appropriate concepts. For example, “creating value for customers” could lead a retailer such as Marks and Spencer to one set of ideas. ”Beating Waitrose” might lead to another. Both are probably useful concepts to use!
- Frameworks. Frameworks come last as they are largely complements to the above – helping focus a process, or capture a concept. Organisations favour very simple and communicable frameworks such as SWOT analysis – although such frameworks often lack analytical power. There is a compromise to be struck between insight and ease of use.
Have I missed something? Let me know – I would be interested in what other levers should be on the list, and what is good practice for each lever.
PS. I am only talking here about COMING UP with the strategy. Of course, IMPLEMENTING a strategy is a different matter!
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A couple of things I would add to the list.
Challenge – if you just use people and process you will be drawing on the insights and intuition of the people involved. This will lead you to do little more than turn your existing actions into a strategy, because the current actions are the result of the instincts of the current team. So if you want to do more than “sex up” your current actions, you need a challenge that will force participants to question their current actions. The idea of a challenge is possibly similar to the “concept” comment by Jo. But I feel it needs a stretch element that forces participants beyond current instincts. To make the challenge effective it is often necessary to have an outsider as part of the team.
Information and data – this could be a sub-set of Jo’s process category. But, without facts, a strategy dialogue will just re-process the historic thinking of the group. In my experience, it is only with data on the table that it is possible to break out of past ways of thinking.
Patience – in my view strategy processes are too often rushed. The expectation is that it should be possible to come up with a new strategy in a week or a month or a couple of months. Whereas good strategies can be developed in a flash or can take years. Often a new strategy is only possible once a member of the senior team leaves the group. Hence patience and a willingness to accept that the group does not have a winning strategy often for months or years at a time are essential.
Good points Andrew. I think that challenge and information and data can be seen as part of the four levers. As you say, people and process without challenge is not likely to be helpful and frameworks and concepts need to be applied to organise and draw conclusions from data and information.
The point about patience is a good one. You have to use the four levers in the “right” way. Perhaps worth a seperate point of view as to what is “right”…
Here is something to start the ball rolling. The four levers have to be used with sufficient rigor – which requires a mix of data, information, analysis, challenge, patience…what have I missed?
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