Today’s business environment requires a different approach to strategy making. The traditional process of devising and implementation strategy on a periodic basis could well be a recipe for disaster given the rapidly changing competitive landscape. Often we see companies spending enormous resource and energy only to arrive at a strategy that most of the time becomes a printed document gathering dust on a shelf, or even worse, the major cause of failure. Why?
The strategy is a five year plan on a three ring binder that sets out our visions, goals and directions. Assuming the future is predictable, we will meet or even exceed those goals. Pieces of the strategy are broken down into separate elements and line is separate from staff. Companies them decompose pieces of their strategy into separate min-projects and assign them to different managers. From then onwards, company is fragmented by the “internal white space”.
If we take a look at organizations around us, you often find managers that are caught up in the rivalry between competitive firms. It would be a natural instinct to see rivalry as the centerpiece of strategy. Yet if we take a historical perspective, the most dynamic changes in industry structure and business performance have always been driven by innovation. We are now moving in the early transition into a new economic order when businesses are entering a period of permanent volatility and turbulence. Everyone is inevitably facing global competition, ultra low cost competitors and disruptive technologies. As a result we see shattering organizational; barriers and new entrants keep reinventing new rules. Welcome to the new realities of business!
Unfortunately many organizations have not yet made the transition of the new economic model. Strategic plans take too long to be developed and companies too slow to transform themselves. They need to go beyond conventional approaches to strategy making and a new framework that guides people at all levels as they convert informed choice into timely action. In military terms, they need corporate doctrine. A management doctrine is not minutely prescriptive, it does not provide detailed instructions on how to fight a specific campaign. Rather, it is a mixture of philosophy and practice and the connections between the two. In business, a good doctrine meets three needs. First, it establishes a common purpose—the company’s definition of victory. Second, it establishes a common language—a shared way of expressing corporate strategy. Third, it establishes common decision rules—a shared framework for action. The sum of these elements answers the questions that any company must answer: How do we compete? Where do we compete? How do we conduct ourselves? How do we know whether we are winning or losing?
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