Shaping your strategy attuned to the global forces

The wind of changes is ubiquitous nowadays. For a strategy to be sound and full proof, a strategist must account for the changes happening around him or her. When accounting for the changing trends, the article bolsters the importance of understanding the “tail winds” created by the trend. In a way the article highlights the importance of the power of predictive approach when it comes to the creation of a sustainable strategy.

In today’s world, creating a sustainable strategy is easier said than done. The strategists are tasked with achieving self-conflicting goals: sustaining a competitive edge in an environment in which change is the only constant thing and working in a global economy when policies stifle the integration. The article discusses these issues by broadly categorizing the challenges as global growth shifts, accelerating industry disruption, and new societal deal. All these channels encourage to take a holistic view of the situation instead of having a tunnel vision.

With proper policies and institutions globalization can be a boon to the poor [1]. Globalization fosters open market and an open market in turn lowers the barrier of entry, replacing the monopoly. Back in nineties, when Indian market was opened to the rest of the world, a Japanese car maker, Suzuki, launched compact and cheap car, Maruthi, by getting into a joint venture with an Indian company. This move drastically reduced the car prices in India, removing monopoly of Hindustan Motors, HM, and making a car affordable to middle class people. However, since, without proper implementation, globalization is a double-edged sword, many small and medium sized Indian companies were bankrupted as they were unable to compete with the multi-national giants. Although, initially, globalization put big cities such as Mumbai, Shanghai etc. in their economic zenith, with time, the economic focus has been shifted to lesser known cities. A strategy should be aligned with this trend in mind to make it robust and effective.

The efficacy of a strategy lies in its ability to cope itself with the zeitgeist of an era. The essence of 21^st century is both digital revolution and disruption. Digitization of commerce has put the consumer in the driving seat. Today’s consumers have a plethora of options to chose from, making profit hard to come and product differentiation a key factor to success. E-commerce sites opened a bounty to the consumer, as consumers are only a click away from competitive prices with no extra cost. In one hand digitization gave the tough time to the producer and on the other hand it provided a sound means, in the form of Block Chain, to conduct distributed business, fostering globalization a local phenomenon. Hence, a sound strategy needs to use the available resources to reap the proper benefit.

Globalization not just fosters competition among the nation, but it encourages coalition. We can see the coalition among nations helped the maritime trades by suppressing the activity of pirates.

In conclusion, we can see that a strategy to be successful it must observe the trend of the time and align itself with the trend while, at the same time, have open mind to modify itself as per the need of the hour.     

[1] Globalization and Poverty: http://www.nber.org/digest/mar07/w12347.html

The importance of company values and vision in job hunting and hiring process

As I was starting to interview with Linkedin last month for their bay area HQ, I was given a core
values and mission statement document by my recruiter. I already knew that these two were a
very important parameter for my company selection criteria, and Linkedin’s values and mission
aligned perfectly with what I was looking for. Linkedin mission is -

           “To create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce.”

This really hit me on a personal level. I could be working here and my work will help provide
jobs and economic opportunities for other people! With Linkedin having more than 500 million
members, imagine the amount of impact that I could make with my contributions! When I
looked at their core values, which included “Members first”, “Demand excellence” and
“Relationships matter”, I knew that the company culture would be great fit for me. I have
worked in a couple of companies before Linkedin, and I can assure you that these values and
visions are what make companies great places to work! Without a mission, there would be
absolutely nothing that would motivate a person when he gets to his office every morning.
With core values, a job applicant can be assured that his potential future peers fit into a certain
profile and behavior category, which the applicant himself wants to be in.

Seeing from the point of view of an employer, values and mission statements are extremely
important in order to attract and retain the right people. A highly skilled group of people,
working on a common goal that they associate themselves with, can lead to huge success for
the company. For example, during my initial call with Linkedin, the recruiter told me about
Linkedin’s BHAG (big, hairy, audacious goal), which was related to the Economic
Graph(Reference below). I really felt connected with this mission on a personal level and this
helped Linkedin to find a potential hire. At the end of the day, what remains common across all
the employees of a firm are the values and mission, something that everyone can associate
themselves with. On the flip side, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Hiring a candidate
that does not align or relates to the company’s mission would be disastrous for both. So, the
next time that you are interviewing for a company, or interviewing someone else for a position
at your firm, don’t forget to incorporate tests of company values and mission in the interview
process!

References- https://economicgraph.linkedin.com/

Vision in Local Government

Over the past decade local governments – primarily cities – have made investment millions of dollars and thousands of hours on pursuing innovation strategies. Louisville, KY is trying to develop a governing culture built on a two-fold foundation of high-performance and compassion. Nashville, TN is revamping its human services with a focus on implementing innovation techniques. Philadelphia is experimenting with new forms of outreach to boost enrollment in taxpayer benefits. As more cities join the trend and focus on making their operations and services more dynamic, forward-thinking, and vibrant, it's important to take a step back and appreciate the revolution in strategic thinking occurring across our nation's cities. At the local level, stereotypes like "sclerotic" and "static" and "unimaginative" are giving way and it's all because those who governor are subjecting the functions of local government to radically new visions.

But what exactly is vision and how are local governments using it? As James Collins and Jerry Porras argue in their piece, "Building Your Company's Vision," vision is used to “provide guidance about what core to preserve and what future to stimulate progress toward.” This concept is comprised of two key elements, a core ideology and an envisioned future. The core ideology defines the enduring character of an organization by embodying a consistent identity on a daily basis, year by year. The envisioned future is clearly aspirational but instead of relying on broadly convinced goals the envisioned future is a vivid description requiring big commitments over a 10-year plus window. Thankfully, we don’t have to look too hard to see these elements in action. We can see them right here in Pittsburgh.

The first time I heard someone refer to Pittsburgh as “A Most Livable City,” I thought what an odd and completely underwhelming motto. However, as I’ve spent time working in and collaborating with local government, I’ve come to see that motto as the ethos of government. Mayor Peduto’s office has furthered this ethos by modernizing city government and implementing new practices to make the government more effective and accountable. His administration has also embraced the p4 Initiative with the goal of building a future Pittsburgh that is resilient and focused on promoting people, planet, place, and performance over traditional measures of city strength. p4 is positioned to play an important role in contracting decisions. For example, a p4 matrix has been developed and is being utilized by several government agencies and authorities to aid in bid award decisions related to economic development. This initiative satisfies the envisioned future component. Pittsburgh faces many challenges. Its adopted the right vision to guide it towards a future of prosperity.

Fresh Perspective

Developing a winning strategy is a difficult, often unintuitive task. One of the primary factors complicating strategy development in modern corporations is scale. Simply put, corporations are often too large for any one person, or even business group, to have a complete understanding of a corporations' interests, strengths, and goals, or the market (or markets!) the corporation finds it self in. 

This dynamic is all the more pernicious because it's very easy for an executive or business section to think they have a complete or effective understanding of the picture without actually doing so. Such assumptions are common in traditional strategy development paradigms. From "The Balanced Scorecard" by Kaplan and Norton: 

As the controllers and finance vice presidents involved in the research project took the concept back to their organizations, the project participants found that they were not able to implement the balanced scorecard without the involvement of the senior managers who had the most complete picture of the company’s vision and priorities. This was revealing, because most existing performance measurement systems have been designed and overseen by financial experts. 

Kaplan and Norton billed The Balanced Scorecard as a revolutionary development in corporate strategy, and it is essentially just four questions:

 How do customers see us? (customer perspective)

What must we excel at? (internal business perspective)

Can we continue to improve and create value? (innovation and learning perspective)

How do we look to shareholders? (financial perspective)

The key component of all four of these questions is that they attempt to force strategists to consider their business from a (sometimes radically) different perspective. Avoiding settling into established paradigms is a main thrust of "The Real Value of Strategic Planning" as well. It advocates deliberately staging strategy planning in contexts that minimize standard corporate constructs- small meetings to avoid hierarchical effects dominating discussion of strategy, meeting in branch offices to avoid the impression groups are being "called to the principal's office", etc.

And fresh perspectives, properly cultivated, can reap significant rewards. When the City of Charlotte's PD reevaluated its objectives in response to crime reports, they found that fast response times were irrelevant in most cases, and not even important to the citizens making the reports! An anecdote from "The Balanced Scorecard" details how a relatively low level manager used what had previously been a deluge of unused reporting data and parsed it into useful real-time maintenance data for his workers, allowing for targeted response to incidents and a significant increase in productivity.

Building Rapport to Generate Value in Strategic Planning

In “The Real Value of Strategic Planning”, Kaplan and Beinhocker disprove the view that formal strategy development meetings are useless and argue that there are key benefits for CEOs who devote much of their time in strategy meetings. There is some validity to the claim that lots of strategy is made in informal occasions, and formal meetings can borrow from the personal nature of informal meetings to achieve more results. The main takeaway from the article is the importance of building a personal relationship and establish rapport with the people you are meeting with. And rapport can be accomplished through both reducing the number of people in a strategy meeting and shifting the location for strategy meetings.

A key reason that formal meetings fail is that there are too many people. Kaplan and Beinhocker claim that 3-10 people are a prime amount for “real conversation” (72) to happen, and any group larger than that only seem to be engaging in “more of a slide show than a real dialogue” (72). I’ve had personal experience with this while working on an advertising pitch with a 7-person group. The initial time spent where everyone voices their opinion is excruciatingly slow and unproductive, and until someone takes the initiative to split the group into 3 2-person groups little progress is made. There is less pressure for group-think and each person feels less pressure taking up “talk space” when they are insecure about their ideas because the opportunity cost of the space is lower.

The other strategy that they proposed is to have CEO visit employees on-site instead of summoning employees to the CEO’s office. This helps build a closer personal relationship across hierarchies and build more trust because it enables employees to talk to their CEOs on familiar ground. It gives off the impression that they are presenting their work as “hosts” instead of trying to prove themselves as “guests” on foreign territory.

Given the fact that “It’s not possible to have an in-depth strategy discussion about a significant business in less than a day”, it’s a good idea to partition a lengthy strategy meeting into small meetings based on the job functions and expertise of the participants. This will enable corporations to both cut attendance at meetings to the essential members and thereby ensure the efficiency of the meetings. I have hosted production meetings while working on theater productions where some members feel like they do not have enough time to discuss certain strategies while others feel left out. Even for meetings where multiple constituents need to be present, each division could meet beforehand and then present together as a group. I believe that this is the key to preparing “prepared minds within management teams” (71).

In conclusion, the scholars who believe that true strategy planning happens over lunches and in hallways miss the true cause of efficient progress: building rapport with those you strategize with. Formal strategy meetings are not inferior in and of themselves; it is the way that they are conducted that determines the efficacy of strategic planning.

Strategy Style in the Digital Age

 The article Your Strategy Needs A Strategy points out that there is a systematic way to make strategy which can prevent to make strategy not matched with the environment the company is facing. In the article, author offers a simple framework that divides strategy planning into four styles -Classical ,Adaptive ,Shaping ,Visionary .After considering predictability and malleability of the industry , strategy makers choose the according strategy by locating the industry in the predictability-malleability  matrix. According to the given matrix in the article, strategy style differs among  industries but has large similarly within the same industry. However, one company still needs to operate in many modes of strategy  considering its performance may vary in different geographic markets or may differ in different business function or change in different stage of life cycle.

The framework of choosing strategy is efficient and can give inspiration for those formulating strategy for their companies. What I am curious here is that whether the method still works well for the industry of different kinds at current data transformed world and whether the framework still apply when technology is developing at a speed faster than ever before. It seems that technology is narrowing down the difference between different industry. Technology pushes traditional industry such as banking ,pharmaceuticals  to  transform themselves to embrace high-tech . High-tech industry is ambitious to combine their newly -emerging technology and traditional consumer products to expand their business to other territories. For example, they also sell financial products which were normally sold by traditional banking. What’s more, technology such as artificial intelligence and blockchain may redefine the measurement of predictability and malleability. Take fashion retailing as example. The article states that Zara, leading retailer in the fashion retailing takes an adaptive approach for now . If data can be collected from their customers and accurate prediction of fashion trend can be achie The article Your Strategy Needs A Strategy points out that there is a systematic way to make strategy which can prevent to make strategy not matched with the environment the company is facing. In the article, author offers a simple framework that divides strategy planning into four styles -Classical ,Adaptive ,Shaping ,Visionary .After considering predictability and malleability of the industry , strategy makers choose the according strategy by locating the industry in the predictability-malleability  matrix. According to the given matrix in the article, strategy style differs among  industries but has large similarly within the same industry. However, one company still needs to operate in many modes of strategy  considering its performance may vary in different geographic markets or may differ in different business function or change in different stage of life cycle.

The framework of choosing strategy is efficient and can give inspiration for those formulating strategy for their companies. What I am curious here is that whether the method still works well for the industry of different kinds at current data transformed world and whether the framework still apply when technology is developing at a speed faster than ever before. It seems that technology is narrowing down the difference between different industry. Technology pushes traditional industry such as banking ,pharmaceuticals  to  transform themselves to embrace high-tech . High-tech industry is ambitious to combine their newly -emerging technology and traditional consumer products to expand their business to other territories. For example, they also sell financial products which were normally sold by traditional banking. What’s more, technology such as artificial intelligence and blockchain may redefine the measurement of predictability and malleability. Take fashion retailing as example. The article states that Zara, leading retailer in the fashion retailing takes an adaptive approach for now . If data can be collected from their customers and accurate prediction of fashion trend can be achieved, their approach to make strategy may be changed in the future. And also, technology also can empower the companies in those industries feels that they have less ability to change the environment.

Considering so many possibilities technology is bringing to the world, it will become harder and harder for company to simply choose a strategy style. For example , entertainment industry . Where should entertainment giants companies such as Warner Bros and Paramount in America be located on the matrix? I think it is also locates in the adaptive bucket in the matrix. But rising digital platform such as Netflix, YouTube apparently will not locate themselves at the same point on the matrix. If those companies still stick to the strategy , they will fall behind in this competition and finally will lose their current position in the entertainment industry.

Strategies are important for companies to achieve long-term success because strategy brings competitive advantage against their rivals. But strategic planning can never be rigid. Too stick to the strategic planning is a dangerous signal because it shows the lack of fast response to the keep-changing environment of the company. The real value of strategic planning is to build prepared minds that are capable of making sound decisions.

The Balanced Scorecard

Traditionally companies have been using financial metrics to gauge their performance. These metrics include return on investment, earnings per share among other things. These financial measures are a result of previous actions. On the other hand operational measures are a driver of future performance. Therefore factors like customer satisfaction, internal process, improvement, and innovation should also be considered while ‘scoring’ the company. This is where the balanced scorecard comes into the picture. It aggregates both financial, operational and other metrics into a single well balanced representation.The balanced scorecard provides information about four things. 

The first one is the customer perspective. This begs the question ‘what do customers think of us ? ’. Customer partnerships, response time, quality, price performance,service and reliability all are metrics that are used to measure what customers think of them. These goals must be chalked out in advance and then implemented. Examples of quantifying this metric include conducting customer satisfaction surveys, examining mean time response to a service call etc. 

The second box on the balanced scorecard is the internal business perspective. Internal business perspective is mainly measured through effectiveness of product development, cycle time, unit cost and measure of yield. This metric can be quantified for instance, HP used BET( Breakeven time) to measure the efficiency of its product development cycle. Processing customer order faster is another way to score high on the internal business criterion.   

The third criterion is the innovation and learning perspective. The future value of the company depends on the research and development done today on futuristic technologies or trends. This is especially important in a global competition market with a continuously changing landscape in a low barrier to entry industry. Examples of innovation include improving manufacturing efficiencies and deploying new products.  

And the last but definitely not the least is the financial perspective. Any company is answerable to its shareholders and therefore this metric. This can be measured using earnings per share, quarterly sales, cash flow, market share and ROE. It’s important to note the independence between financial success and success on the other three boxes discussed above. A well-designed financial-control system can enhance rather a company’s management system.Improved operating performance will not always lead to higher financial success. This will happen when the company fails to capitalize on its operational achievements. For instance, consider a case where the company increased yield by 200% , decreased cycle time by 100%. On the other hand, they failed to expand their marketing team to deal with this increased supply of product.Thus the increased efficiency will be redundant and although those numbers look good on paper, it doesn’t mean financial success. Other examples include greater demand for new products and slow releases of new products. This implies not all long-term strategies are not great strategies. Hence assertions that short-term financial metrics like quarterly growth are not good methods are fundamentally flawed.

Aggregating all the above 4 metrics of financial , innovation , customer process and internal process it is possible for senior executives and managers will be able to measure performance much better in comparison to their traditional counterparts. 

The Benefit Of The Adaptive Style

The main takeaway that I learned from my reading is to plan ahead and set goals of the business before you implement a business strategy. Based on my reading, to support the strategy implementation, is important to study the market needs, risks, and challenges. Its critical to have a clear strategy for business and evaluate it from time to time to maintain the business performance. By having a planned strategy, the company will gain a tool to determine the business progress and performance. Ongoing evolution process for the business strategy is a major key to ensure the business growth. 

After reading Martin Reeves’ article, Your Strategy Needs a Strategy, Martin Reeves suggested  that setting an strategy style the fit the business development needs in advance is very crucial. Implanting industry study in the early stage will allow the business to project the benefit, demand, and risks to overcome any business potential challenges.  He mentioned that there are 4 strategies style , classical, adaptive, shaping, and visionary , and each one is work for different types of industry .

I recalled a time when I worked at the project experience at (Arabian garment safety company) 8 years ago. I was a project manager and we expanded the business to include supply safety protection equipment. The lack of strategy planning that limited our ability to improve the business performance.  I realized that the reason behind the loss of the market share is the ability to adapt to the new change in the personal protective equipment market. The safety equipment industry is required to keep up to date in term of new technology and design. For instance, a typical safety goggles were offered in one basic style that fit the oil and gas industry needs but later, many PPE supplier companies entered the market with new styles and advanced safety goggles. When we started the project, our strategy was to deliver personal protective equipment (PPE )product to our clients at the least price and decent quality. We did not put in our consideration the rapid change of PPE technology manufacturing that offer many of high quality product and decent price. That led us to lose a multiple contract with many of the oil companies that prefer the new product.  The company would have benefitted from using Reeves’ adaptive strategy to overcome the technology change, and to keep the clients buying from us. We could have done better if we predicted the technology change in the PPE market. The adaptive style would have enhanced the ability to gage the market needs and act fast to secure agreement with many PPE suppliers.

Strategy Development and Scrum

Over the past few months, I’ve taken several classes that have covered the Scrum methodology. Additionally, I’ve used scrum in my academic projects and internships. I’ve wondered how Scrum can fit into strategy development and how the  two methodologies compare to each other. Therefore, I will investigate the similarities and differences between Scrum and the research presented in “The Real Value of Strategy Development.” 

In the article, Sarah Kaplan and Eric Beinhocker write that most strategy is developed in informal settings, as opposed to formal reviews such as meetings. However, formal strategy is not useless: the authors hypothesize that a formal strategy development process can lead to a competitive advantage for the company. The key is to develop real-time strategies that account for an evolving market environment.

Although Scrum is focused on product or software development, and the article focuses on strategy development, I noticed several similarities between Scrum and the article. The authors describe several pointers for effective strategy development. First, meetings should only invite the necessary participants, and have an atmosphere that promotes discussion between managers and coworkers. Similarly, small teams of product developers often use Scrum. Most teams meet for a Daily Scrum (daily meeting), where each developer describes the progress they have made, and whether they need help completing their assigned tasks. Similar to the article, Scrum provides a meeting framework that encourages all developers to participate in the discussion, even if they are more reluctant to speak up. Another similarity between Scrum and Strategy Development is their emphasis on real-time development. The article encourages CEOs to devote a significant portion of their time to strategy discussions so that they understand the current state of the industry and can quickly react to any market changes. Likewise, Scrum requires the leader of the team to continuously track the state of the project through a product backlog, and modify the schedule depending on whether the team is ahead or behind schedule. The product backlog has a list of tasks that must be completed for the project to be successful. The backlog (state of the product) might be compared to the state of the industry for a strategist.

There are many differences between Scrum and Strategy Development. The key difference is the scale at which each operates: Scrum is for small groups of 5 - 10 people, whereas Strategy Development can apply to corporations with thousands of employees. Because of this disparity, the frameworks operate on very different timescales: strategies should be developed 2-10 years into the future. In contrast, Scrum operates on two week sprints, where the team should complete a set of pre-assigned tasks in that time frame.

The Importance of Vision for Creating Strategy in Non-Profit Organizations

Non-profits organizations, at their core, are mission-driven organizations. Whether they are a contracted social service agency, community groups, or niche/sector related organizations, the mission related to social good drives the organization and its employees, more so than industries. While values seem to be a natural part of non-profit organizations, it is all too common for non-profits (especially smaller organizations) to miss the mark on vision and strategy.  

As Collins and Porras mention, “a well-conceived vision consists of two major components: core ideology and envisioned future”. All too often, however, a non-profit’s mission and vision miss on this key concept. The vision statement focuses on the operational aspect of their work but entirely lack in defining their actual core values, which is a missed opportunity. For example, ‘We believe no one should be without food’ is a much stronger and clear vision statement than ‘We provide meals for xyz community’. Too many non-profits organizations, however, fall into the latter. A vision and is more than just words. However, the vision becomes greatly are minimized if they are not carried throughout the organization. Organizational vision should be reflected not just in the organization’s statements, but also appear prominently and be paralleled in departmental goals, operational activities, and even employee job descriptions and evaluations.

A strong, stated vision helps non-profits, and all organizations really, define who they are and guide the organization as the social landscape changes. Especially for long-term planning, that strong vision helps steer conversations away from the operational aspects (which is easier to hook into since it’s more tangible in a lot of ways) to the larger strategic aspirations of the organization. If the vision is strongly established, it is easier to talk about the future of the organization, where it looks to grow, and identify what challenges lay ahead for the organization, the industry, it’s stakeholders, etc. As echoed by Kaplan and Beinhocker, these types of conversations are much more important for strategic planning than setting KPIs and benchmarks data, which once again depend too much on the operational aspect of the organization and not it’s true vision and values. 

At a time when long-term strategic planning is difficult for non-profits given the ever-changing political and societal landscapes, a strong vision is necessary. Non-profits cannot afford classical strategic planning, or they risk not evolving when the world around them does. Rather, a non-profit’s strategic planning must be adaptive, shaping or even visionary so when challenges or difficult decisions, planned or unplanned, are encountered the organization has a compass to navigate through the situation. A strong vision gives a non-profit organization a distinct advantage in strategic planning, which in turn helps to strengthen its position in the future.

Coherence Premium is the key to competitive advantage in market

The article on “Coherence Premium” by Leinwand and Mainardi from the Harvard Business Review addresses the core notion that successful organizations are always aware of their capabilities and the growth of their business is largely underpinned by the strategies that attempt to leverage these values. In this era of cut-throat competition, it is important for any organization to intensely focus on “what they are best at” and cannot rely solely on “expanding the portfolio of products or services” or “acquiring or divesting” as part of their strategic purpose. The authors call the companies that effectively blend these characteristics while devising their strategies as “coherent”. The idea of Coherence Premium is the realization and aggregation of these best attributes and it allows the organizations to hold a competitive advantage in a market.

My appreciation of this idea of coherence premium and why it is a key to the performance of a company comes from my past experience of working in the foods and beverages industry. Cadbury, a leading chocolate brand in India and now owned by Mondelez International, faces competition in the market from various small and big players that include global leaders such as Nestle, Ferrero, and local players such as Amul. Being in the chocolate industry, it is imperative for any manufacturer to have a business strategy that spans across multiple dimensions such as the product should be in sight of consumers at all times, it needs to be planned in a manner such that it does not remain on shelves for long, and this has to be coupled with effective marketing and sales strategy.

Cadbury understands these core principles, knows its strengths and have incessantly focused on building their brand by targeting consumer categories across all price segments, maximizing store presence, and even providing retailers with coolers under conditions that these always remain in the line of sight of the consumers. The company has innovated with new products but has maintained a strong focus on its most promising products as well. Further, their marketing strategy is particularly appreciable because they understand that Indian culture has numerous festivities which are celebrated by exchanging sweets and they connect with people’s emotions through compelling stories conveyed by artists and celebrities that the population admires. There is no surprise that Cadbury understands this idea of coherence premium as best as any other player in the Indian chocolate industry and continues to maintain a competitive advantage along with strong bottom line and value creation for its shareholders.

As rightly put by the authors Leinwand and Mainardi, “coherent companies build deep, scalable expertise in just a few areas and align their strategy and day-to-day decision making to take advantage of them”, and Cadbury is certainly one example that fits this statement. Cadbury, now owned by Mondelez International, offers a wide variety of food products and confectionaries in the global market, and it will be interesting to see whether the company will make any attempts to diversify its portfolio in Indian market or continue to keep its strong personal connection with the customers through a mix of innovation in chocolates (its most promising product) and their pricing and branding aspects.

The Real Value of Strategic Planning

     In the U.S. Army we have very rich historical moments of strategic brilliance, such as the "dummy" tanks in Norway during WWII. For sure there were more than 3 officers involved in planning D-Day invasions, and debating the long term strategies of the war.

     As Sarah Kaplan and Eric Beinhocker write in their case about the values of strategic planning, they mention that the number of planners involved should not exceed 10-12. I offer an addendum to the audience involved in strategic planning. The minimum number should be at least 5. I have the privilege of serving in the Army and have worked with commanders who had their entire staff of senior leaders involved in planning. I have also been witness to toxic leadership where the commander reduced to such a small number that it eliminated certain people from the planning process. Subsequently it destroyed forecasting, budgeting, resource allocation, and endangered the entire unit's safety in Europe.

     When there are not enough representatives, and especially not the right representatives to challenge, businesses or armies or nonprofits, will not reap the true benefits and values of strategic planning, which is more than just a mere paper outline of plans as Kaplan and Beinhocker intimate. It is the intrinsic value of the senior leadership getting together on the same page for a path forward, and providing a basis for dealing with crises, growth, or a myriad of unforeseen events.

The Perception of Strategy

The article “Your Strategy Needs a Strategy” mentions how markets affect the strategic style that the company adopts at a certain time. I would be interested to know how much of strategic style is affected by the real empirical market needs versus the public perception that stems from many factors. I think about the automotive industry as an example of a perceived dichotomy between a classical approach and a visionary approach to developing products. Non-traditional competitors came to the market to completely change public perception and expectations on the future of vehicles. Although classical automakers have been slowly bringing autonomous features to the market while are on par with the new so-called visionary strategies employed by newcomers to the market. Autonomous vehicles have been in the long-term strategy plan of traditional automakers such as Ford and GM for years. However, the non-traditional competitors have projected themselves as visionary with their autonomous technology.Classical automakers are adapting to the new valid competitors in the space.

It’s interested to see that in the same industry, with companies working on the same technology, the perception of the different companies are so vast. Does that mean their overall strategy is different? It’s hard to tell.  There is a lot of money invested in this technology based on prediction of widespread adoption of this technology. Although no one has made profit on full autonomous technologies yet. I wonder if there are external environment factors such as government regulations and hiccups like the recent Uber crash can cause unforeseen changes to the business landscape which will require visionaries to step back into more of an adaptive environment. So are both these strategies inherently adaptive?

The operating in many modes section of this article seems really applicable to many large businesses. It mentions the flexibility that can be implemented in adapting styles based on divisions or even specific projects. To tie in the perceived vs. real approaches I mentioned earlier, I wonder if there is any merit to creating a perceived notion of a different strategic style than what is actually employed in the business.. Maybe that is a strategy in itself, projecting to the customer a different mode of strategy than what is actually employed in that instance. In that case it could be possible for companies to be able to adapt efficiently under the hood keeping the same goal of a vision intact. This does bring up something that the article “Building Your Company’s Vision” that mentions drawing the line between core values and strategy. This claims that the former stays constant and the type of strategy employed is live, continually changing while keeping the core values intact. This analysis leads me to believe that all strategies must be adaptive.

Adaptability might be an inherent value of a strategy, however classical and predictable it may perceived to be.

Strategy Takeaways, Professionally and Personally

As far as I know, I am the third employee in my office to have taken this course, and so it’s fascinating to read some of these articles and see ways that the office has potentially adapted (or remained stagnant) and wonder whether that could be tied to some of the ideas that will be discussed throughout this mini.  One article that particularly stood out is “The Real value of Strategic Planning”, where the idea is put forth that reviews of strategy and the company should take place in a group of three to ten people (72). My office has three annual “Marketing Action Planning” (MAP) meeting a year: one to discuss how the year went, one to discuss how to improve (and follow up on action items), and the last one to prepare for the next year and throw out any wild ideas (not quite to the level of BHAGs though).  These meetings have the whole office staff – between 17 and 22 people present. The agenda of items is long, and due to the time allotted, usually conversations have to be ended midstream so that other topics can be addressed.

            This constant pattern of conversations being ended without resolution or a clear follow up process leads to frustration. The whole section in the article on “Who should attend the reviews?” made complete sense to me, for after attending 4 of these meetings, I end up dreading the frustration and lack of change in the process.  While I appreciate the idea of wanting to involve everyone in the office, from entry level to senior management, including everyone seems to be more counterproductive than helpful.

            The idea is also brought up to have the meetings at a business-unit site. I think of how the article started, by referencing Henry Mintzberg’s idea “that real strategy is made informally – in hallway conversations, in working groups, and rarely in the paneled conference rooms where formal planning meetings are held” (71), so it’s interesting that while the authors say they support this, they also recommend strategy meanings take place in the sterile environment of a business suite. I think of “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team” by Patrick Lencioni, and how taking time away from a “normal” environment, that’s completely dedicated to evaluating the process is more productive.

            Finally, my personal takeaway is from the article “Building your Company’s Vision” and David Packard addressing the “why” of people joining a company: “so they are able to accomplish something collectively that they could not accomplish separately – they make a contribution to society (5). It’s a noble statement, and an idea that can frequently get lost or pushed aside.  It can be frustrating at times to work with people on a team or in an office, but we’re working together for a common goal ultimately, and to accomplish something that we individually can’t do, it’s only by combining our talents and work that we can achieve our goals.