Evolving Origins for Strategy Crafting. Over the last 40 or 50 years it seems that the genesis of strategy has shifted from organization-centric to environment-centric origins. Perhaps in the last 10 to 15 years, the environment-centric perspective has dominated many industries, and not yet fully reached others. Phrases like voice of the customer, design forward strategy, blue oceans, and open innovation give example to the shift. More rare and possibly a glimpse into the future of strategy crafting is a third perspective – that of the health of the large systems in which organizations are embedded. Systems thinking crept into organizational language as early as the 1970s and with the popular works of Senge, Capra, and others in the 1990s, the concepts became more common in business practice. A holistic origin would be a more complicated approach to strategy development. Let me go on about the three perspectives in a bit more depth.
Organization-centric origins: Strategies that emerge from the internal perspective have their genesis in the wants, needs, and dreams of the organization. This is the most common perspective taken by strategy development teams. During strategy development the chairs are turned inward. While external scanning and reflection may be conducted early in the strategy crafting process, the information is used to help determine the likely success and potential risks associated with the organization-centric strategies that are developed. The strategies that arise benefit the organization first, most often the shareholders if the organization is for profit, or the funders if the organization is nonprofit. We see language about winning, war, competition, market share, profit, and owning.
Environment-centric origins: Strategies that emerge from the external perspective have their genesis in the wants, needs, and dreams of those external to the organization. This is a less common but emerging perspective taken by strategy development teams. During strategy development the chairs are turned outward. Both intense external reflection and internal reflection characterize the early parts of the crafting process. Primary are the likelihood of success of strategies based on the adoption, participation, and engagement of those external to the organization. Internal capacities, values, and alignment are all important, but secondary in the environment-centric strategies that are developed. The strategies that arise may fully benefit the organization, shareholders, and funders, but the shift in perspective puts their interests secondary to the customers, related businesses, interest groups, or the public. This shift is grounded in the wholesale belief that if their needs and wants of external parties are met first, internal interests will ultimately achieve greater benefits that will be sustainable. We see language about collaboration, partnership, win-win, mutual gain, and customer experience.
Holistic origins: I am not aware of models or methods for strategy crafting that are wholly developed from the perspective of the health and optimization of larger systems. Learning about these is a keen interest of mine. I can give some examples of where I think this is happening. Strategies that emerge from the holistic perspective would have their genesis in the complex systems dynamics of the combined internal, external, peripheral, and hidden components of the larger system in which the organization lives. Reflection early in the strategy crafting process would focus on understanding the long-term complex characteristics of the organization, its surroundings, and the possible futures that could be forecast. Primarily are the potentials for the strategies encouraging and optimizing health of the entire system, in turn benefiting both the organization and the external stakeholders.
Three Buckets or Categories for Emerging Strategy Methods. My strong focus moving forward will be more on discovering and explaining methods for crafting strategy, and less on the scholarship of strategy, the waters my toes dipped into in the last few paragraphs. To help organize and explain what I uncover, would like propose a simple taxonomy for the innovation and methods – the expected, the unexpected, and the future.
- Expected innovations in strategy crafting: These are the new methods that we all saw coming. Whether just apparent or little used a while back, there was evidence of these methods early and their popularity increased in recent years. There are the “Why didn't we think of this sooner”? methods.
- Unexpected innovations in strategy crafting: These are the new methods that might have caught us by surprise. I will place some of the most novel methods in this category. An early example is the expedition mapping method. We may not have seen these methods coming nor are they perfected, they appear to have value and hold interest for the future. These are the “Why didn't I think of that”? methods.
- Future innovations in strategy crafting: This the most exciting category for me and at the same time the most intimidating. These are the innovations in strategy crafting that really are true innovations. Something brand new or something different. I’m on the hunt for these ideas and methods now and I have a few candidates. What intimidates me about this category is establishing the methodology. My approach – create a sloppy early model and iterate the prototype until is make sense. This is probably going to be the most fun as well – these are the “That is really interesting, but I need to learn more” methods.
My Own Course Corrections. So my initial research has been very rewarding. I articulated five core components of strategy. I compared and contrasted strategy from the often confused concepts of excellence and innovation. I reviewed changes in strategy crafting over time and looked at the environmental dynamics that may be at play in these shifts. I synthesized many models of strategy creation and extracted five common steps in the process. I've also seen glimpses into the possible future of strategy crafting with some emerging practices or happenings. I'm pretty excited about the work ahead.
These learnings have caused me to correct course in my work. I'd be unhappy if I were not doing this, but I had no way of knowing what I would learn nor which path forward I would take. This all has helped me build a framework moving forward exploring innovations in strategy crafting – I have three evolving origins for strategy and a taxonomy, or buckets, in which to place new methods. Over the next six months, I plan on draft short methodology articles and posting the methods and explorations of their application on my blog and summarizing useful articles for the newsletter.
I’m going to need some more help. If you have an interest in communicating about what I'm writing, please reach out. If you have an opportunity to sponsor an application or exploration of one of the methods in an organization, I’d appreciate the opportunity to work with you.
Please reach out with any comments or questions about what you have read here. I'm open to further shifting course. Thanks... Rob
Robert Brodnick, Ph.D.
Vice President for Strategy & Innovation
530.798.4082
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