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Without strategy there is only drift - Thomas Friedman

Why bother having a strategy? It's a fair question, after all many companies have failed with solid and effective strategic plans in place and many have thrived without them.  There is even great debate within the strategic management academic community as to whether a strategy should be developed and followed (called deliberate strategy) or whether it emerges (appropriately emergent strategy) as a result of everything you do anyway. Before I tackle this question it is important to state that this blog is for people in business (probably small-medium businesses who don't like paying for expensive consultants) and not the academic community.  In an academic sense this question is large and this is not the appropriate forum to try and add the required academic rigour to the discussion (you'd get bored anyway). Why bother having a strategy is actually not an easy question to answer in a few words (believe me I have been sitting here trying for a while).  I think the quot
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Double Hermeneutic

I came across this term (pronounced 'her men you tic') in my strategic management PhD travels and was quite intrigued by it as it's both simple (despite its name) and very enlightening.  Hopefully I'll do the simple part justice here!!!! It was coined by  Anthony Giddens , a famous British sociologist, and it reveals a major difference in the way we should (stress on the should) theorise about the natural world versus our social world and of particular interest to me, theories about how we should manage people. In essence, a theory about our natural world has no impact on the natural world which remains the same no matter what we think.  For example it was previously thought that the world was flat (and yes there are some of you still out there) but that didn't change the shape of the earth which remained a sphere (oh yes it is).  This is a single hermeneutic. However in the social sciences this isn't the case and, if for example, a management theory gains su
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If planning is everything, Maybe its nothing.

A blog back on my subject area, strategic planning or strategic management to use the correct term for the academic field. I have been reading an interesting article entitled 'If planning is everything, Maybe its nothing' written back in 1973 by Aaron Wildavsky.  It is almost a fore runner to one of the largest debates in strategic management, whether strategy should be planned and deliberate or it emerges naturally as part of general management activities. The article makes some very interesting points but it does read a little gloomily as though Mr Wildavsky hasn't got a lot of time for planners in general.  His particular interest is planning in the 3rd world (although it wasn't called the 3rd world then) and he observes that in amongst all the money poured into formal plans and planning, the results have been pretty disappointing. It raises another interesting argument/point and that is the difference between the plan and the outcomes.  He appears to be arguing t
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Management Books - Gurus or what??

I've been reading a couple of articles looking at the concept of management gurus and came across this story which is either outrageous or really clever and I'm still not sure which. In 1995, management gurus Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema secretly purchased 50,000 copies of their business strategy book The Discipline of Market Leaders from stores across the nation. The stores they purchased from just happened to be the ones whose sales are monitored to select books for the New York Times bestseller list. Despite mediocre reviews, their book made the bestseller list. Subsequently, the book sold well enough to continue as a bestseller without further demand intervention by the authors Bikhchandani, S., Hirshleifer, D., & Welch, I. (1998). Learning from the behavior of others: Conformity, fads, and informational cascades. The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 12(3), 151-170.  The central question for me is just where should we (managers, strategists, leaders e
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Management urgency - What can we do by Tuesday??

In order to get stuff done you need sometimes to create a sense of urgency - what can we do by Tuesday?  It doesn't matter whether it is a strategic issue, a work project, study or something at home.  If it needs (or you want it) to get done then getting some focus on it can only help. One of my business clients has a very important strategic issue that needs to be resolved and the impact of what happens will be very, very material to their business.  We have developed a good solid plan of attack (and should win as we have all the cards) but unfortunately it is difficult to get the required people to 'get the lead out'.  An important meeting needs to take place but everyone seems to be busy and we are aiming for about three weeks away, having already waited for two. That is classic lack of organisational urgency.  Contrast it to what the actions would be are if the building is on fire!!!!!  I have tried to speed things up by basically demanding the meeting earlier
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Michael Porter - the 5 forces model

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Organisations don't operate in a vacuum and so it is important that when organisations engage in strategic planning or thinking they take a good honest look at the industry(s) in which they operate. Michael Porter outlined a technique for industry analysis in his 1985 book 'Competitive Advantage' which was developed into the (hopefully) very familiar model - Porters 5 forces.  Whilst not the only or exclusive tool that can be used, it provides a nice and simple way to look at the prospects of profitability in an industry and can be done over dinner on the back of an envelope (in true entrepreneurial style). Porter’s 5 forces model is a tool for analysing an industry or market to gain an indication of the likely future profitability.  If you are operating in an unprofitable industry, no matter how strategically well positioned you are, it will be difficult to deliver consistent bottom line profitability. The model looks at five critical areas in a market and as
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Mintzberg and Waters' strategy model

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It is interesting how some strategic management models come and go whilst other ones seem to survive the test of time.  In 1985 Henry Mintzberg (one of the leading strategic management thinkers) and James Waters developed a model to demonstrate how the strategy that is ultimately delivered is made of two parts; deliberate strategy (what the organisation set out to do) and emergent strategy (what happened on the way). In their original paper the model looks just a little clunky, word processing not as it is today, but very recognisable for all scholars and practitioners. And although the concept of the model hasn't changed at all, it does look a little funkier with a 'lick of paint'. The model still communicates with a simplicity that belies the revolutionary nature of what it was at the time.  It looks obvious with hindsight that of course we haven't got a crystal ball and the world changes so where we end up is a combination of where we were heade
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