Without strategy there is only drift - Thomas Friedman
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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 quote that starts this blog though is very apt, without strategy, without a planned way forwards, without some sort of stake in the ground about what you want to do and where you want to be you are just adrift and to a far greater extent, success and failure are at the mercy of external factors. The concept of strategy as we know it today originated from the military and to use Sun Tzu's words from 2,500 years ago.
We (well most of us) certainly don't live our own lives without some idea of where we want to be living, what we want to be doing etc etc. We think that having a plan for the future is more likely to lead us to safety.
Maybe the real confusion is really over what is a strategy. It certainly isn't a weighty document produced by a large international accounting firm. That I believe is the illusion of a strategy, something so important looking and expensive (ouch) it couldn't possibly be wrong, hmmmmmmm.
Many good, maybe the best, strategies are carried around in peoples heads who are constantly working in, and on, the business. Often they don't even credit their actions as strategy. I interviewed people from two companies as part of the work I was required to do to gain admittance to the PhD programme, both said we didn't really do any strategic planning. They didn't do any formal planning but they sure had a plan of attack and executed them very successfully.
I was hoping to start this blog with an short, inspirational piece but on reflection that was rather over ambitious in much the same way as trying to stun the strategy world with my PhD thesis isn't going to happen (even Einstein had a more modest PhD and then turned the world upside down with his theory of general relativity). I hope though over the course of the next two years I can take a lot of what I learn and discover in the strategic management field and pass it on weekly in an easy to understand and relevant way.
Next blog update is scheduled for 8 March.
Today's final words, yeah, have a strategy........
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 quote that starts this blog though is very apt, without strategy, without a planned way forwards, without some sort of stake in the ground about what you want to do and where you want to be you are just adrift and to a far greater extent, success and failure are at the mercy of external factors. The concept of strategy as we know it today originated from the military and to use Sun Tzu's words from 2,500 years ago.
It is a matter of life and death, a road to either safety or to ruin. Hence it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected.Safety or ruin..........
We (well most of us) certainly don't live our own lives without some idea of where we want to be living, what we want to be doing etc etc. We think that having a plan for the future is more likely to lead us to safety.
Maybe the real confusion is really over what is a strategy. It certainly isn't a weighty document produced by a large international accounting firm. That I believe is the illusion of a strategy, something so important looking and expensive (ouch) it couldn't possibly be wrong, hmmmmmmm.
Many good, maybe the best, strategies are carried around in peoples heads who are constantly working in, and on, the business. Often they don't even credit their actions as strategy. I interviewed people from two companies as part of the work I was required to do to gain admittance to the PhD programme, both said we didn't really do any strategic planning. They didn't do any formal planning but they sure had a plan of attack and executed them very successfully.
I was hoping to start this blog with an short, inspirational piece but on reflection that was rather over ambitious in much the same way as trying to stun the strategy world with my PhD thesis isn't going to happen (even Einstein had a more modest PhD and then turned the world upside down with his theory of general relativity). I hope though over the course of the next two years I can take a lot of what I learn and discover in the strategic management field and pass it on weekly in an easy to understand and relevant way.
Next blog update is scheduled for 8 March.
Today's final words, yeah, have a strategy........
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