9 Systems
The Design school of strategy, which emphasises creating an organisation whose internal capabilities exactly match its external environment, is probably the most widely known because of its introduction of the Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats SWOT analysis. This school sees strategy as a deliberate process where senior managers consciously analyse and redesign the organisation — or enter new situations — to suit.
You are now in the ninth minute, and it would seem very tempting at this point to do a SWOT analysis — marking out strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in a four box matrix. In fact, this is redundant here, because you will already have gathered this information in the Situation phase. But there is another question which is asked by the Design school which has not yet been answered in the previous phases. It is the question of how an organisation is actually redesigned, if it is found to be not correctly aligned to its environment.
In fact, the question for the ninth minute is slightly simpler: “What redesign do I need to do to make all this work?” The way you approach this question depends a great deal on what your strategy looks like so far. However, the kinds of areas you might look at include policies, protocols, reporting mechanisms, committee structures, and all the other things which are the ‘systems’ of your organisation. As with Embedding, the question is not ‘how do you create the perfect organisation’, but ‘what changes must absolutely be made in order for the strategy to work?’ These changes can also include external agreements with other organisations.
Systems may seem to be only appropriate to bureaucratic, paper-based organisations, but the importance of this phase is clearly seen in the Seven Samurai. The villagers have agreed a set of policies which they conceal from the Samurai when they first arrive. On the one hand, they hide the weapons and armour which they have obtained by killing fleeing Samurai in the past, and on the other they hide all the girls in the village, to avoid mistreatment by the Samurai. When the Samurai discover this, they are initially furious, and plan to massacre the villagers, until Kikuchiyo, the would-be Samurai, appeals to them. They then agree a new policy together, based on trust and openness.
There are other systems which the villagers and Samurai create together, but most of these are covered in other phases, and relate to tactics and planning. The honesty policy is important here since it illustrates a kind of norm which is not covered elsewhere.