Overview
Strategy, for our purposes here, is about finding an alternative approach to a problem which is better than the ‘obvious’ approach. This overview sets out a simple process for integrating Mintzberg’s ten schools of strategy into a way of finding, rounding out and preparing for action, that alternative approach.
Mintzberg, Ahlstrand and Lampel identify ten schools of strategy in their seminal Strategy Safari. They describe each school as perceiving a part of the beast which is strategy, but no school as having the complete picture. The complete strategist, therefore, must learn to use all the schools.
The schools are:
Mintzberg, Ahlstrand and Lampel’s best recommendation (they do make a stab at a single strategy process, but it’s rather cumbersome) is to use the best school for the situation you are facing. This author would suggest that they have rather undersold their work. In fact, we would go so far as to argue that observing the strategy process of natural strategists, who are not looking over their shoulders at what strategy academics have written, shows a fairly clear and obvious way of fitting these together into a simple programme.
In fact, there is a lot of overlap between the differing schools, and our process is not meant to be a rigid and delineated one. But it does aim to be one which can be practised again and again in a short space of time.
To make life easier (and life should be as easy as possible), we have slightly changed the names. We have also taken the liberty of trying to extract the things which are most distinctive about each school, rather than finding the common ground between them. In our view, the strategy formation process goes something like this.
First, there is a Situation, it may be an opportunity, it may be a threat, but it is something which calls the would-be strategist from simply doing what they always do (the obvious approach) into considering what they ought to do. We see this Situation as corresponding to Mintzberg’s environmental school.
Second, the would-be strategist Thinks. They may come up with an approach to the problem which is radically different, or which is little more than a development of their existing practice. In many cases the more radical strategies come from seeing the problem in a new light. This corresponds to the Cognitive school.
Once the strategist has dreamt up an approach, he has to ask himself — are we really going to pursue this? He may balance risks and consider resources, or he may take an entirely executive decision to pursue his idea. However, at some point he must come up with the Resolve to take it forwards. If, in fact, he is not an individual but a committee, management team or board, he may even need to pass a resolution to this effect. We see this as very close to the individual action of Mintzberg’s `Entrepreneurial school, where an organisational leader takes matters into his own hands to push forward a particular programme.
Having resolved to go forwards, the strategist then looks around and says “who is with me in this?”. Although there may be wide agreement that there is a problem, and even broad agreement on what the problem actually is, proposing a course of action immediately creates opponents, although it may also create Allies. The strategist may need to negotiate with some opponents and recruit potential allies in order to make the strategy viable. This corresponds to Mintzberg’s Power school of strategy.
Choice (or availability) of allies immediately helps to shape Tactics. Allies may bring particular skills and market positions to the table. They may also bring particular scruples. However, in most cases tactics will have to be spelled out, since the natural behaviours or two persons or organisations are unlikley to be the same. The spelling out of memorable tactical positions corresponds to the Positioning school.
From tactics, the strategist is immediately faced with the question of how to embed the new methods into the organisation. He may be aware that most strategies fail, and most that do fail, fail because they are never actually put into practice — at the moment of a decision, a team member is unable to remember what the new strategy is, and does what they would have done anyway. The task of Embedding corresponds to the Cultural school, which recognises that an apple never falls far from the tree, and without cultural change, an organisation will continue to pursue the course it has always pursued.
With these considerations clearly in mind, the strategist is now in a position to put in place a Gameplan to implement the agreed approach. While the Thinking and Tactics aspects of strategy have been conceptual, and the Allies and Embedding aspects are very human, while Resolve is a matter of the will, the Gameplan is a series of steps eminently suitable for setting out using PERT diagrams, Gantt charts, and Critical Paths, and corresponds closely to Mintzberg’s Planning school.
One of the oldest debates in strategy is between the Planning and the Learning or Emergent schools — of which Mintzberg was one of the most famous advocates. The ultimate conclusion of the debate was that any planning process must be amenable to Improvements, and so the strategist must ensure that a programme of evaluation and improvement is built in as the next step in the strategy.
By this time, as likely as not, the proposed strategy will be making all kinds of new demands on the organisation itself. To protect the organisation from degenerating into a strategy-induced chaos, thought must be given to the Systems that will allow the strategy to work without derailing other programmes and objectives. This amounts to a redesign of the organisation, including its formal policies and procedures, possibly its organisational chart, and other key frameworks. This then corresponds to the Design school.
Finally, the successful implementation of a major strategy initiative will change the organisation. The strategist must see the implications of the strategy for organisational Transformation from the outset, and use the strategy as a tool to bring about long term change. This corresponds to Mintzberg’s Configuration or Transformational school.
If all this sounds confusing and hard to remember, things are about to become easier. Our cunningly renamed schools become something quite memorable.
Situation
Thinking
Resolve
Allies
Tactics
Embedding
Gameplan
Improvements
Systems
Transformation
In the subsequent articles, we will explore how to step through the STRATEGIST process.