Is strategy making a difference?

Abstract

IF YOU WANT A THOUGHT-PROVOKING insight into strategy, try an apparently simple test. First, take your company’s most recent Annual Report and examine the descriptions of where your organization is now and where it is going. Then track back through previous years to find where today’s position is articulated in some form of strategy. So ... how did your organization get to where it is today? McGill’s Henry Mintzberg 1 points out that not all intended strategies are realized, and not all realized strategies were intended. Realized strategy is often emergent in nature. While Mintzberg’s view of strategy usually strikes a chord with managers, they often struggle with his different ‘strategies’. However, they usually identify three sources of strategic outcome: { Implementation of earlier strategic intent. { Deliberate responses to issues emerging within the competitive environment. { The results of the actions of people, working in ignorance of the strategy or of how they contribute to its implementation. The first covers Mintzberg’s intended and deliberate strategies. The second can still usefully be labelled emergent strategy, as it is based on responses to emerging opportunities and threats. They are the result of deliberate decisions to marshal and focus resources in order to pursue a new direction, modifying or replacing some aspects of earlier strategic intent, a process which Mintzberg refers to as strategic learning. The third, however, might best be labelled strategy in action, as it is the result of the actions of many people throughout the organization, rather than the intentions of a few at the top. It modifies the outcomes of earlier strategic intent, without the ‘‘knowing, deliberate decisions’’ described above. It rarely becomes formalized as strategy and so, rarely results in strategic learning. These labels, and what lies behind them provide the building blocks of a new model of strategy as a dynamic process. This process involves ... the formation of strategic intent, the alignment of action with intent, and the response to emerging issues, as well as the learning which is deeply implicated in all three (Fig. 1). We can use this model for discussing three common strategic questions: