The importance of conversations-for-action for effective strategic management

Abstract

As we witness a changing landscape of business and world affairs, it becomes increasingly more important to maintain a systemic understanding of developments, as a guide for improved strategic management. Organizations that embarked on implementing new approaches (TQM, reengineering, learning organizations, etc) for significant performance improvements have experienced limited or no success. In periods of rapid change, the paramount challenges in strategic management are related to the effective execution of current plans and the adaptation needed to cope with change. Two significant causes for disappointing results have been the lack of framing problems in systemic terms and the poor coordination resulting from inefficient communication patterns. In this sense, any solution to a problem contains the seeds of the next set of problems. An effective approach for handling these deficiencies highlights the conversations-for-action needed for effective coordination in both strategic and operational planning. The need to develop and implement viable strategies for sustainable high performance requires that, in addition to materials and information flows within a system, we must explore ways to accommodate this third kind of flow of human communications within and between organizations.