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Strategic Reviews Are Like Rearranging the Deck Chairs on the Titanic
Strategic Reviews hinge on the misguided notion that planning and strategy are the same thing. Instead continuously reconfigure strategy choices by routinely holding Revising Strategy Conversations
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Better Business Strategy III: Making Strategy Happen
Making Things Happen Strategy Conversations are not solely about strategy execution. The notion that strategy formulation and strategy execution are conceptually, and practically distinct activities is one of the fairy tales of Strategic Planning. In the real-world Strategy is what firms do to create value. Strategy is not a plan nor is it a ‘laundry…
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Better Business Strategy II: Lessons on Business Model Design from a Dog Sled
Design Thinking has become a something of a fad in business in recent years. But it makes an important contribution to Business Strategy by taking the ‘mish mash’ of initiatives that typically come out of Strategic Planning, reshaping them into focused, coherent and integrated Business Model prototypes, and iteratively testing and refining these prototypes for…
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Better Business Strategy I: Making Sense Strategy Conversations
The notion that Strategic Planning is the ‘one best’ pathway to Strategy is still widely held in many organizations. The problem is that Strategic Planning is typically long on analyses, on ‘laundry lists’ of things to do but short on insight and creativity in understanding and delivering what really matters for Customer and Organization Value…
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Strategic Planning Really Is An Oxymoron!!
Where is the logic in Strategic Planning? While Strategic Planning has become institutionalised in the business world, I agree with Henry Mintzberg that Strategic Planning is an oxymoron. You cannot plan Strategy because planning is primarily about analysis while Strategy is primarily about synthesis, about developing insights into what really matters. The output of Strategic…
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How to Create Customer and Organization Value Simultaneously
The ‘How’ component of the Business Model View is the system of Capabilities + Resources that a firm uses to create Customer and Organization Value. ‘How’ is first described generically using the Value Logic typology. From there, ‘How’ is designed in the context of the firm’s Business Model by identifying the specific Capabilities and Resources needed to deliver…
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Maximizing Shareholder Value — A Legitimate Goal of Business Strategy or the Dumbest Idea in the World?
Shareholder Value, measured by share price, is not a legitimate nor even a sensible goal of Business Strategy. It’s an outcome of Business Strategy, subjectively arrived at through a combination of art, science and smoke and mirrors. Shareholder Primacy, the notion that public corporations are owned by their shareholders and that Shareholder Value should take…
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Organizational Value — Economic, Social, Environmental – Balancing Choices on a Barbed Wire Fence
Businesses are under increasing pressure to better integrate Social and Environmental considerations into their mainstream Customer and Organization Value Creation activities, to do well and do goodsimultaneously. Neither Strategic Planning nor the ESG movement provide an adequate framework for integrating the complex choices involved or for balancing the trade-offs that these choices present to strategy practitioners.…
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Doing Everything Is Not Strategy
Strategy Conversations In Practice recognize that Customers buy products or services to address a Job that they want done or a Problem that they want solved. Firms need to clearly understand this Job or Problem in terms of its discrete Value Dimensions, and choose which Dimensions it will address, where it will excel, where it will…
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Being Customer Centric Is Not Strategy
Being Customer Centric is not strategy. It’s common sense. The end goal of Business Strategy is to create Customer Value. Business Strategy begins with clear choices on the ‘Who, What and Why’ of Customer Value. These are interdependent choices that must always be considered together in practice. Choosing ‘Who’ your Primary Customers are depends on…
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The ‘Who Gives A Crap’ Business Model – Raising $Millions For Clean Water & Sanitation – Strategy in Social Enterprises
The Business Model View at the core of Strategy Conversations in Practice can be successfully applied to Social Enterprises such as Who Gives A Crap. Its major advantage is the clarity it brings to Business Strategy by focusing on four components — Customer Value, Organization Value, How, and Value Logic — as well as on the way…
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The Strategy Conversations Framework — Better Strategy, Better Results
Strategy Conversations In Practice are very different to the ritual rain dance that is Strategic Planning. Strategy Conversations ARE continuous dialogue on the choices an organization makes or might make to create Customer Value and to share in that value. Strategy Conversations ARE a learning loop of four distinct but interconnected, iterative, and reflective stages…
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Disappointed with Strategic Planning? Try Strategy Conversations in Practice
My experience as a strategy practitioner, researcher, teacher and consultant has convinced me that, rather than providing focused direction, strategy has become overly complicated, fragmented, and confusing. Strategic Plans have become a laundry list of unrelated activities. Everything is strategic………..strategic thinking, strategic execution, strategic courage, even strategic strategies! Strategy has lost its way.
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Strategy Conversations In Practice 