Strategy isn’t “messy”

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… and there are general insights. Just jumped on another claim that strategy is too complex,  subtle and case-specific to understand or learn about. (I hope the link works – it’s a LinkedIn discussion in The Strategy Bureau group under “Should strategy be taught like medicine?”)

The first claim was that “strategic” means, by definition, messy - I don’t see why. An issue, initiative, plan or whatever is strategic if it will likely make a significant difference to the medium- ...

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The Extra-Rational Manager

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This MIT-Sloan piece hints at help with understanding business dynamics. Much of a business model is typically simple – the causality of the Income Statement, the productivity of equipment or staff, etc. The accumulation of resources is completely deterministic, and many changes in those are simply decisions we take – add equipment, launch products, borrow cash.
All of which leaves the question “If so much is clearly determined, where lies the uncertainty that makes performance so difficult to ...

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Strategy is not an Art!

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Every statement ‘Strategy is an art, not a science‘ knocks back any chance of being taken seriously by management colleagues.

Some such statement comes up on just about every strategy discussion group I follow, but it’s a false dichotomy, and untrue in any case. The ‘Picasso’ analogy is a nonsense – not only is every work by true artists highly creative, but every brush-stroke is too.

Creativity is a minuscule element in strategy – spotting some business idea that no-one else has ...

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FT calls for more Fred Goodwins!

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So the FT reckons companies just need CEOs with “experience”, not strategic competence. Business leaders, politicians, strategy consultants and business schools have been wringing their hands since the 2008 crash (which was not just about banks), asking how on earth we got into such a mess. The article says no-one saw the recession coming, but fails to note that the corporate sector itself actually created the problem – as it has most other recessions.

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Beyond budgeting

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Great presentation on Beyond Budgeting at the Perf Mgmt Assn in Cambridge by head of reporting at Statoil. A small group of top corporations [see Linked-In] including names like Google, Telenor, Toyota are junking the whole idea of annual budgets and devolving continuous target-setting to teams. If I understood correctly, in principle any team can change any target, and any performance indicator, at any time, for any reason – the control being credibility with their peers, ...

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