Great leaders become skillful at strategic thinking.
Strategic thinking effectively combines creative and critical thinking. We
have worked with many organizations in facilitating business and strategic
planning and invariably the process has the added benefit of helping an
organization’s leaders sharpen their strategic thinking.
In his highly readable book Strategic Renaissance, author Evan Dudik
offers good advice on how to rise above “cookbook” thinking and the
clutter of too many “truths” as business strategy trends du jour
come and go. It may not always be possible to prove a theory to be true, but
“a theory’s power and greatness lie in its ability to specify what
observations or consequences would make it false.” Falsifiable strategic
hypotheses have two main elements: IF (conditions) and THEN (outcomes,
effects).
A retail store might say, “We will lower prices to gain market share.”
But notice how specific and “falsifiable” this example of a “testable
strategy” is, from Walmart: “If prices are lowered storewide by an
average of 2.5 percent, then market share in trading areas where we
compete with Kmart will increase by at least 5 percent compared with stores
without price reductions over a period of twelve months. Further, gross
margins can be retained at current average levels because logistics cost
reductions equaling the lost gross margin can be achieved.”
Dudik defines business strategy as a “prediction about what markets,
customers and competition will do in the future, and how that will change
depending on the action you take.” Strategic Renaissance offers its
readers a language and framework for the new competitive business environment.
Organizational culture plays a major role in effectively deployed strategy:
“Culture is strategy’s biggest ally and potentially its biggest foe.”
Has your organization:
--built into its strategic planning process and thinking, a way to test or
“falsify” its assumptions?
--developed an effective approach to team-building? Go to: Teambuilding
--examined its organizational culture for “disconnects”—and
opportunities? Go to: Free Evaluation
CultureConnects can help. We offer training support,
strategic planning facilitation and corporate culture assessment.
