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Scenarios : the art of strategic conversation 2nd ed
The above conversation, which I had some time ago with Peter Schwartz in front of an audience of strategic planners, provides in a nutshell an overview of the territory this book covers. Let me reiterate a few crucial points here. This book is about organisational strategy. The words ??scenarios?? and ??strategic conversation?? in the title indicate some aspects of strategy that I judge are underdeveloped in the literature. I see strategising as thinking about how we can intervene in the hustle and bustle of the evolutionary process that organisations are subject to. Strategy is about winning in this process, judged in terms of survival and self-development. I will assume that it takes place against a background of irreducible uncertainty and human/social interpretation, where communication is just as important as individual thinking, and where intuition and creativity are just as important as rational reasoning. Strategy is a highly dynamic area, full of fads and fashions that come and go. Yet a few texts seem to remain valid over the years. These mostly aim at analysing underlying structures rather than proposing specific strategies. After all, copying ideas that ??work?? for others is unlikely to be a winning strategy. Success can only be based on being different from (existing or potential) competitors. This will be a fundamental point of the line of argument developed here. I find it helpful to sift through the rich literature on strategy by distinguishing between three ??schools of thought??: Preface xv . Rationalist (aimed at finding the ??optimal strategy??, e.g. Michael Porter), . Evolutionary (assuming that strategy emerges and can only be understood in retrospect, e.g. Henri Mintzberg), and . Processual. Managers tend to have a preference for the rationalist school; it assigns to them the power to affect the destiny of their organisation. However, they also realise that it does not always work very well. Things often turn out rather unexpectedly, compared to plan, and there is a lot of uncertainty about implementation, even if the plan turns out to have been just right. Most managers don?t have a lot of sympathy for the evolutionist school. It disempowers them to a large extent and this feels counterintuitive. Managers need something in between the rationalist and the evolutionary schools of thought. This is where the processual school of strategy comes in. If things change rapidly and are unpredictable, today?s best strategy may be tomorrow?s disaster. Managers have to stay with the issues as these change around them until real world action is taken, and then they have to stay with the consequences. The lower the level of predictability the more attention you need to pay to the strategy process. Uncertainty has the effect of moving the key to organisational success from the ??optimal strategy?? to the ??more skilful strategy process??. The essential medium of any strategy process is the strategic conversation that goes on in any organisation. It has a formal part, designed by the managers, and an informal part, which consists of the casual conversation about the future that spontaneously emerges. The informal conversation affects strongly where people?s attention is focused. Managers cannot entirely control this, but they can intervene. It is the most powerful lever they have to affect where the organisation is going. The issue here is to find the high leverage points. That?s what this book is about. The language of the organisational strategic conversation is largely rational. Managers aiming to intervene try to build a solid line of strategic reasoning, around which others in the organisation can gather. This starts with aligning views in the management team. If there is one thing that kills management interventions it is mixed signals from the top. Management needs to keep up this strategic conversation until change champions stand up and go out to ??make things happen??. A significant part of this book, therefore, is about how management should get its own strategic process in order. xvi Preface But building solid logic cannot be sufficient. In the end organisational success derives from being different. Success requires an original strategic invention. Management can contribute by creating the enabling conditions that make it favourable for inventions to emerge. But there will always be an unfathomable part to this; how else could the invention be truly original? Blending original invention into the logical language of strategy is an art, the art of strategic conversation. Nobody can tell you how to make an original invention. We can learn from studying the great masters who have gone before us, and create appropriate conditions in the organisation, but when the moment comes we are on our own. The question, of course, is how we can create the conditions for true strategic creativity to emerge. Pierre Wack suggested that if we look long and hard enough the moment of reframing will always come, when we suddenly see the world in a new light, and gain a unique insight in how to find/regain success. An example of management intervention for this purpose is the creation of more ??space?? for the informal conversation, by creating a process of events through which views can be exchanged outside the pressure of immediate decision making. Taking the strategic conversation away from the pressure of immediate decisions allows people to explore possibilities more freely. Generally speaking strategic conversation is shaped by the way people in the organisation see their world. Their mental models have been built up over time, and have become coupled through a common language that makes the strategic conversation possible. Over time people influence each other in the way they see their world. The result is a degree of overlap in their mental models, the socially constructed ??reality??, sometimes called the ??Business-As-Usual?? model, or the dominant orthodoxy in the organisation. Without such overlap there cannot be a strategic conversation, and therefore no strategy, the organisation fragments into a bunch of separate and unconnected individuals. But danger also looms at the side of too much overlap. If everyone sees the world in the same way the organisation loses the ability to perceive a wide range of weak signals in the environment, based on multiple viewpoints. As a consequence it fails to develop understanding and cannot introduce this into the system and the conversation, and react. Therefore there are two pathologies at both ends of the organisational behaviour continuum from integration to differentiation of mental models, namely ??groupthink?? in case of an excess of integration and not enough differentiation, and fragmentation in case of an excess of differentiation and not enough integration. Organisations, if left to their own devices, will inevitably drift towards one of these extremes. A healthy balance requires active management involvement and intervention. Preface xvii Scenarios are the best available language for the strategic conversation, as it allows both differentiation in views, but also brings people together towards a shared understanding of the situation, making decision making possible when the time has arrived to take action. Managers have always been involved in these tasks. However, through the conceptualisation of the notion of the strategic conversation, as the underpinning ??nervous system?? of the organisation, it has become visible how these interventions link to the strategy of the organisation, and ultimately to its success or failure. Being aware of the strategic conversation in the organisation and the opportunities it offers helps managers practise more skilfully and intentionally the many aspects of the job that the best managers have always addressed intuitively anyway. INFLUENTIAL
Ketersediaan
| Call Number | Location | Available |
|---|---|---|
| Tan 658.45 Van s | PSB lt.dasar - Pascasarjana | 2 |
| Penerbit | West Sussex John Wiley & Sons., 2005 |
|---|---|
| Edisi | - |
| Subjek | Strategic planning Communication in management Creative thinking |
| ISBN/ISSN | 9780470023686 |
| Klasifikasi | NONE |
| Deskripsi Fisik | xxiv, 356 p. : ill. ; 26 cm. |
| Info Detail Spesifik | - |
| Other Version/Related | Tidak tersedia versi lain |
| Lampiran Berkas | Tidak Ada Data |