Anatomy of Business Strategy - and Why it Fails Often
Sunil Dutt Jha
CEO of ICMG International, Creator of Universal Enterprise Anatomy Model
In my earlier days, I was amazed to see the number of management and strategy frameworks. Even today, it's surprising to find that strategy models continue to be one of the least formal. Very often available in installments of excel and PPT files, to be used at your own risk. In fact, there is NO version control or baseline for the strategy models.
Try asking a Sales Director to share sales strategies deployed by company 2 years prior to his joining when the revenue was at peak? If you are lucky, you might get a one page note in some magazine interview. No doubt that emotional quotient is key for an Enterprise, but what is even more critical is "engineering" element. Just like in a medical treatment, emotions are important, but engineering is of paramount value.
Similarly, enterprise survival and growth has to deconstruct the personality cult driving the business strategy. We need to deconstruct the "Business strategy" and understand the "strategy primitives".
Guess what, once you have strategy primitives, you can create complex strategy composites quickly and with high degree of confidence and guarantee success.
Ten Reasons why Strategy Fails
1. Experts and practitioners treat "Strategy" as a "primitive" ( like a element in a periodic table) while it is actually an enterprise "composite" ( i.e compound)
2. Strategy definitions are "incomplete", doesn't contain all the six enterprise variables (why, what, how, where, when and who)
3. Practitioners treat relationship among the "Strategies" as "linear" i.e. strategy 1 + strategy 2 = strategy 3, while relationship is "non linear"
4. Every new strategy variables must be tested against the existing hundreds of instantiated strategy variables for optimization, conflcit resolution, seldom happens
5. No version control, baseline on strategy and strategy variables
6. Lack of knowledge about "laws of reification" i.e. every idea must go through six stages of transformation
7. Due to absence of well defined "transformation" process, execution is often marred by erroneous assumptions i.e decisions are taken by exactly wrong people
8. Roles and skills are not properly defined to handle each stage of transformation, driven by gut filling
9. Lack of application of engineering techniques such as simulation, gap analysis, relationship matrix, impact analysis etc.
10. People are in hurry to fail, you can't help them. They have already applied for new job with better salary ;-)
Join me for this presentation at Architecture World Summit on 18-19 Nov in Bangalore
https://live.icmgworld.com/architectureworld/2014/
Managing Consultant
7 年Sunil, you raised some issues that needed to be ironed.You said that strategy definitions are incomplete and in most cases do not capture enterprise variables of why, what, how, where, when and who). What is your own conceptualization of strategy.I think Minzberg(1985) definition of strategy is good enough.He defines strategy using 5ps that is strategy as plan, ploy,position ,pattern and perspective.Strategy as a plan is a means of attaining, making and implementing decisions. Strategy as a ploy is a specific maneuver intended to outwit opponents or competitors. Strategy as a position is to locate an organization in an environment. Strategy as a pattern is consistency in actions and decisions i.e. consistency in behavior whether intended or not. Strategy as perspective is the personality of an organization. Anao (1979), defined strategies as schemes, methods, maneuvers which management hopes to deploy in order to move the organisation from its present position to arrive at its target goal by the end of a specified period, recognizing that during the intervening period a host of changes are going to take place in the environment. Osaze (1998) sees strategies as a means of operationalizing a policy and for achieving some predetermined objectives.The definitions of strategy given by the two authors essentially lay emphasis most of the variables you mentioned.You said that practitioners treat relationship among strategies linear.Does it mean that one should treat them as having inverse relationship.You need to explain this further.
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7 年Looks great......
Strategy Management technician. 19,000+ smart followers. For an example of a strong nation, look where European cities are bombed every day by Dark Ages savages. Slava Ukraini! ????
7 年Unfortunately, after reading your ten articles published on LinkedIn Pulse (19 Jan 2017), I couldn't find ANY clue that YOU really know how the processes of Strategy Formulation, Strategic Planning and Strategy Excution work. To prove that I'm wrong, please write another article describing how these processes work, in your view, but without using not even once the term 'Enterprise Architecture'. You may accept this challange, or not, and I'll react in consequence regarding your future public use of the terms 'Business Strategy' or 'Strategy Execution'. .