Addressing the Global Strategic Thinking Crisis

If the truth be told, the overwhelming Chief Executive Officers, Board Chairpersons, Government Leaders and their top decision-makers and officials around the world are struggling in the area of strategy. The evidence of this crises are everywhere to see, severe underperformance of organisations, inability to capitalise on science, technology, engineering, medicine and high levels of general education to address the world’s challenges including reversing climate change and effectively and successfully executing around the 17 United Nations Development Goals. As has already been highlighted by many of the world top thinkers in strategy and world leading authorities in metastrategy-including Richard Rumelt, Michael Porter, Gay Hamel, C. Parahalad, Dudley Lynch, Paul Kordis, Tony Grundy and others, a bewildering majority of organisational leaders are running with what they think is strategy when in reality it is only fragments of strategy at best and bad strategy at its worst. Many companies, organisations, businesses, economies and countries are running with what they call strategy when in fact they have no strategy. In addition, and I am not sure if organisational leaders are listening or will ever listen, more than 95% of strategic planning efforts including the fame strategic planning retreats, are not producing any strategic plans at all but basic operational plans peppered with strategy jargon and lexicon. The result is that, in spite of producing strategic plans year in and year out, companies, organisations, businesses, economies, countries and the global society is failing to successfully address their challenges and to create the positive changes in situations, performance and results that a real strategy is supposed to produce.

The strategy crisis is so bad that many economies are sliding into a downward spirals in performance and results and are heading for doom instead of for destine. Many countries are unable to create enough of decent employment for their citizens and wonder why. The reason is simple; they are facing a strategy crisis. And strategic thinking deficiency is the mother of strategy crises.

Businesses collapse because of strategic thinking deficiencies. Let me say this, it is normal for a company to close; but there is a difference between a company closure and a company collapse. Company closure is a strategy-driven folding of company in order to preserve value when it is no longer possible for the company to remain viable in a certain industry, sector or market. Company collapse is a when a company crashes while the leaders and decision-makers were battling to keep it alive and going. This difference is important and often ignored. When leaders make strategic decisions to close a company then there is no company or business failure.

If the problem were with the organisational leaders and their top managers alone, this problem would have been addressed. The truth is that in many situations, board chairpersons, board leaders, organisational leaders, government leaders and business are within ecosystems in which not one person is aware of the strategy crisis. They are also surrounded by “strategy consultants” and “strategy advisors” whose versions of strategy are flawed if not completely wrong. Add to that the inability of many organisational leaders and managers to listen to any news that suggests that they could be wrong or that they may be lacking in their knowledge or understanding of something. Many leaders convince themselves that they already know everything that they must know to be great in their work. No one can teach them anything unless the person is within their circles or is within their levels of power, position and authorities. It is amazing that so many leaders actually believe their own lies that all the best knowledge and all the leading edge theory and practice exist within their own circles. One author calls this executive incest. Executive incest causes many leaders to become stale and lose the innovation edge that they so critically need.

Some companies, businesses and economies can still be relatively successful even if they are suffering from strategic thinking deficiency. This is because you can find the fastest runner even among a bunch of the slowest runners. The fastest runner among the slowest runner wins by benefitting from worse performers, not from his or her brilliance in running. This is very important to know. The fact that you are the best company, company, organisation or economy does not automatically that mean you have strategic brilliance. ?It many mean that you are simply benefitting from the worse strategic incompetence of your competence.

Now, if leaders paid attention to addressing the strategic thinking deficiency system, they could, almost overnight, dramatically improve the performance of their companies, organisations, businesses, economies and countries. Companies and businesses could experience more growth and create more jobs. Countries would set their economies towards incredible pathways to great destinies and start solving the serious economic challenges they face including employment creation and ending political turmoil. Fewer companies would face collapse and many that are on the brink of collapse could be saved. The world would improve its execution around the sustainable development goals and successfully deal with climate change. Emerging economies would accelerate in economic development and leap frog the developed economies. All this would happen by simply addressing the global strategic thinking defiency.

And do no think that addressing the strategic thinking deficiency is a complicated thing; it is as simple as ABC once you know how to do it. The biggest challenges in doing this is developing awareness of the crisis, acknowledging that they might have the crisis in their own companies and organisations and economies, an awakening by the leaders and decision-makers to that they have to act on the crisis in their own companies, organisations, businesses, economies, countries and societies. ?It takes only between 12 hours and 72 hours to start the process of addressing the strategic thinking deficiency in any company, organisations, business, country or economy. But it needs awakening by leaders and decision makers.

Feedback [email protected] ?+263-77-444-74-38

?Simon Bere, 2024