Crusade on Strategy Execution

There is a crusade built agains the Strategy Execution. Why? Let's see ...

For several years, Prof. Roger Martin was very happy receiving accolades and enthusiastic reviews for Playing to Win, a book that he co-authored and published 10 years ago. A good book that I have highly appreciated, to the point that I have incorporated the Playing to Win cascade within the integrative Strategy Clockwork model.

But years have passed and in the crowded Red Ocean of Strategy Formulation, the honorable Professor was no longer getting the much-craved attention. The first place in Thinkers50 ranking that he got in 2017 was a boost, but then he slipped to number 5 in 2021 and this year might come with a surprise. So what did he think? "Why not enter the Blue Ocean of Strategy Execution?" Well, that comes with some problems.

Prof. Martin's Problems

In entering the Blue Ocean of Strategy Execution Prof. Martin had two problems:

1. The place was taken by the Kaplan-Norton BSC framework (XPP)
2. The honorable Professor had no real, practice-born competency in Strategy Execution, at least not anywhere close to the one Kaplan & Norton had from the 10,000+ effective BSC framework implementations, except for some approximate claims about "doing Strategy" and "getting great strategy choices to happen" ... stuff like this.

Solutions to Prof. Martin's Problems

So, what did he think? Most probably something along these lines:

1. The Red Herring

Never say "Strategy Execution" because people will immediately think of Kaplan & Norton. Say "Execution" or "Strategic Planning", or even "Planning", these are ideal red herrings to distract attention, and best targets to attack.

2. The Marketing Campaign

Start a campaign of videos, webinars, articles, a book, etc. claiming that "A Plan is not a Strategy", "Execution is a Bankrupt Management Concept", "Execution is logically indefensible and bad for you", "Strategic Planning looks like a waste of time", and similar themes. In other words, "There is no Blue Ocean of Strategy Execution! (but we'll create one, like it never existed before)"...

3. The Attempt

Test the water and speak about Strategic Planning as something done completely wrong, although the esteemed Professor knows virtually nothing about the XPP (Execution Premium Process), and he even ventured two years ago to explain "how to do Strategic Planning right" in a webinar titled "Where to Start with Strategic Planning", organized by IDEO-U, the online academy of the Design Thinking company IDEO. Not very successfully, at the first attempt, but he had to begin from somewhere.

4. The Companion

Join forces with IDEO-U, where Prof. Martin has started delivering the Designing Strategy online course ($799, 20h, live) and make a team with Jennifer Riel , described by IDEO as "their own strategy nerd", and support her in adding to the mix a course of her own, titled "Activating Strategy" ($799, 20h, live), based on a superficial wannabe framework that "brings strategy to life through everyday choices"!? Not even an approximate surogate of the Kaplan-Norton BSC/XPP framework, maybe just a very faint, incomplete shadow of it, at superficial level.

I have criticized her course with technical and precise arguments (even drawn a diagram for her), nearly one year ago, but she didn't care. Here is the post:

MISLEADING ON STRATEGY EXECUTION

The obvious ultimate goal of the Martin-Riel enterprise, supported by IDEO-U, is to project to the market the impression of a complete Strategy cycle framework that they can deliver (as a pair of courses, at the beginning), spanning from the Playing to Win cascade, to the Strategy Activation story, including a human-soft version of Strategic Planning (their version), with a little bit of Strategy Testing (sic!) in between.

Why did Prof. Martin attack me?

I would be almost proud to say that because of the Strategy Clockwork and of the Penta Model that were competing with Martin-Riel enterprise, but I don't think they care, they are those guys who don't read books (not even articles, maybe) whose titles they don't like. So, what else was it?

1. A comment. One that probably touched a nerve of the honorable Professor. I have turned it into a post, to be easier accessible. I did express some suspicions about his goals, as I had reached the limits of my endurance to see his mockery of Strategy Execution and Strategic Planning. I don't know if that's a fair excuse, but that's the truth about what has triggered me. STRATEGY EXECUTION: A CONTESTED BLUE OCEAN?
2. Two more posts. Both published during the past month and criticizing Mrs Riel's initiatives, which I considered that introduce dangerous, shallow, and confusing 'inventions' to a wide audience that deserves much better than that. I have explained in sufficient technical detail why I considered that.

• ENOUGH WITH THIS "STRATEGY ACTIVATION" NONSENSE!
• THE STRATEGY TESTING FANTASY

1. Five critical posts. They are against three of Prof. Martin's ideas ("A Plan is Not A Strategy", "Strategy = Marketing", and "Doing Strategy"). I wonder if he got fed-up, or did he thought to exploit the opportunity that has recently appeared, show some chivalry in defending Mrs Riel, and 'discipline' me in this manner relative to a standard of "rudeness and insult" that the honorable Professor decided to define for me? Anyway, here are the posts that include the technical arguments of my critique:

• THE 'UN-EXECUTED' EGG (10 mo ago)
• WHY MARKETING IS NOT STRATEGY (11 mo ago)
• WHY "DOING STATEGY" IS NONSENSE (> 1 year ago)
• A FALSE DICHOTOMY (> 1 year ago)
• TO "DO" STRATEGY?!? WHAT IS THAT? (> 1 year ago)

Conclusion

I know that the esteemed Professor could say something along the lines of ...

"No, it's not about that! It's about the standard of 'rudeness and insult' that I took the liberty of defining for Mihai Ionescu in order to 'discipline' him and penalize him, from my level of professional authority and reputation, in order to teach him a lesson and publicly boycott whatever he might be doing, professionally!"

... but I would still believe that this gross, disproportionate, and arrogant attack full of pseudo-arguments, if any, that he decided to launch against me is determined by some vested interests.

I am sorry, Prof. Roger Martin , you have accomplished NOTHING positive in what regards me with your 'Open Letter to Mihai Ionescu'. But the damages that you have done to yourself include the following:

• You have lost the personal respect that I had for you until yesterday. Your text left me the impression of only arrogance and vanity. What a disappointment!
• You have gained a more persistent and more incisive 'strategy technician' critic of your work, and of your partner, in your futile (in my opinion) quest to integrate Strategy Formulation and Strategy Execution in full disregard of what has already been placed at the foundation of the Strategy Management discipline by other thought leaders than yourself.

I just lost someone I was looking up to. Very sad.