Have you tested your strategy recently?
by Mark Blackwell, Arkaro ([email protected])
As long ago as 2008 Collis & Rukstad challenged with
“Can you summarize your company’s strategy in 35 words or less? If so, would your colleagues put it the same way? It is our experience that very few executives can honestly answer these simple questions in the affirmative.”
in their thought-provoking article?Can you say what your strategy is??(Harvard Business Review – April 2008). Nevertheless, the problem remains common.
The Emergent Approach to Strategy, a new approach to strategy development from Dr. Pete Compo, aims to tackle this challenge head-on, and say goodbye to the 200 slide PowerPoint strategy presentations sleeping on hard drives.
To help ensure strategy statements really are strategies, the Emergent Approach toolkit includes new tests called The 5 Disqualifiers of Strategy which ask the following of a strategy statement:?
If you can answer?yes?to any of these questions, then the statement is most likely?not?a strategy, but a goal, plan, or no more than a cliché or truism instead. In other words, the statement is disqualified to serve as a strategy.
The disqualifiers work by showing if a statement meets the three requirements of a strategy:
Here’s an example: A CEO of a Fortune 500 company recently said, “This quarter’s results, while falling short of expectations due to market volatility, show signs that we are making progress to transform our corporation for long-term competitiveness.” He then added,
?“Our strategy focuses on four major objectives: to narrow our focus on businesses where we can grow profitably, drive for efficiency, grow through innovation and optimizing our data assets, and return excess capital.”
The good news – 33 words, but how do these words fair versus The 5 Disqualifiers?
Fail?– In all cases the opposite is absurd avoiding any meaningful trade-off and therefore no real time guidance on what to do.
Pass?–?the number four is simply an identifier
Pass?but fail if the board has made this the rules-of-the-game constraint for him. (Could you imagine?)
Pass?But only because the strategy themes are so high level and because they are such clichés and apply to most every business in the world.
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5. Is it a list?
Fail?Lists are rarely strategies – more often aspirations.
As is so common with many corporate strategies, it is a list of strategy themes, without a unifying rule to tackle the dominant bottleneck.?
Perhaps it would be fairer to look at the written statement from the same company? An annual report should provide guidance to shareholders on the strategic choices and objectives. From the 2018 report, the key priorities also appear as strategy themes but let’s continue with the tests
If Wall Street accepts such a statement and the CEO buys some time, then it is useful. But if this is the CEO’s actual working strategy, it is a disaster. Like the zillions of “strategies” that are like this, it could apply to any business on earth; zero uniqueness. Where are the customers? Where are the competitors? Where is anything that says something about this company’s place in the world?
Let’s be clear, passing the 5 Disqualifiers of Strategy does not mean you have a strategy, or even a good strategy. However, once internalized, the Disqualifiers are a powerful, (and fun!), adaptive tool because they destroy unfit strategy ideas, allowing true strategies that pass the tests to emerge and evolve further.
Meanwhile next time you see statements such as:
Please think about the 5 Disqualifiers of Strategy!
Arkaro is the first affiliate partner to deliver Dr Pete Compo’s Emergent Approach to Strategy.?By working with your teams in Agile-like sprints, Mark Blackwell helps your team create strategy alternatives, choose the best, and establish a dashboard of metrics and triggers to drive execution.
Instead of the “do it for you” approach, Arkaro takes the “do it with you” method ensuring the team has ownership of the strategy but guided by experienced expertise and external objectivity to secure a quality outcome.?
The efficient agile methodology allows Arkaro to support as a trusted partner while the strategy evolves and is implemented.??Please contact Arkaro?to learn more
To hear Pete and Mark discuss the 5 Disqualifiers in more detail click on the image below;
For more example of the disqualifiers from Peter Compo, see The Emergent Approach website, and of course, his book, The Emergent Approach to Strategy.
Peter Compo
Peter Compo?is the author of?The?Emergent Approach?to Strategy: Adaptive Design and Execution. With a doctorate in Chemical Engineering from the City College of New York, and also a musical background, he spent twenty-five years at E. I. DuPont in a wide range of leadership positions including product, marketing, supply chain, and business management, and he was the corporate lead for integrated business planning. He left the company after 25 years to work full time on developing the Emergent Approach. His mission is to help organizations achieve a new level of clarity in their strategy and to fully embrace the adaptive view of the world.
Mark Blackwell
Mark Blackwell founded?Arkaro?in 2016 following a career in?both large and small organisations, covering a wide range of industries across agriculture, food and chemicals. As Global Sales and Marketing Director Mark led the growth of the animal health company Antec International to its acquisition by DuPont. Leadership positions in DuPont developed expertise in Business Development, Innovation, Product Line Management, Integrated Business Planning, Business Productivity and Six Sigma Black Belt Project Management. At DuPont Mark worked with Pete Compo as the ideas forming the Emergent Approach to Strategy? were developed.?In recent years Mark has been involved in the preparation of?the?Emergent Approach to?Strategy?and is the first affiliated partner to deliver?to help product line and business teams design and implement adaptive strategies