The New Lords of Strategy

I have to admit that I've only browsed through the book when I've bought it. Now I've taken an hour to go through it again. It's clear for me. I can estimate that the top-3 novelties that you would probably mention may be (1) Formulating the Strategy by drawing inspiration from the future, (2) Strategy Formulation & Execution performed in an organizational-inclusive way and (3) Managing an integrated portfolio of competitive opportunities instead of a portfolio of products or business lines. (1) I don't know who have you written the book for, or who are the customers who pay for the consulting services based on your intended FutureProof framework, but it is obvious for me that you have dark-painted an 'as-is' reality that can be found today only in ill-managed companies. In comparison to that, your ideas look wonderful, but what you have done was to mainly re-invent the hot water. You do have certain merits, however. For example, in highlighting that the future trends are dynamic, in terms of speed-of-onset, as certain trends observed today may evolve at an accelerated pace. But apart from that, you are assuming (or considering companies) that use a very obsolete Strategy Analysis, based on current situations and SWOT 4x4 boxes. I wonder who's not using today the future trends, outside and inside their industries, in evaluating the Strategic Choices of their Strategy, over their specific Strategic Horizon. (2) If you ('at A.T.Kearney', as like to say) would have invested a little bit of time in researching the Kaplan-Norton BSC Framework (the Execution Premium Process - XPP), or at least in reading 'The Execution Premium' (2008) and the 'Alignment' (2004), you could have noticed that the term 'cascading' has been replaced many years ago by 'alignment', specifically for transforming a top-down hierarchical, one-way process into an iterative, top-down AND bottom-up process. Learn about the XPP stages 5 (Monitor & Learn) and 6 (Test & Adapt) and you'll know better. Many thousands of companies and public organizations are using the Alignment process, but probably they are not part of your target audience. (3) With your 'Three Times Horizon', you are not bringing anything new to the table, either. McKinsey's 'Three Horizons of Growth' and 'Initiatives Portfolio' (2002) and their reference book 'The Granularity of Growth' (2008) are describing the same general concept of staged focus and action along three time horizons. But I'm sure that you thought that by adding a subtle twist to their concepts you can create something innovative. Again, I don't know who have you targeted with your book and consulting proposal, based on 'FutureProof', but they must be very decoupled from the current advanced Strategy Management frameworks and practice (I'm an exception, because I've bought nearly everything published in the Strategy domain during the past 35 years, so don't count me in your book's target buyers). P.S. I've noticed that you haven't included in you reference pages the books mentioned in my comments here, but I won't assume that you haven't read them :)

It seems , increasingly, to me that the biggest problem in this topic is the insistence on tying the value of strategy to the preservation of the company. If absolute candor is allowed, the whole idea that a strategy "fails" is usually brought up exclusively in the context of the incumbent form of an entity facing existential threats. That forces us to look plainly at who cares: and the answer will always be "investors", a.k.a. lenders. Few things are as dependent on the ability to constrain complexity as is "successful" lending, and as is painfully evident everywhere, the primary feature of complexity today is the speed of independent change. Obviously this scenario of strategy requires capabilities that are, more and more frequently, extraordinary for most companies paying off legacies. My intention with that point is neither political nor newsy. It is merely matter-of-fact regarding the predominant manner of discussing "strategy". I am reminded of an actual experience that is useful or relevant only in contrast. In youth league sports, it occurs in some communities that the same pool of athletes wind up playing multiple sports. Most of a football team will wind up populating most of a baseball team later. The same "resources" drive both games; the rules are different, the outcomes are dissimilar, but the notion of success and value in one game is not negated by, nor less important than, the the notion of success and value in the other game.It may also be true that the bunch of players who are pretty good at football may not be very good at baseball (or vice versa). However, what is most interesting, ultimately, is that the community invests in both games because the player participation is good for the community even if one team or the other is not winning. So, by implication, if the topic at hand is Business strategy, there is some importance to explicitly bringing up the question of what the purpose and SCOPE of "business" value is intended to be -- **within** which it is reasonable to discuss how strategy can work (or not) for "good". It may be that radical reformulations of resources -- and the competency for doing that -- is NOT what the current supply of lenders is really interested in, and if so, the main issue to be confronted regarding failure (a.k.a. "losing") is not so much "strategy" as it is "investing". In other words, the discussion can be framed in different ways. What if the current company is not necessary to investors in order to generate benefits from the supply of resources? What is the point of keeping the current company instead of making or finding a different one? In that light, what is the purpose of strategy? Etc.

I'm struggling to understand the novelty (something different than 'repackaging') in both the book and the descriptions of 'The Future of Strategy'. Maybe you can guide me/us and point to the top-3 novelties of your intended framework (the advise would be not to reword known concepts, principles and methodologies). Until you do that, my first problem is with your definition of Strategy: 'The art and science by which managers use their authority to accomplish the organization's mission - to assess the current situation, anticipate the future, direct the actions of employees, seize opportunities and cope with competitors.' First of all, there is no mention of (1) 'strategic choices' (see Jan Rivkin, Roger Martin), no mention of (2) 'strategic challenges' (see Richard Rumelt), and no mention of (3) 'strategic coherence' (see Mainardi & Leinwand), three concepts which are at the core of the Strategy. Then, your Strategy definition brings in a strange mention ('managers use their authority'), which is, by all means, a specific detail that's misplaced in a definition like this. Furthermore, by introducing the scope of 'coping with competitors', you make your definition inapplicable to strategy models which aim to make the competition irrelevant (e.g. Blue Ocean Strategy). There would be a lot of other comments, but I'll stop here, awaiting for your summary of the top-3 novelties of your intended framework. .

Great article Johan. Corporate and Business Strategies also fail because at their foundation there is no real vision: no deep yearning to change peoples lives. Senior Management need to be aware that “raising our profits by 4%” or “being a market leader in the segment x” is not a vision.

Definitely! Clearly a transformative approach to strategy is needed in a world of continuous change and that is full of surprises