LDR 660 - Formulating Strategies

Editor's Notes

• #3: As a continuation from our previous discussion about identifying strategic issues, from that list that’s been created we need to ask these questions.What is the real issue, conflict or dilemma?Why is it an issue? What aspect causes the issue? Mission, Vision, Mandate, SWOT analysis?Who says its an issue?What are the consequences of inaction?Can we do something about it?Can issues be eliminated or combined?Does an issue need to be separated into two or more issues?Is it an issue for one department or team, or across multiple departments.What’s missing?
• #4: Strategic issues show us the gaps where these bridges need to be built to either reach the goals or fulfill the vision, depending on which tact the organization has taken. And at times, that means that the strategy has to be very broad, because the environment is changing so rapidly being too specific hinders outcomes.
• #5: Henry Mintzberg wrote in the Harvard Business Review in 1994 about the rise and fall of strategic planning. The full article is in the drop box if you want to read it. Mintzberg identified four aspects of strategy in the above graphic. Intended strategy is strategy as conceived by the top management team. Even here, rationality is limited and the intended strategy is the result of a process of negotiation, bargaining, and compromise, involving many individuals and groups within the organization. However, realized strategy—the actual strategy that is implemented—is only partly related to that which was intended (Mintzberg suggests only 10%–30% of intended strategy is realized). The primary determinant of realized strategy is what Mintzberg terms emergent strategy—the decisions that emerge from the complex processes in which individual managers interpret the intended strategy and adapt to changing external circumstances. Thus, the realized strategy is a consequence of both deliberate and emerging factors. Source: Carpenter, M., Bauer T., & Erdogin, B. (2009). Principles of management. Flat World Knowledge. Web Books Publishing. http://www.web-books.com/eLibrary/ON/B0/B58/031MB58.html
• #6: There are a number of ways to think about strategy and we briefly touched on Patterns already. With position we’re determining where the organization exists now in the marketplace, and where we’d like to be in the marketplace. Perspective planning relies heavily on organizational culture and would require a culture measurement tool. Osborn and Plastrik’s book Banishing Government (1997, Perseus Books) discusses five key strategies of which the organization would only choose one: A core strategy that sets clear goals and defines accountability; A consequence strategy that creates new incentive systems; A customer strategy that includes customers and competitors; a control strategy that determines where decision-making power resides; and finally a cultural strategy that creates new, non bureaucratic practices and processes within the organizaiton. Often using a strategy as the plan by identifying opportunities is not enough on it’s own to achieve the organizational objectives. Developing strategies as a posture or ploy is a means of blocking competitors.
• #7: Strategies to address the previously determined issues need to focus on: (slide)
• #8: There are four basic levels of strategy creation (slide). Remember though that strategies aren’t tactics. Tactics or action items are short term activities underneath the strategies that determine purpose. Though as Mintzberg wrote in 1994, “The trouble with the strategy-tactics distinction is that one can never be sure which is which until all the dust is settled.
• #9: As we look at Bryson’s ten step map again, the purpose of strategy formulation and plan development is to make sure that our strategies clearly link together, and link the organization to the community and the environment in ways that create enduring significant value.
• #13: Strategy mapping is a highly effective tool, though often the maps will become too large to fit into a readable PowerPoint. Although the specific client has been removed this is a real strategy map for a large health care organization. Just from a surface glance you can see in the upper left Mission, Vision, an overarching organizational goal, and the values.
• #14: Although I’ve blanked out the vision because it is organizational specific
• #15: As we move from left to right across the larger strategy map you can see that the organization has chosen five key strategies to focus on: Collaboration, Presence, People, Product and Finance. Each of those then has a measurement so we can see how we’re actually doing against the plan. This process for this particular organization has been going on for six months, in part because we’re talking about a very large organization with multiple division heads and departments and multiple service locations. They will continue to meet monthly until they narrow down the specific initiatives that will fit beneath the strategies and the measurements and metrics that will be used to guide progress and decision making.
• #16: Senge (1990) defines the learning organization as an organizationthat possesses not only an adaptive capacity but also “generativity”—thatis, the ability to create alternative futures. Senge identifies the five disciplines that alearning organization should possess: team learning—emphasis on the learningactivities of the group rather than on the development of team process; sharedvisions—ability to unearth shared “pictures of the future” that foster genuine commitmentand enrollment rather than compliance; mental models—deeply heldinternal images of how the world works; personal mastery—continually clarifyingand deepening personal vision, focusing energies, developing patience, andseeing reality objectively; and system thinking—ability to see interrelationshipsrather than linear cause-effect chains.
• #17: Watkins & Marsick, (1993, 1996) originally defined the learning organization as one that is characterized by continuous learning for continuous improvement, and by the capacity to transform itself. This definition captures a principle, but in and of itself, is not operational. What does it look like when learning becomes an intentional part of the business strategy? People are aligned around a common vision. We’ve discussed that previously. They sense and interpret their changing environment. They generate new knowledge which they use, in turn, to create innovative products and services to meet customer needs. We have identified seven action imperatives that characterize companies traveling toward thisGoal with three three key components: (1) systems-level,continuous learning (2) that is created in order to create and manageknowledge outcomes (3) which lead to improvement in the organization’sperformance, and ultimately its value, as measured through both financialassets and nonfinancial intellectual capital. Learning helps people to create andmanage knowledge that builds a system’s intellectual capital.
• #24: Bryson has several points regarding process design and action plans beginning on page 245, but we’re just going to touch a couple of key points here. (pg 265).