Strategic Thinking
By James Crown, Chief Executive Officer, Knowledge Group Consulting

Is your management team loyal and hardworking, operating with the best of intentions but so tied up with today that they fail to plan strategically for tomorrow? This is a very common leadership problem – the failure to provide strategic leadership, and to create and communicate a future Vision for the organisation.

Usually there are three related problems:

• Failure to formulate a strategic vision based on careful analysis and understanding of the environment the organisation operates within
• Failure to communicate that strategic vision in a way that allows managers and staff to align all critical delivery towards achieving the vision
• Failure to provide ongoing monitoring of progress towards the vision and the making of adjustments to guarantee the vision’s continued relevance

The Knowledge Group Consulting Strategic Thinking and Leadership Program is based on two simple definitions: the need for leadership (influencing people, by providing purpose, direction, and motivation, while operating to accomplish the mission and improving the organisation), and strategy (the framework of choices that determines the nature and direction of your organisation).

Our program brings together your top thinkers – directors and senior management – as a Strategic Leadership Team (SLT) to ask complicated questions about the internal and external environment in which you operate, about assumptions, competitors, products, services, resources, beliefs and values, competitive advantages, markets and customers.

This is not Strategic Planning – that’s the role of the CEO or MD and his or her senior leadership team. This is Strategic Thinking where your SLT will formulate the Vision and the future of your organisation. Out of this activity will come the need for strategy formulation with objectives and performance measures.

Strategic Thinking, from our perspective, focuses on a few key questions and not masses of information. We question and carefully review demand, competition, and capability. We learn to effectively manage the risks about products, services and markets where your competitors may not know how to manage those same risks.

Let’s define and play in our own ballpark with our own rules, rather than continue to play the same game alongside our competitors!
There are five simple phases in our program:

• Phase 1 – Strategy Intelligence Gathering and Analysis – assesses future trends, examines internal variables, values and capabilities. Puts in place an invaluable and carefully reasoned set of assumptions about the future.
  
• Phase 2 – Strategy Formulation and Vision – examines alternative futures and selects an appropriate vision, around which strategy and objectives can be formulated.
  
• Phase 3 – Strategy Master Plan – key objectives emerge along with performance measures and targets. Objectives, programs and projects can then be developed and captured in a strategic plan.
  
• Phase 4 – Strategy Implementation and Reporting – from the strategic plan comes the implementation and action level, detailed in lower level business plans.
  
• Phase 5 – Strategy Monitoring, Reviewing and Updating – regular monitoring allows adjustments to be made that keep the plans alive, flexible and relevant.
  

Phases 1, 2 and 5 are best done by using the Strategic ‘Thinking’ Team (the Strategic Leadership Team), with Phases 3 and 4 done by the traditional Strategic Management Team. Phases 1 and 2 provide Vision, focus, and direction, Phases 3 and 4 produce the Strategic Plan out of which cascades the SBU, Department or Divisional Business Plans. Phase 5 is back to the Strategic Leadership Team for reviewing and updating.

Vision and strategy development requires process. This approach provides that process. Vision and strategy creation also need management discipline – at least as much, if not more, than any other critical business process. Strategic thinking is a dynamic process that never ends. Set aside annual planning sessions that fit some artificial timeline. Adjust your plans as the environment changes, as customer needs mature, as your competitors encroach, and as your capability improves.

The advantage of strategic thinking as a key component of the strategy development process is it provides an open-ended view of the future and is not constrained by 3-5-7 year horizons.

The work that is produced become integral to the success of the organisation as it relates to structure and resourcing, a theme for communications, direction for marketing and promotions, guidance for lower level planning, as a contribution to purpose, values and culture, and helps link human performance to the ultimate delivery of the vision.

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