A strategy can be understood according to its gestation process or its content. In terms of process, it is essential to know how we are to conduct the work of reflection, planning and implementation of the strategy. Your success or failure will depend on this. An inspiring process, which catalyzes a sense of direction and shared purpose, which is open to continuous learning and is supported by it, and invites the emergence of initiatives at all levels, this is the formula on which this work is based; how to make it happen in the company is another topic he considers.
1. The Strategic Process
The development of a strategy is not an individual phenomenon, it involves the entire organization. Today probably not even a personal development project can be launched, ignoring that there are interested parties, that we will make alliances or depend on various support providers; With all these people we need to align ourselves at some point, share information and criteria in order to arrive at a dynamic and coherent plan that offers a minimum of guarantees of success.
If we examine the personality of the strategist, it becomes clear to us a trait without which he could not continue forward: he has the ability to influence others, he manages to convince and sell his proposal, he infects his vision and enthusiasm to others who decide to join in by contributing talent, efforts and resources to reach the goal.
This is also the fate of business strategy, it is born from a process of reflections and shared actions that affect many people in the organization. And this, so-called Strategic Process, can take the most diverse forms.
The senior management may be located on a continuum whose ends touch one hand to the General, who formulates strategy consciously and communicates to the rest of the organization; and on the other to the Sponsor, who recognizes and supports the strategy that has emerged from the company.
Correlatively, the role of the members of the organization ranges from the Good Soldier, who executes the plans drawn up by Senior Management; even the Entrepreneur, who is expected to behave autonomously and develop new initiatives.
We guess that in a complex environment, with a rapid speed of change and multiple interest groups, where it is necessary to intuit the future and improve without rest, the strategic process acquires peculiar forms, the strategic function can no longer be exclusively located at the top of the organization, but it is required in every worker as a way of thinking and acting, so that he also collaborates.
2. Modalities of the Process
Any strategic reflection process appropriate to the dynamics that surrounds us must above all catalyze a sense of shared direction and purpose. It will have to instill faith and energy, enable and build upon learning, and invite the emergence of insightful initiatives.
A strategic process, in the present, starts from assuming the complexity involved in deciding the most appropriate behavior pattern for the company, and opens up to the possibility of developing new approaches on the fly (1)
Considering the classification made by SL Hart (1992), we find three distinctive and complementary characteristics of the strategic processes that can facilitate the work of formulating and implementing our strategy. According to this author, any strategic process can be highlighted by its Symbolic, Transactional and Generative nature (2)
2.1. Symbolic Character
This is the starting point of the strategy. Senior Management starts the process by creating a unifying Vision and a clear corporate Mission.
The mission provides meaning to the activities of the company and provides a sense of identity to the workers. It is said to be a symbolic process because the mission and vision statement appeals to the use of symbols, metaphors, and emotional components.
The development of the strategy takes place through the translation of the ideas expressed in the mission and vision into specific aspects both internal (capacity development) and external (defeating a competitor). It is, in short, about carrying out a Strategic Purpose (Hammel and Prahalad, 1990) that is inspiring for the members of the organization and contributes to a strong corporate culture (Schein 1992)
In this process, Senior Management motivates and inspires the rest of the members of the organization (in a similar way to a coach) and they respond to the challenge launched (as team players)
2.2. Transactional Character
The transactional approach tells us something that we try to forget very often: life is too complex to fully understand at once, the levels of uncertainty are high, it is obvious that we will have to continually "compromise" with reality, building the bridge while we advance through it.
It means that we must order the strategic process in a way that ensures continuous learning of all actors, and the timely readjustment of the strategy based on the results in action.
Although it seems common sense, not a few are reluctant to modify the strategy, considering the implementation as a process that executes a rigidly determined plan. Here we are saying something totally different. Strategic processes follow an incremental logic, where learning is of fundamental importance, so it is useful to systematize and increase the performance of learning processes within organizations.
This will be, moreover, an important dynamic capacity that will give the company greater competitive facilities.
In the process with transactional attributes, Senior Management plays the role of facilitator of the learning task, while the members of the organization are fundamentally participants in the strategic learning process.
2.3. Generative Character
Our strategic process requires a third and unique quality, to be able to self-drive generating autonomous initiatives from the base, from those positions where we are in direct contact with the “moments of truth”, in front of the client, in the operation of the plant, in negotiations with the supplier, etc.
In this way, the strategy is developed by intrapreneurship (intrapeneurship) In a similar way to entrepreneurs who operate in the market, the members of the organization must convince the Senior Management about the goodness of their initiatives.
Senior Management here acts as a sponsor of strategies developed by enterprising members of the organization, whose role is to experiment and take risks.
3. Materializing the Process
Inspire, define a purpose, learn in action, embrace emerging patterns that deserve to be generalized by qualifying or changing the strategy… how do we do it? One way is to create a special work team made up of:
- Top Management. The internal champions of the company, those workers usually young high performance workers, which K. Ohmae calls “Samurai” (Ohmae, 1990) These will act as authentic strategists, giving free rein to their imagination and business sense to produce bold and innovative ideas, as well as later serving as assistants and facilitators of the implementation process.All Decision Makers located on the “Line of Fire” and whose active engagement is essential (Morrisey, Ch. 2) Experts and Analysts who they will come and go as needed.
As is known, this work team cannot be very numerous as its performance is affected, but there are multiple solutions in this regard. The most affordable: create small subgroups, clones, with the same composition as the one described above. These can also be thematic, obey a certain level of specialization, activity, process, or problem to be dealt with, which will considerably enhance the analysis carried out.
When working with multiple reflection teams it is important to understand that they are not competing with each other. That tendency so developed in the human being to impose his thought is outside the philosophy of this activity.
Since we know that reality will always exceed our ability to imagine it, the work of strategy will by no means end with its formulation. More than a Task Force, this team constitutes a Committee that remains alive and attentive to Critical Incidents during implementation, will facilitate learning and serve as a forum for new ideas and initiatives born from practical experiences.
Notes
(1) Adjusting the planned strategy is considered an ordinary need within the process. It is assumed that every strategy has a deliberate component formed by the established purpose and the set of activities to be developed; and an emerging component that is nothing more than the response that is given to the reactions caused by the implementation of the deliberate strategy. This phenomenon has become known as Horizontal Dynamics of the strategic process (Mintzberg and Waters, 1985)
(2) SL Hart (1992) describes the existence of two other forms of strategic process: Authoritarian and Rational. These are work styles suitable for stable environments, and where the conception of the strategy and its implementation are presented as separate moments, which in the end hinders the process.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hammel, G. and CK Prahalad1: “The Strategic Purpose” in Harvard Deusto Business Review, 1st quarter, 1990. pp. 75-94.
Hart, SL: “An Integrative Framework for Strategy-Making Processes” in Academy of Management Review, Vol. 17, No. 2, April, 1992. pp. 327-351.
Mintzberg, H. and JA Waters: "Of Strategies deliberate and emergent" in Strategic Management Journal, 1985. pp. 257-272.
Morrisey, GL: Strategic Thinking. Building the Foundations of Planning. Prentice Hall. Digital Edition. Florida. 1995.
Ohmae, K.: The Mind of the Strategist. McGraw-Hill / Interamericana de España SA 1990.
Schein, E.: Organizational Psychology. Prentice-Hall. Mexico, 1992.
