Good - A strategy for success

Introduction

Everything I learned during office hours

You will learn a revision perspective on the strategy of death. It's not that what you have learned is incorrect. It's just that it is not complete.

Strategic management is taught as a core course in almost every business school in the world. I have studied it for over 30 years, first at the University of Michigan,

It includes the Kellogg School, and over the last 20 years, Harvard Business School.

The reason I wrote this book was because I attended Harvard’s Entrepreneur Owner and President Program (EOP) for five years. After meeting with leaders from every industry in the country, they not only understood the strategic thinking I was learning, but also how I was thinking about it in their own real-world strategic thinking. This experience challenged some of my basic assumptions about strategy. Eventually, I began to question both the mindset and the culture that was emerging around me.

I believe it's time to change all that. It's time to approach strategy differently, to transform it from a mechanical process of analyzing processes to something deeper, more meaningful, and rewarding for a leader.

There is no road to this place.

For the past 50 years, most business schools have taught strategic planning as part of general management. CEOs have been identified as the most important people in the organization. This dynamic role involves both formulating and implementing strategies, combining thinking and doing.

Managers use a "SWOT" model to make their asset positioning more attractive. It's a model that includes four factors: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.

In the 1980s and 1990s, my colleague Michael E. Porter laid a significant new foundation in this field, analyzing and validating the two concepts of "opportunities" and "threats," bringing much-needed economic insights and using sophisticated methods to strengthen competitive environments.

My own academic training and research at the time reflected the scholarly environment, and my years in the classroom were all about nurturing this “new” strategic landscape. The problem was that the roles of leaders as mediators and strategic watchdogs were narrow.

It's been buried. In the books that have been written over the last 30 years, there's been nothing about strategic thinking. We've confined strategic thinking to a narrow prison. We've reduced it to the left-brain exercise. So much of its vitality has been lost, and the efforts and vision that go into many of the day-to-day interactions of the company have been lost.

It wasn't until I started studying the EOP program that I regained these lost perspectives.

When I first started working with the group, I used a curriculum that could be used in any executive program. We discussed strategic principles throughout the course, through discussion groups and presentations, and we were able to learn the concepts and arguments vividly. It was a valuable part of everything we did.

In these sessions, EOP students, who include executives and business people, talk about the various situations they face in their companies. The conversations take many turns, and traditional questioning becomes less clear when it comes to the limitations of analysis.

In the stories I heard from managers over the past three years, I couldn't think of a coherent strategy. As a problem to be solved, a strategy is a creative value system embedded in a company's competitive position and uniqueness, something that is open but not closed. It is a dynamic system.

A strategic planner is a human leader. I see how responsible these executives are for making things right. I understand how invested they are in this choice. I see the energy and dedication they put into making this effort happen.

A new understanding

There have been moments of learning in all of our lives that have transformed us. It has distanced us from familiarity. It has also allowed us to see new paths. For me, the EOP experience was one of these moments. It has not only changed some of my most central views on strategic thinking, but it has also given me a new perspective on strategic thinking.

I hope you gain new insights from these pages. The book “The Strategic Strategist” is a call to action. It is an essential part of the strategic planning process that has been neglected for decades. You are the leader. My ultimate goal is not only to “teach strategic planning” but to equip you with the tools to become a strategic planner. A leader who will clearly steer the future of your organization.