OUR APPROACH
So how do we go about setting a strategy? Let’s start with talking about what a strategy isn’t.
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In his landmark book ‘Good strategy, bad strategy’, Rumelt’s introduction describes ‘the jumble of things people label strategy….everything from Utopian visions to rules for matching your tie with your shirt’; he then explains the importance of a focus or kernel to build a strategy on.
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For us, this is built on three questions: where do you want to be, where are you now and how do you move from one to the other.
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The first section of this site aims to answer the first two of those questions. We’ll provide some tools to help define goals and to reference these against the current situation. We will also provide methods to quantify and describe this Purpose in a meaningful way.
The second section describes tools to help define the pathway between where you are now and where you aim to be. The steps differ a little dependent on which type of outcome you are have in mind and we describe these differences and how to choose between pathways and how to check that you are still on the path and that the end goal is still relevant.
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There are also some foundational elements that must be in place for these to be successful. In our studies of management tools we have determined that the only thing better than having the initials of a set of management tools spell out a word is for them to have the same first letter. So we have our 5Ps: Purpose, Pathway, People, Philosophy and Personal.
We have borrowed heavily from the 4P model described in Liker’s ‘The Toyota way’. While not exactly the same, there is a clear basis in Liker’s work (beyond the alliterative titles) and we would recommend reading this, particularly if you are looking to improve operational strategies.
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We also describe our model as a pyramid. The tip of the pyramid is the purpose – what you are setting out to achieve. While this is clearly important, it is built on the next layer down, the Pathway. This second layer is actually more important than the first: if you have a clear pathway process that is constantly evaluating whether you are on track and whether the goal continues to be relevant, then your strategy will be self-healing – it will correct any mis-steps in the Purpose definition. It also follows that if the Pathway is not robust, then no matter how well defined the goal is, you will be unlikely to reach it.
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The next layer down is even more important again. This describes the People that you rely on to execute the strategy. We will describe tools to help define who these people should be and how to identify the capabilities needed as well as the capacity, or amount of resource needed. Without the right people involved, even the best pathways or processes are likely to fail. The right people can also help detect gaps in the pathway and will resolve them.
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The layer below this describes the Philosophy in place to support the people, the pathway and the purpose. What kind of an organisation do you have. How do you communicate with each other and how do you ensure that beyond the explicit elements that can be described above you can build tacit rule sets that serve to guide the people involved when there is no clear rule set.
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Finally, under it all is the Personal element. How do you manage yourself and your activities to ensure that you can build the layers above. How do you sell your approach to those around you and how do you negotiate support.
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A lot of ground to cover. The approach we are taking is to build this model shallow and wide rather than deep and narrow. That is, we will briefly cover all topics and layer on more detail over time instead of describing an individual element fully before moving onto the next.
As explained in the introduction, we are not trying to sell you a magic bullet that will work against any target. We will be building each section up with a combination of our experience and the feedback from yourselves.
We have laid out the site to act as a guide for conversation. We will leave the comments sections open in each category for you to provide your experiences: what worked and what didn’t work. We will then be able to either write your inputs into the content on this site or leave the comments as additional information.
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We look forward to hearing from you!
