I have recently spent a couple of days in the company of Alan Weiss talking about strategy – in particular strategy implementation. My clients hire me for planning and implementation of change projects related to strategy, and so I am very interested in this topic.
There are many matrices, models, formulas and recipes for doing strategy. No doubt you have seen a few of these yourself over the years.
From where I stand, strategy formulation and implementation in organisations are themes in the pattern of conversations myriad ongoing conversations taking place in that organisation.
From that point of view, the strategy models, matrices and other artefacts have little value in themselves. This is because they do not convey some message or meaning in themselves. The usefulness of the models, matrices and recipes is not in the elaborateness or sophistication of the model, nor even the theoretical rigour of the model or matrix itself.
The usefulness is rather in the conversations sparked by the models and matrices. These conversations in turn help move strategy along if they result in people making new sense of the organisation and what it is doing.
It is interesting to think about what conversations you are taking part in about strategy in your organisation.
More importantly, what are your people saying when they talk about your organisation and where it is heading?