Do you understand strategy?

Strategy is a word, which is somehow related to corporate elite or senior management. Every year organizations spend handsome amount in the name of strategy retreats, boot camps, workshops, and planning sessions. Statistics shows that, collectively organizations spend 100 Billion Dollars on these events and on management consultants. Interestingly middle management and workers consider it a good foreign or local trip for senior management.

Another important aspect, with strategy is, there are very few in organizations, who know about their strategy, typically in my workshop sessions 4 out of 20 participants can exactly tell me what is their organization strategy, and only 2 out of 20 can relate their ongoing projects with organization strategy. In the same context McKinsey reported that 70% of organization initiatives fall short of their desired results.

One of the main reason identified by a strategy expert, Donal Sull is that, typically organization strategies are too complex to understand, and finally to implement. Another reason which I identified during my consulting assignments that management wants to keep it secret for competitive advantage, yet they want to implement it with their employees, who are the main front runners, and surprisingly, it is estimated that 70% of corporate leaders spend less than a day in a month to review their strategies, after planning it.

Project Management institute (PMI) is now highly emphasizing that project managers must understand and align their projects with organization strategy, but HOW is a question, which still needs to be answered, as mostly project managers belongs to middle management and strategy is not openly shared with them or if shared means nothing to them. During meeting and interviews what I found that senior management complains that their managers are not strategic thinkers, and managers complains that, organization is too bureaucratic, and we all are chasing our business unit or department net profit.

Between all misalignment, now organizations are targeting consulting, courses and events about strategic management, strategic thinking, strategic leaders, and strategic project management, where we have every piece of information about strategy, its parts and global case studies, except one thing, how can we implement these concepts in our organization.

Based on my research in Oxford on mega projects, and experience of running my consulting and training organization, in an environment where both consulting and training are considered mostly luxury, time wasting, entertainment, team motivation, and tax savings that, first we need to understand what is strategy, second we need to align it with our organization culture and structure and third we need to develop an strategy to execute and control our strategy.

In this article I will be focusing on first part, which is about strategy. Among other fancy definitions of strategy, what I found a simple and easy to understand definition is that “Strategy helps organizations to create, capture, and sustain economic value”.

Although, the oldest documented concept of strategy, known to me is written by SUN TZU, in his classic work “ART of WAR”, and then it comes to Nicholo Machiavelli, “The Prince”, both were written from the concept of capturing and holding the resources for sustainability, which are then translated into corporate strategy, but failed to provide the concept of creation.

Then we have concept of strategy from Michael Porter, with his famous 5 forces, where main focus is on competition through cost, which is some how for me, intentionally or unintentionally influenced by SUN TZU, and Nicholo Machiavelli. Then we have four disciplines of Geoffrey Moore, who have extended the concept of Michael Porter into four disciplines where operational excellence is similar to Michael Porter concept but remaining three; customer intimacy, product leadership and disruptive innovation is targeted towards achieving economic value through creation.

Now “Blue Ocean Strategy” by Kim and Chang is in limelight, where focus is of differentiation of products and services, by creating a new market place. I have implemented blue ocean strategy and introduced multiple project management related services in a market, which helped me to excel in a crowded and cost conscious market, then it seems that blue ocean is good for creation, but what about capturing and sustainability of economic value.

As organization grows through its innovative products and services, so does the competition, and then they started depending on Michael Porter strategy on cost leadership, or start focusing on BCG matrix, of star, cow, dog, and question mark.

I believe at this time, organizations needs a strong realignment of their specific strategy or strategies, with their internal environment and external conditions, because most of the time, it is difficult for organizations to constantly introduce new and disruptive products in a market, and we have lots of examples, like Nokia where companies perish from the corporate world.

For me introducing a PMP® training back by success guarantee for individuals, and Project Management training with corporate case study was a blue ocean strategy, but now as I see further, for these two services, my target is to multiply, which led me two choices, either to focus on heavy marketing or use franchising concept, and whatever strategy I choose, it needs realignment of my organization structure, and completion of couple of projects. Clearly based on my current capability and capacity I can’t do both equally, at least in the same market.

I am on a verge to make a decision, to go big with my establish products, and or introduce new high end product or service, which I am used to, or as I have now both capacity and capability why can’t I go big with established products, and at the same time introduce a new product for high end customer. Whatever strategy or strategies, I am going to implement from here onward, I need to align my organization, and make some adjustments and complete some projects so that, in couple of years, I can triple my shareholders value, like I did in last couple of years.

Now as a CEO, or senior manager, it is up to you to define it for your organization, what is your strategy, going big with existing products, or become a visionary to introduce new ones or do both, but do transform your organization around it, and as a middle manager and project manager it is your art to understand and align the strategic objectives with project scope to provide desired results, rather than focus on timely delivery, within a cost.

Do share your experience and obstacles about understanding strategy, will happy to work with you to resolve it.

Best regards,

Asad Ullah Chaudhry