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6.11.05

Thinking about strategy

Victor Lombardi published an interesting post about strategy as design. In a recent paper by Jeanne Liedtka, she argues that a new metaphor of strategy is needed: the metaphor of strategy as a process of design. I came across a similar approach by Van Aken who argues that management can be seen as a design discipline. He writes that architects, doctors, managers etc draw on 2 different kinds of knowledge in messy situations:
. scientifc knowledge (that is knowledge from academic study)
. design knowledge (looser grounded design rules)

However, both elaborate on the failure of definitive strategy formulation (which assumes there is one ’right’ strategy which can be achieved; invented choice, instead of discovered truth) applied at wicked problems. In such situations, strategic planning must be dialogue-based, participative, hypothesis-driven, dialectical etc. All this aims at invention and learning, rather than control.

I think the design metaphor is very well suited for organisations operating in turbulent environments as personal experience proved that traditional approaches are often too slow, put to much emphasis on control and don’t grasp the big picture.

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