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During this past decade, we've done a lot of work with teams of people to help them think strategically, using an approach we call "collaborative strategy," or "strategic choice." Our experience has led us to three major conclusions:
* In most organizations there's too much strategic planning and not enough strategic thinking. Too much time is spent on analysis that ultimately influences very little behavior, and too little time is spent on the creative process of thinking about forming, acting on, and learning about strategy.
* Strategic thinking can be facilitated. I call it "lightly structured strategy development
* The traditional concept that strategy leads to structure is mistaken, Indeed, structuring, in its broadest sense, is what leads to strategy.
In many companies, the formal planning process takes on a life of its own. It ceases to provide the environment and mechanisms for senior management to debate the significant choices that may be required to achieve or sustain real competitive advantage. In these cases, the planning processes--which have a rightful place--are viewed mistakenly as substitutes for strategic thinking.
The fact is that, fundamentally, strategy is a set of choices --it's usually not one choice. Strategies are frequently the sum of many different small choices made each day that accumulate over time. So the essence of strategy is decisions--choices to do something or not do something.
Effective strategies appear to evolve in the context of some sort of vision. In the most effective cases, there's a driving sense of the enterprise--who are we and what do we want to do--that forms a context for these various strategy choices and decisions. Where that context doesn't exist, then you have the potential for choices being made that are inherently inconsistent. By the way, we believe that visions ultimately stem from individuals not from committees.
In successful companies, strategy involves learning--that is, insight, the development of new knowledge, and the gaining of new perspectives. Therefore, the process is iterative and continuous, not one that happens at a certain time of the year or a certain time of the decade.
Finally, the value is in the planning--the deciding--not in the plan. Most plans have a tremendously fast rate of depreciation. By the time they're printed and bound they've become obsolete....