This month a member of the SPS LinkedIn group commented that brand seems to be a visualisation / articulation of the business strategy, and perhaps the best way of communicating the business strategy both inside the business and externally. But, they asked, which is or should be the driving force? Read more »

The 12-13 March SPS Working Conference sponsored by Saïd Business School was attended by 60 delegates including senior strategy practitioners, academics, executives from other professions and strategists from the US Army Corps of Engineers. Delegates hailed from 15 nations, as far afield as Brazil, Qatar, Turkey, the USA and Australia, and had worked in an even greater number of countries.

Ian McDonald Wood, chairman of the SPS, says the delegates were all clearly focused on expanding the benefit of strategy to society and to business. “It was a momentous occasion where strategy professionals from business and academia got together and discussed often passionately the future direction of the SPS,” he adds. “In many respects the event raised as many questions as it provided answers about the role the Society needs to play, so there is work still to do to bring some clarity to some of the key issues. But, there was universal agreement on the merits of professionalising strategy, such that the new strapline – the Society for Professional Strategy – may well shortly supersede the more familiar Strategic Planning Society to reflect a new SPS.”

At a pre-conference dinner on 12 March held at New College Oxford, delegates heard three speakers talk of successes and failures of strategy in private, public and third sectors.

Kim Warren, strategy writer and teaching fellow at London Business School, asked where strategy was during the economic crisis and noted that the downturn cannot be blamed just on bankers. The cumulative effect of bad strategic decisions by companies in all sectors was responsible, he argued.

Paul Hirst of Mazars talked of the success of strategy in the organisation of the 2012 Olympics as a model for the role of strategy in future public sector projects.

Stephen Greenhalgh, advisor to the government of Zambia on water supply development, talked about the lack of strategy in many previous aid and development projects he had worked on, particularly in relation to goal setting and strategic leadership, leading to a waste of money and other resources on a massive scale over a period of decades.

Delegates were left in no doubt that it is time for strategy to step up to the challenge of solving such problems in all sectors, and that there would be a great benefit to society in its doing so. The aim of these talks was to set the scene for the following day’s working conference, addressing the question of how to develop strategy as a profession, which is the mission of SPS.

Further output from the working conference will be shared in the near future and discussions of themes arising are already starting to take place in a subgroup of our LinkedIn community – Developing Strategy as a Profession.

Dr Llyr Jones, head of group strategy at BAE Systems, has joined the Strategic Planning Society (SPS) Board of Trustees.

SPS chairman Ian McDonald Wood says that his appointment is a significant development. “Llyr’s acceptance of our invitation to join the Board of Trustees and his appointment represent an important step forward for the Society in pursuit of our mission and our vision to elevate strategy towards becoming a professional discipline. Llyr is a strategist of considerable standing and experience. He will surely help us to make real progress.”

Indeed, Jones has over 20 years of operational, strategy and business development experience within major international corporations. His areas of expertise include corporate and business-level strategy, M&A, business development, policy, defence and security geopolitics and full P&L general management. He has worked in senior positions with BAE Systems, MBDA, Thales and their predecessor companies. He has also been managing director of Niteworks, a unique government-industry partnership looking at improving future UK military capabilities.

Jones’ appointment to the SPS Board comes at an important time for the Society. Membership is significantly increasing and moves are underway to achieve the SPS vision of becoming the international leading body for strategy, in the process leading the evolution of strategy from a management practice to a recognised professional discipline.

Speaking of his appointment Jones says he is delighted to be joining the SPS Board at this historic juncture. “In today’s challenging market environment, business strategy matters a lot. The Society has an important contribution to make in building a community of practice and supporting thought leadership.”

Jones holds degrees from a number of UK universities, including a PhD from the University of Southampton and an MBA from the Business School at Loughborough University. He is a Chartered Director, a Chartered Engineer and a Fellow of the Institute of Directors, the Institution of Engineering and Technology and the Strategic Planning Society. He is also a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Marketors, a Freeman of the City of London and a Policy Fellow at the Centre for Science and Policy at the University of Cambridge.

The new issue of Strategy Magazine, the SPS member publication, has been published. Focusing on the need to reform strategy, expert contributors including Duncan Angwin and Kim Warren offer informative insights that no-one with an interest in strategy will want to miss.

Analysis of how to give strategy the status it needs to transform the fortunes of economies is timely, both in terms of the ongoing turmoil associated with the ‘great recession’ and the SPS mission to develop strategy as a professional discipline.

There’s enough doom and gloom about in the economy at the moment without getting pessimistic about your strategy’s chances of failure. Square Peg director and the UK Institute of Consulting’s Consultant of the Year Phoebe Dunn shares her thoughts on Courting Disaster – how planning for failure can boost your project’s chances of success in an interesting and informative article available to members in our library.

Max McKeown, author, consultant and popular speaker in the strategy field, shares his thoughts on the importance of strategy and the relevance of his new book.

McKeown has a PhD and MBA with a speciality in strategy and strategic change. His clients sit across multiple sectors including Microsoft, Virgin, Sun International, 2012 Olympics, Toyota and TopShop. He is the author of several books including E-Customer, Why They Don’t Buy, Unshrink and The Truth about Innovation.

Why do you think strategy is important?
Strategy is about shaping the future. Great strategy is the shortest effective distance between ends and means. In the second decade of a new millennium, this seems particularly urgent because we’ve experienced what has felt like crisis after crisis, disaster after disaster, attack after attack. It’s never been more important to understand the best ways of creating a better future. Systems have failed to live up to expectations of perpetual growth and prosperity. Governments and businesses understand that there is a problem, they may even understand that they would like to solve the problem, but this is not the same as understanding how to get from where they are to where they want to be. This is the function of strategy.

We have been trying to shape our future for as long as we have been human. Along the way we’ve picked up some enduring principles about how to do that better – from the political writings of Machiavelli to the art of war espoused by Sun Tzu to the research of Ansoff, Chandler, Porter or Mintzberg. You don’t need to get an MBA or a doctorate but it’s helpful to be informed. And it’s very helpful to understand better how the creative and analytical sides of strategy work, and how they can work together to achieve exceptional results.

Why do you think a gap between strategy as an academic discipline and strategy in business has developed? What can be done to close the gap?
There are more than two camps in strategy. There is considerable research conducted into strategy that is not intended to directly inform the work of the strategist. This is not a failing of the research: social scientists shouldn’t have to justify their work based on how useful it appears to be in its raw, academic form – that’s not its purpose. And it’s not the problem either.

The problem is that there is not enough focus on improving strategy in the real world. The problem is that strategy has become divorced from leadership and entrepreneurship. Strategy has become separated from imagination and creativity. Leaders are impatient with the layers upon layers of models and flowcharts that get in the way of them actually doing strategy. They don’t want to read 1,000 page textbooks or academic journals. They don’t want out-of-date advice. They don’t want codified knowledge banks. They don’t want to work with cults that believe in the magical power of a few models. They want fast, effective, powerful help to shape their future.

What are your thoughts on the SPS professionalising strategy agenda?
My support for professionalising depends on what is meant by the term. If the focus is on practical ways of creating better strategic thinkers, that’s a good thing. If the focus is on compartmentalising the most obvious information about strategy and turning it into a set of anti-imaginative hurdles and cookie-cutter templates, then I’m against it. The language of the effective strategist is to the point. The language of the ineffective strategy consultant is flowery, grey and dull. Great strategy requires non-obvious answers to obvious questions. It’s not about nonsensical distinctions between mission, visions and goals.

There are strategy tools and processes that can help but the real heart of strategy is the strategist. It’s what you know, how you think and how you get people to care enough about what you are doing to help you get where you want to go. It’s about setting in motion a sequence of events that will shape the future in a way you like. People use strategy to get a lot of what they have. They get a job. They get an education to get a job. They save money for a holiday or a home. They used strategies to romance their partners, wives or husbands. It’s important that strategy stays powerful and effective in the real world.

How do these issues fit in with the content of your latest books?
The Strategy Book has its own competitive advantage: it’s easy to read without dumbing down its strategic ideas. It’s simple to use but is still based on a core set of intelligent strategic foundations. It offers clear explanations of tools and concepts that will help make sense of complex leadership situations. My next book, Adaptability, expands on these ideas, exploring how all success is successful adaptation.

The ideas in The Strategy Book are also based on hard-won experience and knowledge. I’ve worked with some of the most admired and most ambitious companies in the world. This real world experience is built into the book. Some of those companies are facing problems and crisis points. All of them wanted success. They wanted to move from where they were to somewhere better. The Strategy Book helps with all of those situations. It’s been designed to help people to become better strategic thinkers. And because strategic thinking is the difference between good managers and great leaders, these new skills will help any reader to shape their future deliberately – especially when faced with great external turmoil and uncertainty.

The Strategy Bookis organised into six parts. The first five tackle the really important challenges that a leader of any team of any size will face in creating strategy and making that strategy work. Each part is subdivided into specific action topics. You can dip in and out of each section as you feel relevant. The book has been written clearly so you, or your clients or students, can benefit from my experience as a strategist whether the reader is a novice or expert.  The sixth part is the strategist toolkit. It contains nearly 30 hand-picked tools and models explained in very precise, practical and efficient terms.

So far it’s being used in several different ways: in business schools to supplement the standard text books; with executive teams to improve the strategy process; on leadership development programmes to raise the level of understanding and keep a shared strategy language between colleagues. It’s also being used to reinvigorate the idea of strategy as a way of winning, protecting and growing the business.

What role does strategy play in your professional life?
Apart from my research, and writing, my time is spent in two main ways: First with large groups, hundreds or more, making strategy come alive in an entertaining, memorable and thought-provoking way. This is not strategy as an academic subject. This is strategic thinking applied in imaginative ways to the real world problems and opportunities of the whole business. It’s a holistic approach that blends threads from inside the company with trends and events outside the company.

Second, I spend time working with executive teams, and boards of directors, acting as a strategic coach and facilitator. The role here is to ask demanding questions, get the most out of the team dynamic, reveal parts of the big picture that have not been noticed, and help leaders with powerful, effective strategic thinking. We shape the future together.

This month a member of the SPS LinkedIn group asked an important question: “What do you consider the biggest challenge in strategy consulting?”

A one-word initial response cut to the heart of the topic: “Credibility?”

One member wrote that the biggest obstacle is, “Dealing with the human condition, self interest and the moving gap between perception and reality.”

Another cited paradigm change as often the hardest thing to go through for an organisation when a consultant is suggesting to make new strategic implementations. “You have to give strategic implementations time to happen, and often you have to take elements of change management and emotions into your way of dealing with changes as a consultant, as this is often the necessary input that is needed for an organisation to understand the changes in strategy better.”

One response offered a comparison with IT issues – trying to get an organisation that is used to working with paper to change to using computers. “It will be harder at the beginning; the organisation will have to continue operating and, on top of that, they will have to learn and start implementing a totally new concept. It may be hard for them to admit that they were wrong.”

Why not join in the debate, with over 8,500 members of the SPS LinkedIn group.

Businesses have to grow to survive and compete in domestic and international markets even during economic downturns. There is always a need to plan for future growth and Enterprise Growth Strategy presents the total process of a growth strategy.

The book describes mechanisms by which businesses can gain market share; develop, modify, or upgrade products; acquire new or expand existing businesses; transform resources to increase revenue and profitability; reduce cycle time; and empower business associates. Quality concepts – market growth, financial and core competency – are outlined and a variety of growth strategy tools presented, and case studies are presented.

The Author: Dr. Dhirendra Kumar is senior extension engineer at North Carolina State University in the USA. He has worked as an engineer, technical adviser and programme manager for Outboard Marine, John Deere, Pratt and Whitney, and Pitney Bowes. Since turning to academia, he has taught almost every aspect of business and management – the ‘growth strategy’ concept he has developed is comprehensive and manifestly practical.

SPS members can get a 25% discount on this and all other Gower management titles. Please visit our member discount page for the required discount code.

The new issue of Strategy Magazine explores a new vision for strategy. A series of engaging and farsighted features argue that recasting strategy as a profession would benefit business and thus the wider economy. However, much still needs to be done, including defining a body of knowledge and establishing a robust system of qualification, initiatives the SPS is spearheading.

Strategy Magazine Issue 28 offers an in-depth discussion of all these issues and more, with submissions from Kim Warren, Teaching Fellow at London Business School, Founder of the Strategy Dynamics approach, practitioner, author and speaker, Richard Whittington, Professor of Strategic Management at the Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, Duncan Angwin, Professor of strategy at Oxford Brookes University, UK and Associate Professor at Warwick Business School, and Ian McDonald Wood, the Research Director at FutureValue.

Distributed free to all members of SPS, Strategy Magazine continues to be essential reading for strategy practitioners and teachers alike.

The inaugural SPS Strategy Club event at Strathclyde University on 7 February saw a full house of captivated students and local business people who are alumni. Dr George Burt, Full-time, Part-time and Flexible Learning MBA Course Director, introduced Kim Warren, Teaching Fellow at London Business School and creator of the Strategy Dynamics Approach, who gave a talk exploring the broken relationship between strategy and finance and the urgent need to fix this.

“We had nearly 80 people attending the event. It was a great success,” Burt says. “Kim raised contentious issues about cash flows, asset flows and strategy, breaking the traditional positioning-based mode of thinking about strategy.” He calls the subject matter “very thought provoking”.

Cooperation with the SPS was natural given the significant focus on strategy in the Strathclyde Business School (SBS) and the Strathclyde MBA, Burt adds. “Our academics publish in the leading journals, and also apply their expertise in consulting with large and small organisations. SPS, like SBS, has a history with strategy and they are keen to create a community that share that interest to exchange ideas, practices and so on. They are also interested in developing strategy as a profession, and that is appealing.”

As regards the importance of strategy, he says: “There are a wide range of views about strategy and we have an obligation to be a voice in the community to help everyone understand the challenges and opportunities that arise from the wide range of views.  Events like this are important to enable an activity community to come together, share experiences and enrich each other through mutually beneficial discussion – the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.”