Strattomics - Raising Strategic Agility

Flourishing enterprises excel at their current activities, spot changes in their operating environment early, manage the expectations of their stakeholders effectively and develop the agility needed to embrace new threats and opportunities. In the Strattomics series, Huw Morris uses his experience from a broad spectrum of enterprises to explain how Enterprise owners, Directors and Managers can use practically a range of established techniques to improve enterprise performance. This book, promotes broader thinking about the future of an enterprise as a platform for improving its ability to respond to changes. After a short diagnostic to provoke a self-assessment of the agility of an enterprise, S curves are used to identify the “As Is” in terms of its position on the growth journey and the distinctiveness of capabilities. To help develop an understanding of business environment forces, there is a discussion of buyers, sellers, new entrants, the threat of substitute products and overall competitive rivalry. A further well-established framework – the 7S is then used to help broaden thinking about the overall enterprise, with a particular focus on values. The discussion includes use of the John Kotter “dual operating system” (“Accelerate”, Harvard Business Review Press, 2014), to engage willing volunteers in organisations to speed the implementation of change. Following the broad assessment of the “As Is”, there is a switch to considering future scenarios and strategic themes to guide the development of the capabilities required for continued success in the changing world. A particular case is made for establishing a transparent linkage between the overall Mission, Core Values and Vision for an enterprise and the initiatives people are asked to spend time on. As a means of reducing the risk of “unintended consequences” the use of the “future wheel” technique is recommended.  The agility discussion closes with consideration of adaptive planning and rolling forecasts (including ranges of possible outcomes) as means of preventing the planning process becoming a barrier to change.