The Hindu Business Line : Future is what commitment collides with

What are the prerequisites of success? “A compelling vision, bold leadership, and decisive action.” While the combo may seem ideal and invincible, it can well be the recipe for phenomenal failures too, cautions Michael E. Raynor in The Strategy Paradox ( www.landmarkonthenet.com).

“The most successful strategies are those based on commitments made today that are best aligned with tomorrow’s circumstances. But no one knows what those circumstances will be, because the future is unpredictable.”

Future is what commitment collides with, and so take help from ‘strategic flexibility’, suggests Raynor. This is ‘the ability to change strategies,’ and it has four components, viz. anticipate, formulate, accumulate, and operate.

‘Anticipate’ with scenarios, he explains. “By creating a number of scenarios that define the ‘possibility space’ over a relevant time horizon, one can create a framework for discussing the future without having to stake future success on guessing right.”

The ‘formulate’ phase is about the optimal strategy for each scenario. Decompose each such strategy into its constituent elements, ‘the technologies, capabilities, or other assets’, both core and contingent. In the ‘accumulate’ component, the author speaks of committing to the core elements, and taking options on the contingent ones.

And the ‘operate’ phase demands a close monitoring of the environment, determining which optimal strategy is the most appropriate, and exercising the relevant options.

Both deliberate and emergent be, advises the author. The former approach is for shorter time horizons, and the latter, for the far future. “When it comes to strategy and the long term, uncertainty is the only constant, and choosing options over commitment is the most reasonable response to that uncertainty.”

The book wraps with an appeal for ‘the strategy of humility’. For, hubris can prevent us from admitting and submitting to the unfortunate fact that we cannot foresee everything that matters, as Raynor warns.

Prescribed read before you draw up your next strategy.

D. Murali

http://BookPeek.blogspot.com