After having summarized the criticisms that are given to strategy practice, strategy consulting and strategy education, I end this four-part series on ‘what is wrong with…’ with a critique on strategy research. Like the previous posts, what I write here is primarily based on what strategy scholars have written in the established academic strategy and management journals…
DetailsWith the risk of starting to sound like a grumpy old man, I will continue my ‘what is wrong with…’ series with two more posts: today on strategy education and next week on strategy research. The reason is twofold. First I want to show that there are a number of quite fundamental problems with the way strategy…
DetailsIn my previous post I summarized two generic problems that make that strategy as a field is a mess: that it is fragmented and that it is mystified. While these problems apply primarily to strategy practice, there are more problems. In this post I continue the critique and focus on strategy consulting. Also here, the caveats I…
DetailsAs a friendly scholar once told me: strategy is a mess. Before I will explain why I think this is quite an accurate summary, let me start with a caveat: in this post as well as the next few posts I will make overly generic critical observations about the field of strategy. I will discus strategy…
DetailsAs I hope to have demonstrated by summarizing the seven shortcomings of traditional strategy, it suffers from and leads to paralysis by analysis. By the great weight it puts on analysis, it severely limits the scope of an organization’s possible strategies and it rules out any creativity in strategy generation. Especially if the environment is…
DetailsThe last and perhaps most important shortcoming of the traditional strategy approach is that it underestimates and oppresses an organization’s creative potential. As stressed in the previous six shortcomings, Traditional strategy puts much weight on an objective and thorough analysis of the organization and its environment. It also puts much weight on prediction and on making…
DetailsA sixth shortcoming of traditional strategy is that it is based on an over-deterministic view on the relationship between an organization and its environment. As we can derive from the attention it pays to analyzing the environment, traditional strategy assumes organizations are bent to the dictates of what happens around them. As long as we know…
DetailsWith its strong emphasis on making well-informed choices and decisions, traditional strategy assumes the world around us is to a large extent predictable and that strategies can be planned quite well in advance. This reliance on prediction and planning is also evident when we see that the traditional strategy approach puts great weight on calculating the…
DetailsA fourth shortcoming of traditional strategy is that it overrates the importance of mission and vision statements. It suggests that every organization should have a clear vision and mission statement. That is, every organization should clearly express where they want to go and what kind of organization they like to be on that journey. The reason, so…
DetailsContinuing my discussion of the shortcomings of the traditional approach to strategy, today I will discuss its third shortcoming: that it treats strategy as a sort of multiple-choice exercise. The traditional approach has a strong focus on making the right choices and decisions. As depicted in the summary of in my earlier blog, the core idea…
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