New Book Review: Rethinking Strategy
New book review for Rethinking Strategy, by Steve Tighe, Wiley, 2019:
Copy provided by author Steve Tighe.
The author mentions in his introduction that he feels this is the book he needed to read on his first day as foresight manager at Foster's. "As I sat at my desk on the first day in my new role I still clearly remember the feeling of being overwhelmed by the complexity of the task. Indeed, the one clear thought I had at the time was where do I start? The future appeared to me a vast, uncertain and unknowable black hole, seemingly awash with infinite possibilities. What was important? What was insignificant? And how would I know the difference? These were the questions running through my mind as I sat paralyzed at my desk surrounded by colleagues purposefully going about their roles.
"The difference, of course, was that my workmates fulfilled roles where the patterns of expectation and performance were well established. I, on the other hand, had seemingly stepped into the unknown. Such a role had not previously existed at Foster's, and corporate foresight managers were hardly prominent, so useful reference points were somewhat limited. What I needed at the time, and what every organisation needs today, is a framework for anticipating and preparing for future change. Something to help make sense of the patterns in the chaos." This book "aims to restore the loss of organizational agency by providing an innovative process for strategy development that is purpose-built for today's volatility and uncertainty."
"Central to this process is the art of developing scenarios and an appreciation for the anticipatory and transformational capacity that scenarios enable. Scenarios empower managers to generate original strategic perspectives, to reperceive the future environments in which they might have to compete, and to reconceive the organisation's role and functions within these futures. In doing so, internally generated scenarios help deliver that rarest of business assets, a unique strategic outlook that is fit for the future. Such an outlook is the source of organisational distinctiveness."
A couple months ago, I came across a social media post of an article by Dorie Clark published in Harvard Business Review entitled "If Strategy is So Important, Why Don't We Make Time for It?" Unfortunately, I found this article to be problematic, because for one, it doesn't even try to define "strategy". So I responded with the following comment: "if strategy is so important, why don't we define it?". Tighe, on the other hand, defines "strategy" at the outset: "a plan for action to achieve your goals in perceived future environments." While I tend to agree with Eisenhower that "plans are worthless, but planning is everything", in the sense that strategy should be an ongoing process, the author makes it abundantly clear throughout the rest of this book that this "plan for action" doesn't end. So in other words, strategy is actually planning for action to achieve one's goals in perceived future environments, even though the author later states that "strategy is not planning", mainly because, traditionally, the output of strategy is a plan. If you are at all confused by these last few statements, you have a taste of why Clark likely didn't even try to provide a definition.
The material of this book is broken down into thirteen chapters across three parts: (1) searching, (2) learning, and (3) doing. After discussing the trouble with trends, the author details the theories and methods, acquired and developed over the past 15 years, that underpin his approach to designing strategy, followed by a transition from this theory of strategic design to its actual application, describing an end-to-end process for scenario-based strategy development and using successful case studies to illustrate business practicality. Fortunately for readers, Tighe spends fully 60% in the latter part on doing, as theory tends to be where many strategy authors tend to spend the bulk of their time, never venturing into practical execution.
About ten years ago, I began my foray into strategy by reading extensively on the subject, quickly moving to scenarios due to the practicality these offer, and have in years since been contacted by authors such as Rita McGrath, strategy professor at Columbia Business School, to review their books. After reading through "Scenarios: The Art of Strategic Conversation" by Kees van der Heijden, I was shocked that a senior executive with whom I was working at the time on a client engagement was not familiar with the concept of scenarios. I still remember the response that he gave when I brought this topic up in the context of a software development effort I was leading: "What do you mean, scenarios?" After providing an initial explanation, he closed this subject matter quickly: "We don't care about that."
Tighe comments on this very topic. "In the eyes of my (half-serious?) colleagues I was now the resident fortune teller, palm reader, crystal ball gazer (insert cliché of choice here). The truth behind their jibes points to one of the reasons for the lack of scenario usage in business: serious attempts to understand the future are confused with efforts to predict, and since prediction isn't possible, scenarios are either dismissed as an exercise in futility or else just not taken seriously. 'Can't predict, so why bother?' seems to be the attitude, as those who carry the futurist title are regarded with a skepticism usually reserved for snake oil salesmen." As the author continues later, "leaders prefer the illusion of certainty. It allows them to act quickly and decisively, to convey perceptions of control."
As someone who has read extensively on the subject of strategy, my favorite chapters are chapter 8 ("How do I know what I think until I see what I say?"), chapter 10 ("'What's next?' – Anticipating the future") which comprises over 20% of the book, and chapter 13 ("Making sense of the patterns in the chaos"). Specifically, I appreciated the author's coverage in chapter 8 of the four stages of competence (unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence, conscious competence, and unconscious competence), the last of which leads to complacency. In chapter 10, I appreciated Tighe's matrices that plot relative degree of uncertainty versus relative degree of impact, and in which cases scenario development should actually be used for influencing factors. Lastly, in chapter 13 the author introduced me to the concept of memories that are not confined to the past, memories of the future, to an extent that I am interested in reading the related academic paper. Well recommended text for those new to scenario planning, and those searching for practicality in a sea of theory.