E-Book Overview
There are many parallels between the business world and the military world: both must always be wary of the competition; both must be able to adapt to rapidly changing conditions; and if either falters the results could be devastating. Yet while military leaders have employed essentially the same strategies for thousands of years, business leaders often feel the need to try the latest fad in an effort to capture lightning in a bottle and lead the company to success. In Strategic Navigation: A Systems Approach to Business Strategy, best-selling author H. William Dettmer explains how sound, proven strategies used by great military leaders from Sun Tzu to Schwarzkopf can also be easily and effectively used in the business world. Dettmer begins the book by introducing the conceptual framework of military strategy and maneuver warfare, which dates back over 2,300 years to the time of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. He first explains how the time-tested principles of war planning and military execution can be readily applied to non-military uses, such as commercial business, not-for-profit organizations, and government agencies, leading to considerable benefits in coherence and focus. Dettmer then introduces a logical, systematic tool set to help you translate the military strategy ‘template’ into action, which can then be applied to nearly any industry or business type. The system described by Dettmer is quick and easy to use, flexible enough to accommodate changes in the external environment, and supports the creativity of both strategists and executors.
E-Book Content
Strategic Navigation A Systems Approach to Business Strategy
H. William Dettmer
1
1 Traditional Strategic Planning
Where am I going? I don't know. When will I get there? I ain 't certain. All that I know is I am on my way.
—"Paint Your Wagon" (Lerner and Lowe)
S
trategic planning: the term implies that strategy formulation and planning go handin-hand. And in fact, that's the way strategy has been treated for the past 35 years. The practitioners of strategic planning have founded their efforts on a basic assumption: that the largely creative task of conceiving and formulating strategy can be standardized into a pedagogical series of actions—planning—with the effect that the desired results are both achieved and repeatable. Does this really happen? Let's take a closer look.
PLANNING AND STRATEGY Ask most people how they would define strategy, and they will usually give you the definition of a plan: "a direction, guide, or course of action into the future."1 Russell Ackoff defined planning as "the design of a desired future and of effective ways of bringing it about."2 But strategy is a pattern of behavior as well—the way things are done, but on a somewhat grander scale. Planning is one of the five classical functions of management: planning, organizing, staffing, leading, and controlling.3 So planning is one of those things that managers just do—"Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, managers gotta plan and plan till they die." But why bother planning at all? Why not just fly by the seat of your pants?
2
There are typically four reasons why organizations plan4: 1. To coordinate their activities 2. To ensure that the future is taken into account 3. To be "rational" 4. To control Basically, it all boils down to "control." They want to be captains of their own ship, masters of their fate. They want to be sure that they swim, even if others sink, and to do so they can't depend on fate. As Elbert Hubbard once said, "Positive anything is better than negative nothing." Any executive who answers to a higher authority, such as a board of directors, feels an obligation to control his or her operation. The other four functions of management, of which planning is the first, serve to satisfy this need for