Strategy workshop

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Strategy workshop
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Strategic ManagementAccording to Mintzberg

• Strategy as
• plan (intentional)
• pattern (realized)
• ploy
• position
• perspective
• The design school as a process of conception
• The planning school as a formal process
• The positioning school as an analythical process

• Two fundamental characteristics
• intended, deliberate, realized
• emergent, incremental, radical
• punctuated equillibrium

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Change

• Incremental change
• things change slowly over time, piecemeal
• Radical change
• sudden, disruptive or dicontinuous change,
  unanticipated
• technological,
• external
• often political
• economic

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Change

• Punctuated equilibrium
• transformational change, in which there is a
  fundamental change in strategic direction
• infrequent
• change of CEO
• technological change
• merger acquisitions

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Transformational
Flux
Incremental
Continuity
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Strategic ManagementAccording to Mintzberg

• Strategy sets direction
• can be blinders
• Focus efforts
• coordinations of actions
• no peripheral visions, taboos

• Defines the organization
• too simply (simulacra)
• Provides consistency
• creativity and innovativeness thrives on
  inconsistency

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The Positioning school

• The BIG guru here is Michael E Porter
• despite all criticism he is probably the most
  well known strategy guy in practice
• most firms practice Porter without knowing it
• Mintberg likes to refer to his book as a
  technique book
• roots in industrial organization
• other names Dan Schendel (Hofer Schendel) SMJ

• Is not dramatically different from Design and
  Planning, apart from ONE key point
• The school argues that only a few key strategies
  are possible in any given situation
• as positions in the economic market place
• a very marketing-based mind set
• Two generic strategies
• product differentiation
• focused market scope

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The key lie in the use of analysis to identify
the right relationships

• Analysis for paralysis

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Positioning school

• Controlled
• Conscious process producing full-blown deliberate
  strategies
• To be made explicit before
• Implemented
• The CEO is the strategist

• The notion of structure
• industry structure
• strategic position
• organizational structure

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The premises of the positioning school

• Strategies are generic, specifically common,
  identifiable positions in the market place
• The marketplace (the context) is economic and
  competitive
• The strategy formation process is therefore one
  of selection of these generic positionsbased on
  analytical calculation

• Analysts play a major role in this process,
  feeding the results of their calculations to
  managers who officially control the choices
• Strategies thus come out of this process full
  blown and are then articulated and implemented
  in effect, market structure drives deliberate
  positional strategies that drive organizational
  structure.

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Sources of the school three waves

• The first wave origins of the military maxims
• Sun Tzu
• von Clausewitz
• we bombard customers with marketing
  information
• we launch strategies
• hostile takeover
• attack opponents weaknesses
• major focused thrust
• planned withdrawal
• stretch opponents resources

• The second wave the consulting imperative
• the rise of strategy boutiques
• BCG growth-share matrix
• PIMS (Profit Impact of Market Strategies)
• The third wave the development of empirical
  propositions
• KNOW YOUR PORTER!!

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Porters five competitive forces
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Critique contribution

• Concerns about Focus
• too narrow
• politics
• Concerns about context
• bias towards big business
• Concerns about Process
• too much focus on calculation
• Concerns about Strategy
• narrow excludes perspective

• The role of positioning is to support the
  strategy process not to be
• Probably good when situations are established and
  stable
• Has opened up a huge arena for research and as
  such made a major contribution to SM