Strategic Reflex

“Strategy is about marrying ideas and capabilities with intuition and daring”

John Ralston Saul

We know that the volatile, uncertain and unpredictable business climate is not a temporary phase and that we have entered a new lasting era. Yet, in spite of our extensive knowledge, sophisticated tools and a growing pool of intelligent analysts, advisors and consultants, corporate executives and government officials can no longer sleep peacefully at night.

Have we then seen the fall of the corporate strategy and vision engineering empire? After all, if everything is volatile, why bother spending time and effort on setting strategies and defining a vision? Why not concentrate on cutting costs, getting more effectiveness out of the sales force and product development?

We believe that the current environment, on the contrary, has accentuated the need for devising strategies and sharing them throughout the organization. In the new uncertain climate, strategy can no longer be limited to creating the right content, implementing efficient processes for planning and execution and devising the relevant tools and metrics. These tasks are still necessary, but more than ever, companies need to inculcate all levels of their organization with a “Strategic Reflex”.

For practically fifty years since the late 60s, we saw a continuous stream of new concepts in strategy formulation of which a few notables are the product portfolio, value chain and core competencies. Each new concept has built and enriched the business strategy discipline and has thus assisted executives in crafting a vision and a future for their organizations.

In the past few years, however, we have not seen any major breakthroughs in strategy concepts and what has been coined as new is either a re-packaging of old principles or interesting concepts which have yet to prove their practical applications (we set aside digital strategies).

So what is the value proposition that CEOs and senior executives should now expect from the strategy discipline in general and strategy consulting industry in particular? Are there new practical concepts that will help executives steer their organizations to a solid vision of the future?

Maybe, maybe not. While the idea of breakthroughs cannot be discounted and efforts to develop new approaches should not be abandoned, the future of strategy practice is less about new revolutionary concepts than it is about instilling a Strategic Reflex into the corporations at all levels.

Getting advice on strategy will be less about hiring corporate strategists or remunerating teams of consultants to produce strategic evolution scenarios and blueprints on how to achieve them, than it will be about seeking high value-added assistance to unleash the power of Strategic Reflex and creativity inherent in most of an organization’s personnel.

We do not imply that executives should delegate the strategy and vision creation task, but experience has shown that even the best strategies fail dismally when they are not shared and understood. And the deeper this understanding penetrates within an organization (Strategic Reflex), the more robust will be the corporation’s chances of success in the face of volatility and uncertainty.

We already see the advancement of this reflex in “native digital” corporations and among the millennials, but we believe a deeper penetration is fundamental for organisations’ prosperity.

There will still be the need for applying the tools and techniques developed for corporate and business unit strategy, customer strategy and business innovation, but the added value companies should seek from their strategy advisors should be less on what the next big concept will be, than on how to endow as large a part of their organization as possible with the necessary Strategic Reflex.

Strategic Reflex is defined as the capacity of an organization as a whole to understand and grasp the company’s strategic environment and the orientation it is taking. The deeper this reflex is embedded within the levels of the organization, the more robust is the company’s chances of success in the face of uncertainty and volatility.

Strategic Reflex does not mean that every employee becomes an expert in strategy and it certainly does not imply endless training workshops on strategy. Strategic Reflex implies that the company culture, organization and processes :

• • Enable the employees to understand the company’s strategy and objectives;
  • Promote exchange (formal and ad hoc) between the employees on the topic; and
  • Encourage them to seek an improved understanding of their company’s environment (markets, clients, competitors) and its implications on their competencies and work.