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  • 1.  Further concern arising from the crisis and implications for strategic management

    Posted 05-01-2009 04:28

    Sorry for cross-posting.

     

    It seems that concern arising from the crisis about the contribution of business schools, the MBA and strategy methods has not gone away. Amongst a continuing stream of similar items, Harvard Business Publishing reports a survey by NetImpact - MBA Students Aren't Learning to Avoid Future Crises in which 90% of grad-students blame short-term business focus [which sounds like the exact antithesis of 'strategic' management] for the crisis, and fewer than a quarter think their MBA courses would help them avoid future crises. We continue to get questions from management, their consultant advisors, the media, and the business school community, about why it was possible for such a major crisis to develop, given the sophistication of our strategy concepts and processes – but unless I have missed something, few suggested answers. One common claim is that it was all down to a lack of ethics, but that hardly explains the widespread failure – surely not all our corporations have been led by crooks?

     

    I would very much value further suggestions – specifically about the principles and tools of strategic management, rather than other topics -  from anyone who has been giving thought to the issue.

    ·         What is anyone doing in their class-room teaching, for MBAs or executives, to explain how good strategic management would have helped companies anticipate, prepare for, and cope with the crisis?

    ·         What are you telling folk they should do differently in future, and on what underlying theories or principles are those suggestions based? [links to books, articles or web-sites would be especially helpful]

    ·         And are these new ideas being embedded in changes to your core strategy syllabus? How is that being received?

     

    All I can offer so far is in a presentation given recently at business schools in S America, looking at the kinds of error companies made, both leading up to the downturn and after, and asking how existing strategy tools might have helped avoid those errors. [ These findings encouraged the re-write for the opening of my textbook, at smd-new-start, posted on before. ]

     

    If the links don't work, the URLs are ...

    NetImpact - http://hbsp.ed10.net/r/CIZ4/Y6430/EW3FLK/V0YZT/Z2T90/AZ/h

    Presentation - http://click.icptrack.com/icp/relay.php?r=-1&msgid=0&act=11111&c=234398&admin=0&destination=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.strategydynamics.com%2Fstrategy-lessons

    Book chapter - http://click.icptrack.com/icp/relay.php?r=-1&msgid=0&act=11111&c=234398&admin=0&destination=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.strategydynamics.com%2Fsmd-new-start  

     

     

    Kim Warren: London Business School

     



  • 2.  Further concern arising from the crisis and implications for strategic management

    Posted 05-01-2009 06:01
    Dear Kim and fellow MG-ED-DV members,
     
    I think that the issues raised in Kim´s message are of outmost importance to all of us.  That is why, a group of international scholars is preparing a Professional Development Workshop on the future of business education at this year's Academy of Management meeting in Chicago.  We welcome all of you to attend!
     
    Vlad Vaiman
    Reykjavik University School of Business
     
     

    Dear Colleagues,

    I would like to invite you to an All-Academy PDW dedicated to the issues of sustainable business education.  The workshop will take place at the annual Academy of Management meeting in Chicago on Sunday, August 9, from 14:30 to 17:00, at Hyatt Regency Grand A.  Please mark your calendars!

    Workshop Overview

    The main objective of this Professional Development Workshop is to attract the attention of business educators around the world to the growing mismatch between the needs of future generations of business managers and scholars and the predominant model of education in universities today.  Many urgent calls for changing business education have emerged in the last decade.  The focus of this PDW, though, is somewhat different, since its organizers and facilitators would like to consider the impacts of today's education on managers and scholars as it may affect future generations.   To put it more directly, the main objective of this PDW is to ask and attempt to provide possible answers to the following questions: is current business education sustainable?  Is it meeting the needs of current managers and scholars without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs?   What should be done to ensure sustainability of business education?  While many universities are incorporating concepts of sustainability to make their programs' content to be more "green", the organizers, facilitators, and participants of this PDW will argue that there is a strong need to question not only content but management processes and learning methods.  Specifically, in the workshop, three aspects of what can help make business education more sustainable will be examined in detail: the management of business schools using sustainable approaches, the curriculum of business education, and the pedagogy of business education in the future.

    1.  The management of business schools using sustainable approaches

    Highlights:

    Globalization transformed the way business is done and, by default, (should transform) business education.  For instance, as managerial functions become more interdependent, as international competition explodes, and as new markets open, business managers must adjust accordingly in order to be successful.   These changes force organizations to develop new types of managers who can deal with the increasingly competitive, multilingual, and interdisciplinary issues businesses face nowadays.  In order to succeed in preparing future managers and scholars who will be able to identify, understand and know how to interpret the predictably unpredictable future world, most contemporary business schools require massive reforms in their approaches to business education.  Otherwise, the gap between the current state of business education (supply) and the needs of future managers and scholars (demand) will be growing with the speed of globalization itself, thereby rendering many business programs virtually unsustainable, and ultimately, obsolete.

     

    2.   The curriculum of business education in the future

    Highlights:

    The creation of a business education curriculum that prepares managers to lead successfully in a world that meets their immediate needs without compromising the needs of future generations has begun to occupy numerous schools of business and business scholars worldwide.  Based on an analysis both of the sustainability and business literature as well as writings on curricular changes, there are at least five important components of a curriculum for sustainable business education that can be identified and will serve as the basis of the presentation in this section.

    First and foremost, the SBE curriculum must incorporate a new worldview of the economy and the place of business within it.  The second major curricular component is to incorporate an understanding and comfort with systems thinking and complexity – the interrelationships between the various parts of the economy, environment and social environments must be considered and addressed simultaneously.  Third, innovation and design concepts are critical to a SBE curriculum.  Fourth, the curriculum must incorporate a new approach to leadership.  Finally, students pursuing a SBE curriculum should learn new approaches to organizational structures, governance and measurement as the boundaries between social, for-profit and non-profit organizations becoming increasingly blurred. 

     

    3.    The pedagogy of business education in the future

    Highlights: Sustainability can be an intriguing and challenging topic for both business school students and instructors, not only because the topic can cover wide swaths of social, environmental, and economic course subjects, but that it can also be approached from a wide variety of perspectives using multiple processes of instruction.  Given its panoramic coverage, from a macro/global to a micro/personal view, sustainability perhaps should be taught and learned using more than one method, so that students are able to apply sustainability principles in the wide range of circumstances which they encounter throughout both their personal and professional lives.  Of course, different sustainability topics, student levels, and instructor skills will likely be variables in the selection and application of these multiple instruction methods.  This stream of the PDW will explore the opportunities and variables related to that important selection.        

    This PDW is aimed at business educators, business school administrators (deans, department chairs, etc.), junior faculty members, etc., across the functional, disciplinary, and geographic divide.

    Organizers and Facilitators

     

    Vlad Vaiman – Reykjavik University, Iceland – organizer

    Torben Andersen – Denmark Technical University, Denmark – facilitator

    Arno Haslberger – Webster University Vienna, Austria – facilitator

    Slawomir Magala – Rotterdam School of Management, The Netherlands – facilitator

    Scott Marshall – Portland State University, USA – facilitator

    Michael Morley – University of Limerick, Ireland – facilitator

    Nancy Napier – Boise State University, USA – organizer and chair

    Mark Starik – George Washington University, USA – facilitator

    Sully Taylor – Portland State University, USA – organizer and facilitator



    From: Kim Warren <Kim@STRATEGYDYNAMICS.COM>
    To: MG-ED-DV@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU
    Sent: Friday, May 1, 2009 8:28:03 AM
    Subject: Further concern arising from the crisis and implications for strategic management

    Sorry for cross-posting.

     

    It seems that concern arising from the crisis about the contribution of business schools, the MBA and strategy methods has not gone away. Amongst a continuing stream of similar items, Harvard Business Publishing reports a survey by NetImpact - MBA Students Aren't Learning to Avoid Future Crises in which 90% of grad-students blame short-term business focus [which sounds like the exact antithesis of 'strategic' management] for the crisis, and fewer than a quarter think their MBA courses would help them avoid future crises. We continue to get questions from management, their consultant advisors, the media, and the business school community, about why it was possible for such a major crisis to develop, given the sophistication of our strategy concepts and processes – but unless I have missed something, few suggested answers. One common claim is that it was all down to a lack of ethics, but that hardly explains the widespread failure – surely not all our corporations have been led by crooks?

     

    I would very much value further suggestions – specifically about the principles and tools of strategic management, rather than other topics -  from anyone who has been giving thought to the issue.

    ·         What is anyone doing in their class-room teaching, for MBAs or executives, to explain how good strategic management would have helped companies anticipate, prepare for, and cope with the crisis?

    ·         What are you telling folk they should do differently in future, and on what underlying theories or principles are those suggestions based? [links to books, articles or web-sites would be especially helpful]

    ·         And are these new ideas being embedded in changes to your core strategy syllabus? How is that being received?

     

    All I can offer so far is in a presentation given recently at business schools in S America, looking at the kinds of error companies made, both leading up to the downturn and after, and asking how existing strategy tools might have helped avoid those errors. [ These findings encouraged the re-write for the opening of my textbook, at smd-new-start, posted on before. ]

     

    If the links don't work, the URLs are ...

    NetImpact - http://hbsp.ed10.net/r/CIZ4/Y6430/EW3FLK/V0YZT/Z2T90/AZ/h

    Presentation - http://click.icptrack.com/icp/relay.php?r=-1&msgid=0&act=11111&c=234398&admin=0&destination=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.strategydynamics.com%2Fstrategy-lessons

    Book chapter - http://click.icptrack.com/icp/relay.php?r=-1&msgid=0&act=11111&c=234398&admin=0&destination=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.strategydynamics.com%2Fsmd-new-start  

     

     

    Kim Warren: London Business School

     



  • 3.  Further concern arising from the crisis and implications for strategic management

    Posted 05-02-2009 11:37
    Hi Kim,
     
    it seems to me that there is a tacit assumption in your questions that avoiding future crisis like the global credit crunch, depends mostly on giving students and managers better knowledge. Others in this debate have alternatively argued that it is about teaching better values.
     
    There is perhaps another way of thinking about this. Having spent quite some time researching the way traders in investment banks learn and work, I have been reflecting about this a good deal.
     
    About a year before Baring's Bank collapsed (as a result of Nick Leeson's activities), Peter Baring is reported to have told investors at an AGM "on the evidence of the last year it is really rather easy to make profits in the derivatives market". Given the well known relationship between risk and return in finance, a sensible question for any banker (or other senior manager) to ask when faced with above average returns is "what hidden risks are we bearing which might account for these returns?". A similar question would have been sensible to ask in those banks investing in securitised sub-prime mortgages. It seems unlikely that these people were lacking adequate education about risk return relationships, they were one the whole quite clever, so why did they fail to ask this question?
     
    As human beings our behaviour is driven by all sorts of complex goals, but often we are strongly driven to maintain positive feelings. This is constantly reinforced by the high importance western culture places on maintaining good feelings about oneself. If things are going well we are often remarkably resistant to feedback which suggests trouble is on the horizon. This is often especially true of people who have a track record of rapid and substantial success.
     
    For me the question is not how do we give managers the right knowledge to prevent this happening again, rather the question is how do we help managers build the kind of emotional resilience which makes it possible to face up to the hard questions we need to ask ourselves at times of success as well as failure.
     
    Of course this is not just a problem for bankers - most of us are having a really hard time facing up to the implications for our own behaviour and prosperity of really doing something about climate change. Once we really start to get to grips with this we might conclude that a global recession (by reducing energy use) has come just in time to buy a little breathing space, to bring about dramatic and permanent reductions in our carbon emissions.
     
    best regards
     
    Mark
     
    Mark Fenton-O'Creevy
    Professor of Organisational Behaviour
    Open University Business School
    Walton Hall
    Milton Keynes MK7 6AA
    United Kingdom

    e-mail: m.p.fenton-ocreevy@open.ac.uk
    (DL) +44 (0)1908-655804
    Fax: +44 (0)1908-655898



    From: Kim Warren
    Sent: Fri 01/05/2009 09:28
    To: MG-ED-DV@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU
    Subject: Further concern arising from the crisis and implications for strategic management

    Sorry for cross-posting.

     

    It seems that concern arising from the crisis about the contribution of business schools, the MBA and strategy methods has not gone away. Amongst a continuing stream of similar items, Harvard Business Publishing reports a survey by NetImpact - MBA Students Aren't Learning to Avoid Future Crises in which 90% of grad-students blame short-term business focus [which sounds like the exact antithesis of 'strategic' management] for the crisis, and fewer than a quarter think their MBA courses would help them avoid future crises. We continue to get questions from management, their consultant advisors, the media, and the business school community, about why it was possible for such a major crisis to develop, given the sophistication of our strategy concepts and processes – but unless I have missed something, few suggested answers. One common claim is that it was all down to a lack of ethics, but that hardly explains the widespread failure – surely not all our corporations have been led by crooks?

     

    I would very much value further suggestions – specifically about the principles and tools of strategic management, rather than other topics -  from anyone who has been giving thought to the issue.

    ·         What is anyone doing in their class-room teaching, for MBAs or executives, to explain how good strategic management would have helped companies anticipate, prepare for, and cope with the crisis?

    ·         What are you telling folk they should do differently in future, and on what underlying theories or principles are those suggestions based? [links to books, articles or web-sites would be especially helpful]

    ·         And are these new ideas being embedded in changes to your core strategy syllabus? How is that being received?

     

    All I can offer so far is in a presentation given recently at business schools in S America, looking at the kinds of error companies made, both leading up to the downturn and after, and asking how existing strategy tools might have helped avoid those errors. [ These findings encouraged the re-write for the opening of my textbook, at smd-new-start, posted on before. ]

     

    If the links don't work, the URLs are ...

    NetImpact - http://hbsp.ed10.net/r/CIZ4/Y6430/EW3FLK/V0YZT/Z2T90/AZ/h

    Presentation - http://click.icptrack.com/icp/relay.php?r=-1&msgid=0&act=11111&c=234398&admin=0&destination=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.strategydynamics.com%2Fstrategy-lessons

    Book chapter - http://click.icptrack.com/icp/relay.php?r=-1&msgid=0&act=11111&c=234398&admin=0&destination=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.strategydynamics.com%2Fsmd-new-start  

     

     

    Kim Warren: London Business School

     

     

    ---------------------------------
    The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an exempt charity in England & Wales and a charity registered in Scotland (SC 038302).


  • 4.  Further concern arising from the crisis and implications for strategic management

    Posted 05-04-2009 14:02

    Kim,

     

    I have been watching this discussion for awhile, and I very much appreciate your continued focus on what management education can offer students other than a simple (and perhaps simplistic?) focus on personal values.  I have spent close to 30 years working in or working with leaders in the Criminal Justice System, and I can say with full confidence that our prisons and community supervised caseloads are filled with good people who have done bad things.  We have very few truly evil people.  Rather, we have systems and contexts in which people have to make decisions and take actions.  Focusing on personal values, while not totally a waste of time, doesn't help students create the systems and cultures in their organizations where better decisions can be made.

     

    However, in your recent post you asked about "how good strategic management would have helped companies anticipate, prepare for, and cope with the crisis?"  I am not sure that these three things (anticipate, prepare, cope) are explicitly connected, and I'm not sure if strategic management needs to focus on all three.  First, while some anticipation for future events is necessary for speedy action, in order to look out far into the future we'd need some sort of crystal ball, which I don't think is possible (at least not in the more scientific world of management).  Rather, preparing the organization to have a solid core while being able to adapt to an ever changing world (the last two of your three) would be far more realistic.

     

    In my initial 3 year review of the literature (which I'm constantly updating and thank you for your recent link), what I learned is that the best organizations aren't basing their strategy on anticipating and reacting to crisis situations.  Rather, they create their own reality and their own future.  They are highly focused on what their organization is all about for the long-term, the goals they want to accomplish, and then they figure out how to accomplish this given various constraints in their internal and external enviornments.  In other words, the organizations first know what they need to Be, then they figure out what they need to Do.  From my experience, the current teaching of strategy has this backwards, and has entirely too much focus on what the organization needs to be Doing, rather than what it needs to Be. 

     

    With a focus on Being, we automatically provide a long-term focus for the organization's strategy.  We determine the Purpose and Values of the organization first, and then we discover the Goals that will allow the organization to achieve that Purpose.  You mentioned a few posts ago that the Balanced Scorecard doesn't necessarily provide an organization with the ability to predict crises, but, as I shared above, it isn't so much the predictive value that having a set of long-term, multi-focused goals provides, as it is about providing a long-term and balanced focus.  This helps create stability and clarity in the organization, which, I believe, is more important than being able to try to guess what will happen in the future. 

     

    One of the core beliefs of most American Indian philosophies is that life is filled with constant change.  It is only through our grounding in our foundational beliefs of who we are and a focus on what we want to achieve that allows us to easily deal with these changes.  In other words, it is a sense of Being that allows us to deal with changes and allows us to make better decisions about what we must Do in order to survive. 

     

    I believe that this is what strategy is all about: a focus on providing a foundation of Being, of who the organization is and what it is all about (BTW, the Cherokee word for "corporation" is the same word for "organization," "society," and "congregation"); and then a set of goals it wants to achieve so that it can insure the continued existence of the organization.  As such, strategy should be long-term focused, with a minimum of a 20 to 30 year focus of unchanging goals.  From the strategy comes our initiatives, the actions we will take over the course of 6 months, a year, or what ever time frame we choose or as the situation dictates.

     

    As I shared, what seems to be taught in most b-schools is that strategy is all about the courses of actions (Doing) that organizations will take over the next year.  They may say 5 year strategic plan, but if they are redone every year (as most are), then they are really only one year plans.  If you stop teaching this and begin teaching management students that strategy is all about creating an unchanging foundation of Being for the organization, I think you will go a long ways in helping to achieve the results that has been discussed on this list over the past few weeks. 

     

    Again, I appreciate your bringing us back to this valuable part of the discussion, and I hope that my sharing has helped initiate some new thoughts, ideas, and continued discussion.

     

    Make a Great Day!

     

    Gary Lear, President & CEO

    Author of the soon to be released

    Leadership Lessons From the Medicine Wheel: The Seven Elements of High Performance

     

    Resource Development Systems LLC

    Managing the Human Side of Business (sm)  

     

    gelear@rds-net.com   www.ResourceDevelopmentSystems.com

     

    (c) 2009 permission denied to use this post in any other forum or in any way other than on the discussion list that it was originally posted.

     



  • 5.  Further concern arising from the crisis and implications for strategic management

    Posted 05-04-2009 16:58
    Colleagues,
     
    Gary Lear presents a powerful paradigm; one I adopted over two decades ago when I lost an INC 500 software company because two rounds of venture capitalists in two years, and each demanded that we do it their way.  14 months from second investment, we were bankrupt.
     
    Gary Lear's words, highly condensed.

    >>> The best organizations create their own future.  They first decide what they want to Be, then figure out what they need to Do.
    >>> "Being" provides long term focus for strategy.  Purpose and values set context for goals to achieve purpose.  
    >>> Sense of being enables better decisions on how to change and survive.
    >>>     Strategy focuses on long term goals (20+ years).  Initiatives derive from strategy.
    >>>     Long term plans derive from being.  Annual plans by themselves lead to unmanageable businesses. 

     
    My language (another Gary)
     

    >>> Lear's "Being" is Strategic Identity (market context) plus Integrated Character (corporate context).

    >>> Goals, Identity, and Culture are long term desired states.  Foundational.
    >>> Goals are long term; objectives are near term.  Strategies enable pursuit of foundation; tactics enable adjustments to changing external realities.      
    >>>     Integrated Strategies use initiatives to drive operations toward the foundation.     
    >>> Objectives and tactics enable ongoing focus in spite of accelerating change in Human culture.
    >>>     "Unchanging foundations" cannot exist.  Everything changes, everywhere, all of the time.  No matter the source of lore, change is the single most important context of business and life.
    >>> Thus the key is a stable foundation that evolves smoothly (as opposed to erratic behaviors driven by annual planning)

     
    In yet another language, 22 of 25 elements of a corporate gestalt define stability; only 2 truly drive change - objectives and strategies/tactics.  On the other hand, all 25 will evolve over time including some values, perhaps excepting the mission.  (for the list, respond with "gestalt" in the subject line.) 
     
    The dynamics of modern markets seem to create a sense of urgency to adapt.  In fact, dynamic change requires a carefully crafted foundation first, then adaptation only when required.  Urgency typically reflects an incomplete paradigm or an ineffective process for identity, culture, and/or strategy.
     
    Best to all,
     
    Gary

    ...........................................

    Gary Lundquist

    Director@InnoSearchColorado.com

    Colorado Resources for Innovation

    303-840-9929 

    ...........................................

    GaryL@Market-Engineering.com

      Innovation of Business and

      the Business of Innovation™  

    -----Original Message-----
    From: Management Education and Development Discussion [mailto:MG-ED-DV@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU] On Behalf Of Gary Lear
    Sent: Monday, May 04, 2009 12:02 PM
    To: MG-ED-DV@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU
    Subject: Re: Further concern arising from the crisis and implications for strategic management

    Kim,

     

    I have been watching this discussion for awhile, and I very much appreciate your continued focus on what management education can offer students other than a simple (and perhaps simplistic?) focus on personal values.  I have spent close to 30 years working in or working with leaders in the Criminal Justice System, and I can say with full confidence that our prisons and community supervised caseloads are filled with good people who have done bad things.  We have very few truly evil people.  Rather, we have systems and contexts in which people have to make decisions and take actions.  Focusing on personal values, while not totally a waste of time, doesn't help students create the systems and cultures in their organizations where better decisions can be made.

     

    However, in your recent post you asked about "how good strategic management would have helped companies anticipate, prepare for, and cope with the crisis?"  I am not sure that these three things (anticipate, prepare, cope) are explicitly connected, and I'm not sure if strategic management needs to focus on all three.  First, while some anticipation for future events is necessary for speedy action, in order to look out far into the future we'd need some sort of crystal ball, which I don't think is possible (at least not in the more scientific world of management).  Rather, preparing the organization to have a solid core while being able to adapt to an ever changing world (the last two of your three) would be far more realistic.

     

    In my initial 3 year review of the literature (which I'm constantly updating and thank you for your recent link), what I learned is that the best organizations aren't basing their strategy on anticipating and reacting to crisis situations.  Rather, they create their own reality and their own future.  They are highly focused on what their organization is all about for the long-term, the goals they want to accomplish, and then they figure out how to accomplish this given various constraints in their internal and external enviornments.  In other words, the organizations first know what they need to Be, then they figure out what they need to Do.  From my experience, the current teaching of strategy has this backwards, and has entirely too much focus on what the organization needs to be Doing, rather than what it needs to Be. 

     

    With a focus on Being, we automatically provide a long-term focus for the organization's strategy.  We determine the Purpose and Values of the organization first, and then we discover the Goals that will allow the organization to achieve that Purpose.  You mentioned a few posts ago that the Balanced Scorecard doesn't necessarily provide an organization with the ability to predict crises, but, as I shared above, it isn't so much the predictive value that having a set of long-term, multi-focused goals provides, as it is about providing a long-term and balanced focus.  This helps create stability and clarity in the organization, which, I believe, is more important than being able to try to guess what will happen in the future. 

     

    One of the core beliefs of most American Indian philosophies is that life is filled with constant change.  It is only through our grounding in our foundational beliefs of who we are and a focus on what we want to achieve that allows us to easily deal with these changes.  In other words, it is a sense of Being that allows us to deal with changes and allows us to make better decisions about what we must Do in order to survive. 

     

    I believe that this is what strategy is all about: a focus on providing a foundation of Being, of who the organization is and what it is all about (BTW, the Cherokee word for "corporation" is the same word for "organization," "society," and "congregation"); and then a set of goals it wants to achieve so that it can insure the continued existence of the organization.  As such, strategy should be long-term focused, with a minimum of a 20 to 30 year focus of unchanging goals.  From the strategy comes our initiatives, the actions we will take over the course of 6 months, a year, or what ever time frame we choose or as the situation dictates.

     

    As I shared, what seems to be taught in most b-schools is that strategy is all about the courses of actions (Doing) that organizations will take over the next year.  They may say 5 year strategic plan, but if they are redone every year (as most are), then they are really only one year plans.  If you stop teaching this and begin teaching management students that strategy is all about creating an unchanging foundation of Being for the organization, I think you will go a long ways in helping to achieve the results that has been discussed on this list over the past few weeks. 

     

    Again, I appreciate your bringing us back to this valuable part of the discussion, and I hope that my sharing has helped initiate some new thoughts, ideas, and continued discussion.

     

    Make a Great Day!

     

    Gary Lear, President & CEO

    Author of the soon to be released

    Leadership Lessons From the Medicine Wheel: The Seven Elements of High Performance

     

    Resource Development Systems LLC

    Managing the Human Side of Business (sm)  

     

    gelear@rds-net.com   www.ResourceDevelopmentSystems.com

     

    (c) 2009 permission denied to use this post in any other forum or in any way other than on the discussion list that it was originally posted.

     



  • 6.  Further concern arising from the crisis and implications for strategic management

    Posted 05-06-2009 16:14

    <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Gary</st1:place></st1:city>,

     

    Thanks for condensing my post.  I think you did an excellent job.  I also think we are both on the same track.  Unfortunately, the research I've read seems to indicate that this track is infrequently taken by most organizations.  This was one of the huge differentiators that Jim Collin's shared from his two research studies.  Obviously this means that the majority of organizations aren't creating a foundation of Purpose, Values, and Goals and setting long-term strategies.  The question then is, "why not?"  Is it because most managers aren't being taught this?  Or perhaps is it because they don't have enough tools or the right tools for doing it?  Both?  Something else?

     

    If b-schools want to make a difference in creating a future where managers don't go down the path which some recently went down and had a hand in brining about our current economic situation, then perhaps b-schools need to answer these questions, and maybe even ask some additional questions.  I think it is these discussions that might prove valuable to hold on this list.   

     

    Make a Great Day!

     

    Gary Lear, President & CEO

    Author of the soon to be released

    Leadership Lessons From the Medicine Wheel: The Seven Elements of High Performance

     

    Resource Development Systems LLC

    Managing the Human Side of Business (sm)  

     

    gelear@rds-net.com   www.ResourceDevelopmentSystems.com

     

    (c) 2009 permission denied to use this post in any other forum or in any way other than on the discussion list that it was originally posted.

     

    From: <st1:personname w:st="on">Management Education and Development Discussion</st1:personname> [mailto:MG-ED-DV@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU] On Behalf Of Gary Lundquist
    Sent: Monday, May 04, 2009 4:58 PM
    To: MG-ED-DV@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU
    Subject: Re: Further concern arising from the crisis and implications for strategic management

     

    Colleagues,

     

    Gary Lear presents a powerful paradigm; one I adopted over two decades ago when I lost an INC 500 software company because two rounds of venture capitalists in two years, and each demanded that we do it their way.  14 months from second investment, we were bankrupt.

     

    Gary Lear's words, highly condensed.

    >>> The best organizations create their own future.  They first decide what they want to Be, then figure out what they need to Do.
    >>> "Being" provides long term focus for strategy.  Purpose and values set context for goals to achieve purpose. 
    >>> Sense of being enables better decisions on how to change and survive.
    >>> Strategy focuses on long term goals (20+ years).  Initiatives derive from strategy.
    >>> Long term plans derive from being.  Annual plans by themselves lead to unmanageable businesses. 

     

    My language (another <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Gary</st1:place></st1:city>)

     

    >>> Lear's "Being" is Strategic Identity (market context) plus Integrated Character (corporate context).

    >>> Goals, Identity, and Culture are long term desired states.  Foundational.
    >>> Goals are long term; objectives are near term.  Strategies enable pursuit of foundation; tactics enable adjustments to changing external realities. 
    >>> Integrated Strategies use initiatives to drive operations toward the foundation.
    >>> Objectives and tactics enable ongoing focus in spite of accelerating change in Human culture.
    >>> "Unchanging foundations" cannot exist.  Everything changes, everywhere, all of the time.  No matter the source of lore, change is the single most important context of business and life.
    >>> Thus the key is a stable foundation that evolves smoothly (as opposed to erratic behaviors driven by annual planning)

     

    In yet another language, 22 of 25 elements of a corporate gestalt define stability; only 2 truly drive change - objectives and strategies/tactics.  On the other hand, all 25 will evolve over time including some values, perhaps excepting the mission.  (for the list, respond with "gestalt" in the subject line.) 

     

    The dynamics of modern markets seem to create a sense of urgency to adapt.  In fact, dynamic change requires a carefully crafted foundation first, then adaptation only when required.  Urgency typically reflects an incomplete paradigm or an ineffective process for identity, culture, and/or strategy.

     

    Best to all,

     

    <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Gary</st1:place></st1:city>

    ...........................................

    Gary Lundquist

    Director@InnoSearchColorado.com

    <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Colorado</st1:place></st1:state> Resources for Innovation

    303-840-9929 

    ...........................................

    GaryL@Market-Engineering.com

      Innovation of Business and

    the Business of Innovation™

    -----Original Message-----
    From: <st1:personname w:st="on">Management Education and Development Discussion</st1:personname> [mailto:MG-ED-DV@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU] On Behalf Of Gary Lear
    Sent: Monday, May 04, 2009 12:02 PM
    To: MG-ED-DV@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU
    Subject: Re: Further concern arising from the crisis and implications for strategic management

    Kim,

     

    I have been watching this discussion for awhile, and I very much appreciate your continued focus on what management education can offer students other than a simple (and perhaps simplistic?) focus on personal values.  I have spent close to 30 years working in or working with leaders in the Criminal Justice System, and I can say with full confidence that our prisons and community supervised caseloads are filled with good people who have done bad things.  We have very few truly evil people.  Rather, we have systems and contexts in which people have to make decisions and take actions.  Focusing on personal values, while not totally a waste of time, doesn't help students create the systems and cultures in their organizations where better decisions can be made.

     

    However, in your recent post you asked about "how good strategic management would have helped companies anticipate, prepare for, and cope with the crisis?"  I am not sure that these three things (anticipate, prepare, cope) are explicitly connected, and I'm not sure if strategic management needs to focus on all three.  First, while some anticipation for future events is necessary for speedy action, in order to look out far into the future we'd need some sort of crystal ball, which I don't think is possible (at least not in the more scientific world of management).  Rather, preparing the organization to have a solid core while being able to adapt to an ever changing world (the last two of your three) would be far more realistic.

     

    In my initial 3 year review of the literature (which I'm constantly updating and thank you for your recent link), what I learned is that the best organizations aren't basing their strategy on anticipating and reacting to crisis situations.  Rather, they create their own reality and their own future.  They are highly focused on what their organization is all about for the long-term, the goals they want to accomplish, and then they figure out how to accomplish this given various constraints in their internal and external enviornments.  In other words, the organizations first know what they need to Be, then they figure out what they need to Do.  From my experience, the current teaching of strategy has this backwards, and has entirely too much focus on what the organization needs to be Doing, rather than what it needs to Be. 

     

    With a focus on Being, we automatically provide a long-term focus for the organization's strategy.  We determine the Purpose and Values of the organization first, and then we discover the Goals that will allow the organization to achieve that Purpose.  You mentioned a few posts ago that the Balanced Scorecard doesn't necessarily provide an organization with the ability to predict crises, but, as I shared above, it isn't so much the predictive value that having a set of long-term, multi-focused goals provides, as it is about providing a long-term and balanced focus.  This helps create stability and clarity in the organization, which, I believe, is more important than being able to try to guess what will happen in the future. 

     

    One of the core beliefs of most American Indian philosophies is that life is filled with constant change.  It is only through our grounding in our foundational beliefs of who we are and a focus on what we want to achieve that allows us to easily deal with these changes.  In other words, it is a sense of Being that allows us to deal with changes and allows us to make better decisions about what we must Do in order to survive. 

     

    I believe that this is what strategy is all about: a focus on providing a foundation of Being, of who the organization is and what it is all about (BTW, the Cherokee word for "corporation" is the same word for "organization," "society," and "congregation"); and then a set of goals it wants to achieve so that it can insure the continued existence of the organization.  As such, strategy should be long-term focused, with a minimum of a 20 to 30 year focus of unchanging goals.  From the strategy comes our initiatives, the actions we will take over the course of 6 months, a year, or what ever time frame we choose or as the situation dictates.

     

    As I shared, what seems to be taught in most b-schools is that strategy is all about the courses of actions (Doing) that organizations will take over the next year.  They may say 5 year strategic plan, but if they are redone every year (as most are), then they are really only one year plans.  If you stop teaching this and begin teaching management students that strategy is all about creating an unchanging foundation of Being for the organization, I think you will go a long ways in helping to achieve the results that has been discussed on this list over the past few weeks. 

     

    Again, I appreciate your bringing us back to this valuable part of the discussion, and I hope that my sharing has helped initiate some new thoughts, ideas, and continued discussion.

     

    Make a Great Day!

     

    Gary Lear, President & CEO

    Author of the soon to be released

    Leadership Lessons From the Medicine Wheel: The Seven Elements of High Performance

     

    Resource Development Systems LLC

    Managing the Human Side of Business (sm)  

     

    gelear@rds-net.com   www.ResourceDevelopmentSystems.com

     

    (c) 2009 permission denied to use this post in any other forum or in any way other than on the discussion list that it was originally posted.