We’ve created blog space to explore issues, share ideas and dialogue with you on strategic management at the intersection of theory and practice.  It is a place where  research, teaching techniques, and consulting approaches merge with real world application by boards, executives, and other professionals serving, for this blog’s intent, mid-sized organizations. We focus our attention here because it resonates throughout our teaching and consulting experience and there is much to discuss.

Leadership teams in mid-sized organizations are recognizing the importance to having a disciplined and systematic approach to managing strategy.  But to do so requires that the board, executives and key managers of an organization, as members of a team, accept and take on two difficult challenges:

Challenge # 1 > Making the commitment and devoting the necessary time and effort to becoming a strategic leader and thinker

Challenge # 2 > Formulating, cascading and ultimately implementing a strategic plan throughout the organization

Unfortunately much of the literature on strategic management and consulting work in this area assumes the former while devoting attention to the latter.  Ironically, this puts the cart before the horse.  The ability to lead and think strategically is prerequisite to accepting the challenges inherent in developing a strategy-driven organization.  Once this work is undertaken the two challenges become inextricably intertwined.  

The dual nature of this challenge has been understood since ancient times in military organizations, and in no small measure accounts for their success as strategy-driven organizations. However, this lesson has not been as universally understood in modern organizations as evidenced by relatively recent emergence of strategic management in the 20th Century as a discipline in business organizations and more general application in organizations beyond the realm of business. The widespread tendency to confuse business planning and budgeting with strategic planning has not helped matters.

Most very large organizations using a combination of necessity, trial and error experience and superior leadership have dealt with these challenges for many years--albeit with varying degrees of success. In contrast, small organizations with short-term focus on immediate issues and problems typically are stuck on the realization that this is “something we know we must get to, but now is not the time.

The Forum Audience

The situation in mid-sized organizations falls between these two extremes. Boards, executives and managers in many of these organizations are aware of the need to manage strategically, but often do not know where to start. Even more basic, they are not fully convinced they really will benefit from what they believe are the substantial time, effort, and resources required to develop a strategy-driven organization.
Forum is intended for board leaders, CEO's, executives and key managers who are well aware of the need to lead and manage strategically yet stymied in their efforts to either start the journey or stay on course. They may be overwhelmed be the burgeoning literature on all the various nuances of strategic management and how to apply it in their organizations. All too often they have tried to make a strategic plan only to have development activities lose momentum or, in extreme cases, fail completely.

Let’s Explore

We’ve addressed this situation in our teaching and consulting practice and now we’d like to share our ideas and see what you think.. First things first, the approach we have in mind is to do the following in our blog:
Identify activities that boards, CEO's, executives, and key managers can work on individually and as a team to address personal and organizational challenges like the ones stated above, but without the need to immediately begin a formal strategic management process.

In each of our first four posts we’ll suggest an exercise and explain how they help leaders initiate the strategy management journey. These exercises are as follows:

1. Develop a strategic management tool kit
2. Launch a strategically managed innovation project at the executive level
3. Develop a strategic information "radar" system
4. Assess your strategic processes:  Strategy, Leadership and Learning

An Invitation to Readers

We invite those of you confronting the double barreled challenge stated at the outset, whether as board members, executives, managers, staff, consultants, writers, or researchers, to comment on how you have observed, addressed, solved this dual challenge.

These challenges will only become more urgent as external pressures increase--and as the benefits and opportunities resulting from strategic management are more widely recognized. We have an entire generation of leaders in mid-sized firms that have not yet embraced strategic management as a driving force in their organization. We can pool our insights and ideas, and share the benefits of collective dialogue. So read on, join in and welcome!