Strategy tends to be inductive in nature and revolves around looking for relationships and patterns. These relationships and patterns help the strategist to draw conclusions from which they can make choices about events that may take place.
In last week's article, Leading Complexity and Managing Complication, I examined some of the key differences between leadership and management. The motivation for delving into this subject was that leadership has become a vogue topic and Line Managers often trip over themselves to establish their leadership brand. When this happens, key management skills get neglected, or their value overlooked.
When Line Managers lack the hard skills of process design and implementation or the ability to write sound policy, and instead try to lead their team to success by co-opting other people to solve their management problems, an engine of chaos is created. As an antidote, I am making the case for leader-managers. People who possess the ability to lead change and manage complexity.
If you have not yet read last week's column, Leading Complexity and Managing Complication, please take a glance as it has foundational concepts which feed into this article.
Planning And Strategy, When to Use Which
In lockstep with the growing popularity of leadership, and the drive of Line Managers to rebrand themselves as leaders of the organisation, is a boom in people wanting to focus on business strategy. In many instances this is resulting in a corruption of language as people come to think that either strategy is same thing as planning, or that by strategising they are necessarily planning.
Planning is a deductive process used by managers to achieve orderly outcomes. It does not necessarily produce change, but does provide clarity regarding what to do about events that will take place. It is a known future such as a customer calling in to make a sales enquiry.
Strategy tends to be inductive in nature and revolves around looking for relationships and patterns. These relationships and patterns help the strategist to draw conclusions from which they can make choices about events which may or may not take place. The futures are unknown, such as a change in public sentiment or the choices of other leaders.
