Faced with a strategic level challenge, with millions at stake, the ceo needs to devise a strategy. I’m the chief consultant and I’m baffled.
Not at the challenge but at the lack of framework to design the strategy. it’s amazing how people have been making strategies since ages without actually having a framework.
How can we decide how much to invest without financial frameworks? Same with engineering frameworks to make engineering plans.
It seems that micheal porter in 1980 made the first framework for strategic planning with the give factors. But currently there are three popular frameworks for strategy:
1. Swot analysis
2. Scenario analysis
3. Porters five forces
These make the framework for strategy.
kings and generals of past must have known these at an intuitive level.
However I’ve just stumbled on a fifteen year old book called
Co-opetition
By barry nalebuff
And alan brabdenburger
the framework they offer for strategic planning is so revolutionary that so powerful that I’m baffled how it is still not part of the carricula of mba or even their mention on the internet is so faint.
The above frameworks are part of the co-opetition framework.
They talk about
1.players : this covers the five factors of porter and add one more called complementor in addition to customer, supplier, competitor, new entrants, substitutes.. They call it the value net
2. Added value: related to swot at your level, competitor and industry
3. Rule: related to scenario
4. Tactics: related to any thing we call strategy like blue ocean, that change the perception of players
5. Scope: this goes beyond current frameworks of strategy and incorporates system thinking in the strategic framework.
How has been powerful model evaded me for so long was that it wasn’t popular like porter or swot. Or may be it was because the Game theory it is based on is too complex and mathematical and the leaders are not mathematical people.
But replacing the current three models for strategy with co-opetion won’t be feasible right now and so it will have to be used as the fourth framework.
moreover it’s so complex that this exercise wouldn’t be possible without a consultant.
But that’s the future of strategic planning.
