Want to Be More Strategic? Think Content and Process

“The core of it is creating a strategic system that allows you to continuously match the firm — its capabilities and resources — to the environment that’s changing in its demands and opportunities,” said Thomas G. Cummings, professor and chair of the department of management and organization at the University of Southern California (USC).

Cummings is the author, along with his colleague Larry Greiner, professor of management and organization at USC, of Dynamic Strategy-Making: A Real-Time Approach for the 21st Century Leader. The book aims to help business leaders develop a more agile and responsive organization by creating a strategic system, rather than a strategy.

“The strategic system allows you to continuously assess the organization and its environment,” Cummings said. “It allows you to engage the organization at all levels in setting strategic direction. It allows you to implement it and continually modify it. In the absence of that system, this stuff doesn’t happen.”

The strategic system links the content of the strategy — the organization’s goals, key differentiators and structure — with the process of setting and implementing the strategy. It’s a process that happens continually in real time, rather than once a year.

“We don’t like the term ‘strategy,’” Cummings said. “It’s more a strategic direction. You’re continuously revising it, so you never get there because there is no there, there.”

In the past, the CEO and executive team developed strategy annually, often with the help of external consultants. While thorough, this development method failed to effectively incorporate the processes needed to implement, assess and revise the strategy. The result? Business performance suffered, as strategy often failed to translate from the C-suite to the shop floor.

“The big question becomes, how do you do it?” Cummings said. “How do you do it in a way that gets people involved, that gets participation across the organization, and how do you do it so that you’re continuously getting feedback on execution, implementation and making adjustments as the environment changes?”