Droning On: Strategy Isn't Dead, Not by a Long Shot...

Last week, blogger Mark Wilson, in a post entitled "The End of Strategy as We Know It," noted that strategy has become "too slow; too inflexible, too cautious; too protectionist." He bemoans "old-school strategy" and asserts that "businesses need to think strategically, on a daily basis...the solution is that "business leaders should focus on their organisation's innovation behaviour and how to build a culture that supports it."*

At least he got it partly right, unlike Saatchi & Saatchi's CEO Kevin Roberts, who said last year that "strategy is dead, the big idea is dead, management is dead and marketing, as we know it, is also dead." Then he really stepped into it: "Who really knows what is going to happen anymore in this super VUCA [volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous] world. The more time and money you spend devising strategies the more time you are giving your rivals to start eating your lunch."**

No one, of course, KNOWS what's going to happen in the future. But throwing up your hands is dangerous.

Take Jeff Bezos' revelation on 60 Minutes last night that amazon.com is testing drones for package delivery. If successful, small packages could be delivered within 30 minutes. Attention getting sound bite? Without a doubt.

But listen closely to Bezos: "I would define Amazon by our big ideas, which are customer centricity, putting the customer at the center of everything we do, invention." Looking deeper, Amazon Fresh, which started delivering groceries in Seattle several years, has now expanded to Los Angeles. Grocery customers typically want same-day delivery and, says Bezos, "if we can make this model work, it would be great because it extends the range of products that we can sell."***

Now this is "old school strategy." What Bezos recognizes that Wilson and Roberts miss is that effective strategies start with insight that defines a marketplace opportunity. Only then can you innovate around customer needs and then drive the necessary changes in systems, structure, skills and culture through the entire organization to meet those needs. Focusing on innovation unlinked to a defined opportunity and you become Xerox PARC, whose radical innovations (Ethernet, laser printers, the GUI and even the modern PC among others) were successfully commercialized by others, not Xerox.

No, "old school strategy" is not dead.

But those who dismiss it soon will be. Their rivals will eat their lunch.

*Wilson, Mark, "Is This the End of Strategy as We Know It?", One Last Thing (blog), http://thehumanlayer.com/issues/issue-7/22-one-last-thing/index.html#!

**"Strategy is dead says Saatchi & Saatchi CEO," The Drum, April 25, 2012, http://www.thedrum.com/news/2012/04/25/marketing-dead-says-saatchi-saatchi-ceo

***"Jeff Bezos Looks to the Future," 60 Minutes, December 1, 2013, http://www.cbsnews.com/news/amazons-jeff-bezos-looks-to-the-future/