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August 17, 2006
From the Ivory Tower
In Hyperions Office of Strategy, we contribute to Hyperions direction for the coming years. We look at the market, the trends in and outside the customer base, the Hyperion core capabilities and sketch various paths forward. Strategy is a funny thing. Everyone has a strategy, to some degree, but it seems hard to articulate at times.
The best way of looking at strategy, at least in my opinion, comes from Henry Mintzberg. In his excellent book Strategy Safari, he defines strategy not as an exercise done in the ivory tower, before tossing it over the wall to operations, but as a continuous process. We set out a high-level goal, more or less define the broad steps we would like to take, our letter of intent if you will, and fill in the details as we go. While we travel towards our goal, we will see the circumstances change and we need to take a shortcut or a detour. Organizations that take this view on strategy, are more adaptive and as a result, more agile. The fact we can adapt, instead of being hardwired towards our goal, helps us to reach our goals earlier. But equally important, this take on strategy means that we learn more. Through continuous feedback, we can reapply new insights in our next strategic increment.
Contrast this to the grand plan we all need to stick to. If the situation changes, tough luck, we cant. The program is in place. And only in the next big iteration of updating our strategy, every few years, can we apply those lessons learnt in the meantime.
In a sense, business performance management is the driver for strategy formulation. Lets explore that a little by talking about an automobile driver in a literal way. Continuous feedback through dashboards tells us about our mileage, the estimated time of arrival, our fuel efficiency, the temperature outside and the road condition. It tells us how weve been doing so far and how far we still need to go. Our annual budget has been complemented or even replaced by a rolling forecast. You can compare this to the navigation system, that doesnt only show us the newest roads and bridges, but actively tells us how to avoid the traffic jam. It helps us to adapt to changes in the traffic. Once in a while we consolidate and report. We bring the car to the shop, they hook it up to the system, check emissions, kick the tires, and we get a permit to drive another year with the car. On to the next journey.
Gone are the days of monster-size strategy sessions, run by the strategic planning departments. Welcome to the days of the information democracy, where strategy is consumerized, like so many other things. What we need is a framework, a big picture, a dream of where to go. With that, we can sit back and enjoy the landscape.
Hyperions office of strategy is no ivory tower as well. Most of our time we spend on the road. Visiting you. Discussing whats on your plate, and on ours, for that matter. Wed love to speak to you as well. Please let us know and react to this blog.
frank
Posted by Frank Buytenkijk at August 17, 2006 10:11 AM
