Here is an especially informative article co-authored by Michael Birshan and Jayanti Kar, featured by The McKinsey Quarterly which is published by McKinsey & Company. To read the complete article, check out the wealth of free resources, learn more about this remarkable firm, and register to receive email alerts, please click here.
* * *
We are entering the age of the strategist.
As our colleagues Chris Bradley, Lowell Bryan, and Sven Smit have explained in “Managing the strategy journey,” a powerful means of coping with today’s more volatile environment is increasing the time a company’s top team spends on strategy. Involving more senior leaders in strategic dialogue makes it easier to stay ahead of emerging opportunities, respond quickly to unexpected threats, and make timely decisions.
This is a significant change. At a good number of companies, corporate strategy has long represented the bland aggregation of strategies that individual business unit heads put forward. [Note: In a McKinsey Global Survey of more than 2,000 global executives, only one-third agreed that their corporate strategy approach represented “a distinct exercise that specifically addresses corporate-level strategy, portfolio composition issues.” For details, see “Creating more value with corporate strategy: McKinsey Global Survey results,” mckinseyquarterly.com, January 2011.] At others, it’s been the domain of a small coterie, perhaps led by a chief strategist who is protective of his or her domain—or the exclusive territory of a CEO.
This article draws on those interviews, as well as our own and our colleagues’ experience working with numerous executives developing strategies, adapting planning approaches, and running strategy capability-building programs. We offer three tips that any executive can act on to become more strategic. They may sound deceptively simple, but our interviews and experience suggest that they represent foundational skills for any strategist and that putting them into practice requires real work. We’ve also tried, through examples, to present practical ways of acting on each suggestion and to show how doing so often means augmenting experience-based instincts with fresh perspectives.
[The co-authors then suggest and explain three specific and practical suggestions that will help the leaders of any organization (whatever its size and nature may be) to think more strategically.]
* * *
To download the complete article, please click here.
Michael Birshan is a principal in McKinsey’s London office, where Jayanti Kar is a consultant.
The co-authors wish to thank Emma Parry for her contribution to the development of this article.
[…] Bennis BloombergBusinessweek Deconstructing Executive Presence John Beeson Harvard Business Review How to become more strategic: Three tips for any executive Michael Birshan and Jayanti Kar The McKinsey […]