Strategy Learning 102 - Articles
Next step in your strategy learning journey
Welcome back. Around 6-7 weeks back I had written a post on Strategy learning 101 which got a lot of love from many of you. I want to continue this series every couple of months to bring you new things to read, watch, listen and hopefully enjoy.
This time around I thought I would bring you a list of articles or posts that I have enjoyed reading over the years. They range from the topic of corporate strategy to strategy communication to meetings. So here goes nothing. Enjoy :)
Article 1: Four logics of Corporate Strategy - MIT Sloan
A really well structured take on Corporate strategy. A lot of us end up working in large corporations which have multiple business units. There is always this skepticism of what corporate strategy really is and how does it impact or should impact individual business strategy? This article provides an overview of corporate strategy based on different corporate structures.
One of my key takeaways from this articles is
A business unit’s corporate parent accounts for more of its financial performance than the industry where that business unit competes
Article 2: Is your Chief Strategy Officer set up for success - Strategy&
Strategy offices and officers are under a lot of scrutiny these days. While the firms have been able to successfully establish strategy functions, they have not been as successful in leveraging them for impact.
The article itself points out that
65 percent of CSOs (Chief Strategy Officers) think their priorities aren’t very clear.
Strategy function has not been immune to the recent round of organisation restructuring. It still remains to be seen how this function will evolve with more and more people proposing a larger role in execution apart from the current advisory function.
Article 3: No one knows your strategy - MIT Sloan
Another well researched article from MIT Sloan (MIT Sloan is one hidden gem for well researched academic business and strategy articles), this article explores where the largest drop off in strategy communication happens.
To everyone’s surprise (or not) it it right near the very top.
Our analysis of 124 organizations revealed that only 28% of executives and middle managers responsible for executing strategy could list three of their company’s strategic priorities
- MIT Sloan
It is a fun read and reveals many interesting observations such as how many initiatives do top leaders actually remember and what are the key reasons for this strategy drop off!
Article 4: Stop the meeting madness - HBR
This 2017 HBR article explores the inefficiencies of meetings. As meetings are core to corporate culture and therefore strategy, I found it useful to include it here.
We are in the midst of a meeting epidemic. According to the article-
Executives spend nearly 23 hours a week in meetings in the 2010s, up from less than 10 hours in the 1960s.
It gives some practical tips on how to get out of the meeting madness. Also the article has a link to an interesting meeting cost calculator!
Article 5: The Rule of three and four - BCG
This article was written by Bruce Henderson (founder of BCG) around 50 years back. While this rule might no longer be as widely applicable, it is astonishing that it shows up in so many mature stable industries still.
The core rule goes as follows:
A stable competitive market never has more than three significant competitors, the largest of which has no more than four times the market share of the smallest.
In short, in a stable market there will only be 3 major players with market share in the ratio of 4:2:1. I have seen this rule play out in a lot of industries - can you think of any?
I find this a fascinating and an interesting read.
So this was the round up for this week. I hope you have fun reading these articles. They cover different elements of strategy and provide some nice facts and opinions to ponder over. Do share what you found interesting or what you don't really agree with. See you next week :)
- Strategy Shots
Love this resource list! Some of those numbers feel unbelievable, but also spot on. You don’t realize how true they are until you actually start paying attention.
I was especially intrigued by the last one with the 3 players at a 4:2:1 ratio. Do you think social media is a stable enough industry to apply that kind of model?
The stats on meetings is very telling. At the start of my career, I used to hate them because there was never really anytime to execute the action steps agreed on in the meetings.