A consultancy name Think Strategic a popular two word that often appear as titles of textbooks, article either academic or business. There are numerous materials written by authors on Think Strategic although there seem to be a silent crisis happening when the word strategic is used by people and organisations. Pondering on the word “strategic” has different school of thoughts on the definition that best fits changing business presentation of wordles actions.
So, there is a firm named Think Strategic UK Ltd. The founding of Think Strategic UK as a consultancy and education for schooling of business. At the heart of the ethos “A disruptor that Makes Impossible Possible.” Think Strategic UK is setting a school of though on the best way to construct strategic thinking in the application of strategy using a military perspective.
The infamous word Strategic brings to mind words like strategic objectives, direction, along with goals, and vision. In essences strategic poses a challenge for senior leaders and manager to set direction and action when a CEO does not clearly set a directional path it’s company should take. When talking about strategic vision a CEO should provide a panoramic view of “where the company is going and actions to proceed” a rationale for why this makes business sense for a company. A clearly articulated strategic vision communicates a CEO’s aspiration to staff and stakeholders and steer its energies of a company’s resource and capability in a laser direction.
A Strategic Synopsis
Strategic is centred on a company’s strategy construction; a set of action to outperform its competitors to achieve superior success. Strategy at its substance is too be different from its rivals – don’t do or can’t do. A key element of a company’s strategy should be 95% different that differ in many important respects – tactics and advantage. This mean that a firm should think outside of the box with their product and service offering. Not just tweak products and services around the edge; but go fully out in the opposite direction. Stop being conventional!
Strategic is decided by the firm’s strategy. To think about strategic really needs laser focus on “Actions” founded in a firm’s strategy. A hammer should be taken to dig out from the CEO’s head the critical strategies to build and define strategic actions to enable a firm being different from it’s rivals. Forming strategic action is dug out of the CEO’s head to support a process of military crafting of four stages: designing a strategic vision, deciding intentions, constructing a strategy, and executing chosen strategy.
CEO Hammering over the Head – The Does: Be graphic, Keep it focused, Be sure the action to delivery is feasible. Indicate the directional path makes good business sense.
Laser Focus – Make the Impossible Possible
This ethos looks deep into the mindset of unyielding curiosity, resistance, and enthusiasm to determine if existing ideas and conventional thinking can be broken when it comes to deconstruct vague designs about “Strategy” and “Strategic”.
Think Strategic UK is going against all conventional practices by lasering in on these questions: 1. What established truth are limiting our think? 2. What if the current constraints were removed? 3. Are we defining the problem too narrowly? 4. Do CEO’s have a clear strategy action for their business?
Education Comprehension
What is missing from our understanding of a critical subject matter of military thinking? Military thinking of strategy and strategic is the founding of these two words which have common practices for business although there are chunks missing when it comes to doing constructive show and tell of strategy ideas in teams, companies, and organisations.
Why is military thinking lacking in business? Is blaming the CEO a first, when it comes to a firm’s strategy top priorities!
As a start military thinking into strategy is to clearly explain a business’s activities (actions), directions, and markets engagement. Businesses are short-changing themselves by not adopting military thinking to enable critical firm’s activities, directions, resource, and capabilities. A missing part is the conventional concepts that is not new or reinvented; it is missing from a firm understanding of how to apply these important concepts that can support the design, adoption of the firm’s strategy activities.
Making military thinking simple Think Strategic UK have laid out the missing chunk of concepts that are not been constructively adopted.
1.Competitive Advantage: a primary objective of a firm’s strategy to identify, create and sustain a competitive strategy.
2.Firm Growth: a concept of growth a firm can view as a collection of advice that explains how and why firms grow. Also looks at the resource that is combined within a firm.
3.Core Competence: a focus on what an organisation does particularly well. Is firms-specific collection of skills, insights, and capabilities that represents accumulated knowledge, organisational learning, and focused investment.
Military strategy is focused on achieving strategic actions through the use of military power, while business strategy if focused on achieving commercial action through the allocation of resource and capabilities to design products and services.
Is Command & Control Right Doctrine
Using military speak and use of Command & Control is still being researched to its effective and capabilities in military commands in the UK. Here is a definition of Command & Control:
Niven G, Dstl, UK (2021) The Anatomy of Command and Control: A Generic Functional Model.
Definition:
“Command: the authority vested in member of the armed forces for the direction, coordination, and control of military forces.”
“Control: the authority exercised by a commander over part of the activities of subordinate organisations, or other organisations not normally under his command, that encompasses the responsibility for implementing orders or directives.”
Why such a focal point on Command & Control?
A company, organisations have structures that operates like a military command have an organisational chart with a CEO as the head of the organisation. In a military command has a General or Commander only then it is given the title Command.
A context to Command & Control (C2) a dynamic and adaptive methodological process to design and execute shared action, whose purpose is to provide focus for people and organisations so they may integrate and expand their resource and activities to achieve desired actions. There are comparisons Command and Control that businesses could build to enabling strategy direction knowing the complexities businesses tackle to identify capabilities and resources, these are analytical to a CEO to understanding strategy design to its strategic actions.
A baseline for Command and Control is adopting military laser thinking on capability. A firm’s capability or competence is the capacity of a firm to perform internal activities competently. Capabilities are established and enabled through the deployment of companies’ resources.
Military laser thinking for capabilities: a forceful and adaptive methodology to design and execute joint actions. Encompasses essential functions, to creating shared awareness also responsiveness of command intention. Knowing allocation of resource to create effective assessing progress, recognising a firm to change approach to command and control. The plan of action.
Reflection: The interface between strategy and firm, where would command and control have a major impact on strategy thinking!
