Strategic Thinking in the Era of MORE
Morne Mostert PhD
Welcome to the Era of MORE. More revenue. More customers. More value. More technology. And
more innovation. The paradigm of growth seems so intuitive to the modern mind that its very mention
appears superfluous. But ‘more’ also means more complexity. More uncertainty. More competitors.
More work. More choice. More upgrades. More dilemmas. More paradoxes. More dichotomies. More
oxymorons. And more conundrums. And this means more intensive demands on the mind of the
modern manager – a mind already heavily strained. And conceiving of intelligent strategy with such a
stretched mind taxes the intellect to the point of diminishing returns. In the Era of MORE, one
unintended consequence that is fast emerging is that of more strategic disengagement by the very
intellectual talent that organisations once held dear.
For strategic thinking is, of course, a form of thinking – a cognitive processing of multiple inputs with
endless interactions and possibilities. But in recent times, the art of thinking appears to have moved to
the background and has been surpassed in intention and intensity by a focus on emotional
competencies and a form of determination characterised by action-orientation. Critical self-awareness
and social interactive competencies are the staple of leadership development diets. This has created
yet another perfect storm for leaders: at the same time as complexity has exploded, cognitive
competence appears to have lost ground to affective skills development. This has left many managers
in tune and sensitive; but simultaneously deeply defective in their cognitive processing abilities.
In addition, owing to accelerating frequencies of change, strategy has come under severe and intensive
scrutiny. Gone are the days of determining 30-year (or even 10-year) plans communicated with
confidence to abiding, trusting and subordinate staff. Businesses have realised that the art of prediction
has grown ever more tenuous and plans are best done with the requisite environmental awareness and
responsiveness to market demands, the latter being vitriolic and occasionally apparently random. Not
only are things changing (if only that could change!), but the rate of change is accelerating. And that
makes strategy a delicate art-science.
Long-term, waterfall and top-down type strategy has dissipated in favour of heuristic and incremental
options. The very meaning of ‘long term’ has changed. Pre-designed, pre-packaged, pre-digested and
pre-prepared solutions all have desperately short shelf lives and leaders at the top are starting to be
challenged like never before.
At the same time, middle and even senior managers have come under increasing operational pressure.
The global financial crisis appears to have had little educational value for the way boards and executives
set targets. While many were hoping for a review of ‘the way we do business’, most boards and exco’s
appear to have interpreted the global slowdown as an annoying retardation in profit generation.
Targets have kept going up. Yesterday’s personal best is tomorrow’s minimum requirement as
organisations grapple with the legacy of the crisis, which is often considered less of a learning
opportunity, and more of a loss of opportunities for easy profit. For this reason, managers are under
increasing pressure to produce at rates hitherto unseen. And old methods of conceiving of strategy are
running out of steam. Cost cutting only gets you so far.
With the strategic space further threatened by observable and dramatic organisational failure, middle
and even senior managers have grown increasingly disillusioned with both strategy and erstwhile big
company job security. With severe company failures and retrenchments, employment at a large firm no
longer offers any more of a secure future than smaller companies or even self-employment. It is clear
that when the dynamics of spectacular failure and continuous change collide, faith in the certainty of
strategy wanes at a rapid rate. This has led many managers to a desperate sense of disengagement
from strategic formulation and review.
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Strategic disengagement is further exacerbated by a management response used by managers in selfdefence: as a countermeasure to strategic uncertainty and failure, managers often revert to their
specialisation, favouring the status of their technical expertise over the value of seniority accorded by a
management title. This in turn accelerates the lack of engagement in the complex realities as it
produces a constant reductionist specialisation. As a result, strategic blind spots increase in size and
contextual awareness further diminishes. Many managers have simply opted out of strategic
participation and passively await annual strategic translation into business unit objectives and
individual key performance indicators. In the interest of survival, many managers, once appointed for
their leading minds, have become passive patrons of whatever has been selected for them on the
strategic menu.
Such inward specialisation has led to yet another consequence of strategic complexity: the resulting
silo-sitis that besets many large organisations. Despite calls for holism, teamwork, shared mental
models and integration, large departments in the same organisation often appear as limbs from various
organisms – uncoordinated and governed by apparently separate decision-making processes. A vicious
and self-reinforcing cycle often leads to increasing strategic distance between separate business units,
and the customer suffers the consequence until a surprising competitor lures customers away with
promises of ‘simplicity’.
Even for those leaders convinced of the merits of scanning the strategic landscape (as opposed to
simple internal manoeuvring) the mental demands are growing. While the Era of MORE has meant
more customers, predicting the behaviour of those customers has become akin to star gazing and the
employment of crystal balls for certainty. Some may already be trying the magic 8-ball. Customers have
more power. They have more choice. And more competitors are broadening their focus over more of
the already complex market terrain.
Enhanced customer force in the customer-provider power differential has indeed also had positive
effects. Companies that are customer conscious know the extent of knowledge that customers can
access. Many companies are more respectful of customers and the design of products and their service
packaging has placed further mental drag on the available cerebral horsepower of leaders.
Paradoxically, despite an overly operational approach by many managers, strategic translation into
operability remains problematic. As managers increase their ability to ‘drill down and unpack’ their
specialisations, they become more operationally astute, but suffer greater strategic myopia. Operations
are measured with exactness (a curse of the analytical mind), and check boxes are ticked. But strategic
progress remains limited despite operational excellence. It is posited that it is precisely the strategic
disengagement that threatens operationalisation of strategic intent.
Thus the mind of the manager is under continuous attack from the vagaries, uncertainty and cunning
conundrums of participating in, formulating and reviewing organisational strategy. A clear need
therefore exists for coping with such strategic complexity.
The InCOME PRESCRIPTS 5i Framework
Making complex matters too simple is naïve and dangerous. Just as dangerous as over-complicating
simple ideas. The publishers Knowledge Resources have accepted the concept of a book on strategy
(edited by this author) that aims to engage the mind of the manager in a delicate dance of balance and
poise – on one hand the book wishes to communicate the full complexity of strategy, and on the other
it aspires to provide a practical framework for real-world application by managers with real-world
objectives.
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This strategy framework aims to address managerial strategy disengagement by offering an accessible
framework for both
- strategic review, for which we may consider current levels of consciousness and sufficiency and
our satisfaction with the status quo, and
- strategy formulation, for which we should consider in more detail the ideal state and its
departure from the status quo.
The framework is intended as an instrument for examining the strategic landscape and for that reason
contains multiple dimensions in the interest of broad-view environmental scanning. It is presented as a
mnemonic device which also serves as a meaningful acronym, in order to
- enhance recall and
- increase the probability of strategy-level discourse.
Thus the framework offers
- strategic PRESCRIPTS (fundamental principles) for
- InCOME (revenue)
- all tested against 5 implementation areas, or 5i’s
The dominant containing system for the framework is the Cognitive Suite of Competencies. While
affective factors cannot be denied, the framework aims to enhance the cognitive processing
competence in the field of strategy. Although strategy is always contained by leadership, the
framework does not primarily seek to examine strategy in the context of individual consciousness and
critical self-awareness for leaders. In its stead, the quality of strategic cognitive engagement is the
focus, with leadership in support.
One motivation for the subordination of leadership in this context is the democratisation of strategy in
emerging methodologies, such as design thinking. In addition to design thinking, other cognitive
elements in the containing system include systems thinking, future thinking, innovation/creative
thinking, analytical thinking and others.
Framework dimensions
The main thesis is that, to have a robust strategic discourse, organisations should at least take
cognisance of the following dimensions:
In novation, noesis, change & learning
C ompetitors
O utlook, opportunity, scope & potential
M arkets & customers
E conomic & financial
P hilosophical, Paradigmatic & ethical
R egulatory and voluntary coding
E nvirons
S ystemic interconnectedness
C ultural & social
R isk & mitigation
I dentity, image, brand & messaging
P olitical & geopolitical
T echnology & cybernetics
S ustainable futures
Each of the dimensions above is referenced again 5 application areas, known in the framework as the
5i’s. These are:
1. Insight – the aha! moments
2. Intention – what you really, really want
3. Initiative – what will enact the intention
4. Implications – systemic consequences
5. Investment – putting your money where your strategy is
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One clear criticism against such an extensive framework is that it simply presents too much complexity.
Here I am reminded of the excellent dialogue from the film Amadeus. Following a brilliant performance
of Mozart’s work the Emperor comments, “My dear young man … there are simply too many notes,
that's all. Cut a few and it will be perfect.” To which Mozart promptly replies, “Which few did you have
in mind, Majesty?” One might ask a similar question of those who wish to oversimplify strategy, “Which
dimensions could be easily removed without affecting the quality of the whole strategy?”
Strategic thinking (at the glaring risk of stating the patently obvious) is primarily strategic, not
operational. And it is furthermore a process of thinking; not doing. The quality of cognitive processing
calls for a requisite level of complexity for organisations wishing to thrive in the Era of MORE.
Dr Morne Mostert is a member of faculty at USB-ED in the cognitive domain, including Strategic
Thinking, Systems Thinking and Design Thinking for value chain improvement. He is the President of
World Leadership Day and the founder of Leadership Options. He may be reached at
[email protected]
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