Resumen “Reflecting on the Strategy Process”

There is a difference between consultants, academics and managers. He puts an example in where
there are two characters in a story, an elephant (which refers to the STRATEGY) and the blind people
(which refers to Consultants, academics and managers.)

Consultants: defines them as hunters, seeking husks and trophies.

Academics: Photo safaris, by maintaining a safe distance from the animals they expect to observe.

Explain the evolution of “strategy” from the perspective of 10 “schools”.

1. Design School: A Process of Conception

a. This is the original perspective, fitting the internal strengths and weaknesses, and
external threats and opportunities. Strategies should be clear, simple, and unique.
2. Planning School: A Formal Process (1974-1980)
a. Most of the assumptions of the Design School assumptions are true but the process is
not just cerebral but formal. Having clear steps for the completion of the strategy
(Objectives, budgets, programs and operating plans). Also, in this school staff planners
replaced senior managers.
3. Positioning School: An Analytical Process (1980s)
a. Strategy is reduced to positions selected through formalized analyses of possible
situations. In here the planners become analysts, this became very lucrative to
consultants and academics. Where they could access hard data and promote their
discovering to journals and companies.
4. Entrepreneurial School: A Visionary Process
a. The process is centered in the chief executive, the process arised from the intuition.
Strategies shifted from precise designs, plans or positions to a metaphor. Every
organization need the vision of a creative leader.
5. Cognitive School: A mental Process
a. Strategies are more cognitive, meaning that is most likely to be devoleped as a mental
process.
Strategic management is a community of explorers, competing for discoveries, withc backers eager
for results and a public that demands answers. Basically there are many theorie of which strategic
theory is correct, but it all depends of the point of view, and the time of whet he research was made.
Having 10 types of schools doesn’t mean the cant realte to each other these are the examples in
which the blending of these schools may have different approaches.

“Strategy formations judgmental designing, intuitive visioning, and emergent learning, It is about
transformation as well perpetuation; it must involve individual congition and social interaction,
cooperative as well as negotiating; and all this must be in response to what may be a demanding
environment.”