Strategic thinking

All strategy starts with strategic thinking

 Strategic Management =
strategic thinking + strategic planning
Porter (1987):
“There are no substitutes for
strategic thinking.
Improving quality is
meaningless without knowing
what kind of quality is
relevant in competitive terms.
Nurturing corporate culture is
useless unless the culture is
aligned with the company's
approach to competing.”
Garratt (1995) defines
strategic thinking as …
A process by which
senior executives can
rise above the daily
managerial processes
and crises to gain a
different perspective
of the organization
and its changing
environments.
Strategic thinking involves asking two critical
questions …

• First, what is the structure

of your industry, and how
is it likely to evolve over
time? . . .
• Second, what is your own
company’s relative
position in the industry?
(Porter, 1991)
Elements of strategic thinking
 A number of writers have talked about
the dictation between strategic thinking
and strategic planning.
Strategic Thinking and Panning are
analogous to
Right brain and left brain
 Strategic thinking
The purpose of strategic
thinking is to discover novel,
Thought process: imaginative strategies which can
Synthetic
re-write the rules of the
competitive game and to
Divergent envision potential futures
Creative significantly different from the
present

Strategic management

The purpose of strategic

Thought process:
planning is to
operationalize the Analytical
strategies developed Convergent
through strategic thinking,
and to support the Conventional
strategic thinking process
Strategic planning
Strategic Thinking and Planning
Strategic thinking
Synthetic
Divergent
Creative
Intuitive
Role of strategic Innovative Role of strategic
planning: to realize thinking: to seek
and support strategies innovation and imagine
developed through Strategic new and very different
strategic thinking Management futures that may lead a
process and integrate company to redefine its
these back into the core strategies and even
business Logical
its industry
Systematic
Conventional
Prescriptive
Convergent
Strategic planning
Heracleous (1998) made a distinction between
strategic thinking and planning by an analogy
to single-loop learning and double-loop
learning.
 Actions
Environment

o
Feedback

Single-loop learning: Adapting or adjusting as usual, without critically re-

examining guiding assumptions (O denotes Organization)

Actions
Environment
Critical thinking o
Feedback

Double-loop learning: Enlightened, creative action with results from critical re-
examination of guiding assumptions (O denotes Organization)