MPM8107: Strategic

Management for Public

Sector Organizations
Dr. Ben Ngoye
Session 2

The strategic planning process

Defining strategic planning
 Strategic Planning
 a disciplined effort to produce
fundamental decisions and actions that
shape and guide what an organization
is, what it does, and why it does it
(Bryson 1995).
 Is about analysis - breaking down a goal
or set of intentions into steps,
formalizing those steps so that they can
be implemented almost automatically,
and articulating the anticipated
consequences or results of each step
(Mintzberg, 1994)
 Provides the formal analysis or hard
data that strategic thinking requires
How can one Approach
strategic planning?

1991
Strategy development by design
(Ansoff, 1991, 1994)
• Visioning (Mintzberg)
• Positioning (Porter)

Strategy as an emergent process

(Mintzberg, 1990, 1991)
• Emergent - Learning and adapting (Mintzberg)
• Emergent - Resources and Capabilities
(Barney, Teece, Pisano)

1994
Strategy by design - The
positioning approach
 Data driven – use of templates, analysis
 Big idea: fit between organization (strengths, weaknesses) and its environment
(opportunities, threats)
 Strengths
 Emphasis on facts rather than feelings?
 Conceptual linkages easier (logic?)
 Method can be institutionalized and taught/learnt
 More egalitarian (many participants) cf. visioning (top echelons) and incremental (politicos)
approaches
 Weaknesses
 Feelings masked as fact?
 Domination by analysts and planners who are removed from the implementation
 Conservative – limited by the boxes
Strategy by design - The
visioning approach
 Starts with envisioned goal or performance target
 Modest use of data, formal analysis
 Big idea: what do we have to do to get where we want to go?
 Better accommodation of the dynamism of the environment, less concern of the
environment/competitors – unless they present opportunities that can be grasped, capitalized
 Strengths
 Inspirational
 Opportunistic, action-oriented, yet also pragmatic

 Weaknesses
 Driven by the top
 Can be blind to emerging threats
 Cannot be institutionalized
Strategy as an emergent process -
The incremental approach
 Strategy evolves slowly, gradually, in marginal increments that result from fragile
and often temporary agreements between political factions, coalitions, stakeholders
 Big idea: Bargaining, compromise, political maneuvering
 Strengths
 Recognizes role of values, power and politics
 Flexibility – not committed to a particular strategy/set of tactics
 Pragmatic

 Weaknesses
 No identifiable strategy leading to confusion
 Can lead to the compounding of errors
 Not proactive, symptoms rather than causes, processes rather than solutions
Strategy as an emergent process - The
resources and capabilities approach
So which way?
 Deliberate
 To realize the specific intentions of senior management e.g. to attack and conquer a new market

 Emergent
 Convergence of actions taken by different persons over time
 Based on serendipity, recognition of unexpected patterns
 Learning is key

 So which is best?
 deliberate strategies are not necessarily good, nor are emergent strategies necessarily bad (Mintzberg,
1994)
 purely deliberate strategy making precludes learning, purely emergent strategy making precludes
control
 So both feet necessary - Learning must be coupled with control
 Umbrella strategy
 Process strategy
The classic 4-step process

STEP 3: How will you get

STEP 1: Where do you
STEP 2: Where are you there? (Objectives,
want to be? (Vision,
now? (SWOT) Development of Action
Long-term Goals)
Plan)

STEP 4: How will you

know you are getting
there/when you get
there? (PMM, Continuous
Improvement)
The pitfalls of strategic
planning
 SP rarely functions beyond the boxes to encourage the informal learning that
produces new perspectives and new combinations…rather encourages the
application of formal technique, without judgment and intuition…hence therefore
encouraging mere rearranging of established categories (Mintzberg, 1994)
 represents a calculating style of management, not a committing style…fix on a
destination and calculate what the group must do to get there…yet strategies take
on value only as committed people infuse them with energy (Selznick, 1957;
Mintzberg, 1994)
 Premised on several fallacies
 Fallacy of prediction
 Fallacy of detachment
 Fallacy of formalized process
Planning and implementation – an artificial
demarcation?
The idea of strategy as a choice cascade
(Roger Martin, The Execution Trap, YouTube, 24 mins)
But its not all bad
 Planning cannot generate strategies. But given viable strategies it can operationalize
them. This involves:
 Codification - clarifying and expressing the strategies in clear and specific terms e.g. capture new
market vs. 50% share of market for high-end X’s
 Elaboration - breaking down the codified strategies into sub strategies and ad hoc programs as
well as overall action plans specifying what must be done to realize each strategy
 Conversion - considering the effects of the changes on the organization’s operations

 Plans as tools to communicate and coordinate

 Plans as tools to gain support
 Role of planners
 As analysts
 As strategy finders by looking for patterns
 As catalysts by encouraging creative thinking about the future
Crafting (vs. planning) strategy…
Mintzberg’s approach
 Difference between periods of stability and periods of change…consequently:

 Manage stability – issue is not change but knowing when to change

 Detect discontinuity that may undermine the business in future
 Really know the business (beyond the abstracted facts and figures)
 detect emerging patterns and intervene when appropriate. create the climate within
which a wide variety of strategies can grow
 Reconcile change and continuity - be able to sense when to exploit an established crop of
strategies and when to encourage new strains to displace the old
MOVING ON WITH OUR 4-STEP
PROCESS:
DIRECTION SETTING
 The 4 elements in Direction-
setting

VISION MISSION (OR VALUES BUSINESS

PURPOSE) DEFINITION
The business definition
 Defining the industry/sector, legal form
 Recall too the issue of SOE and their
diversity…
 Ownership: centralized,coordinating
agency, dual ownership, twin-track,
decentralized – which convey varying
flexibilities
 Staffed by public servants and secondees
from private sector (ratios important)
 Fully funded by government budget?
Dividends earned? A mix? – which affects
budgetary autonomy for operations
The Vision
 Concise statement of where the organization is
headed/where it wants to be
 Critical aspect not necessarily the substance
but rather
 Its presence
 Ability to communicate it
 Ability to implement it

 DISCUSSION QUESTION: How can we go about

developing a vision statement?
Mission statement
 Raison d’etre >>> what we are going to do and why

 A good mission statement will define

 The organization’s cause
 Who? What? Where?
 The organization’s actions
 What the organization does
 The organization’s (hopeful) impact
 Changes for the better that are hoped for

DISCUSSION: HOW CAN WE DEVELOP A GOOD

MISSION STATEMENT?
Organizational
values
 Set of beliefs that specify universal expectations and
preferred modes of behavior
 Defines the acceptable standards that govern the behavior of
individuals within the organization
 Reflect who you are and why you are there

 Point the way to purposeful action and approved behavior

Syndicate discussion
 Lets review our organizational
Mission, Vision and Values statements
in our syndicate groups
 Prepare and share in the group a
‘before’ and ‘after’ for your
organization’s M, V, V statements
MPPM strategy
Dr. Ben Ngoye