REINVENTING STRATEGY Using Strategic Learning to Create and Sustain Breakthrough Performance WILLIE PIETERSEN John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ▼ ▼ Copyright © 2002 by William G. Pietersen. All rights reserved. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. In all instances where the author or publisher is aware of a claim, the product names appear in Initial Capital letters. Readers, however, should contact the appropriate companies for more complete information regarding trademarks and registration. 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For more information about Wiley products, visit our web site at www.Wiley.com Acknowledgments viii Foreword xi PROLOGUE The New Leadership Challenge xv INTRODUCTION A Journey of Discovery 1 A New Game • From One-Time Change to Continuous Adaptation • The Need for Practical Tools • From the Front Lines to the Classroom CHAPTER 1 The New Playing Field 9 The Three Leadership Questions in the New Economy • Understanding the New Economy • Eleven Hallmarks of the New Economy CHAPTER 2 The Challenge of Change 27 “Shift Happens” • The Sigmoid Curve • Leaping to the Second Curve v CONTENTS CHAPTER 3 The Search for an Answer 40 Starting with Strategy • Strategy as Making Choices • The Dead End of Strategic Planning • The Learning Organization • Complexity Theory • The Adaptive Enterprise: Nature as Teacher • The Killer Competencies CHAPTER 4 The Strategic Learning Process 57 The Four-Step Process • Implementing Strategic Learning as a Leadership Process • Step One: The Situation Analysis ( Learn ) • Step Two: Strategic Choices and Vision ( Focus ) • Step Three: Align the Organization ( Align ) • Step Four: Implement and Experiment ( Execute ) CHAPTER 5 Winning the Battle for Insight: Doing a Situation Analysis 69 No Substitute for Insight • Vision versus Insight • The Golden Rules for Situation Analysis • Searching for the Scoop • How to Do It • Customers • Competitors • The Firm’s Own Realities • Industry Dynamics • The Broader Environment • Case Study: A Situation Analysis of Med-Surg CHAPTER 6 Defining Your Focus 105 A Winning Focus Begins with Insight • The Meaning of Focus • Making the Strategic Choices • Customer Focus • The Winning Proposition • Five Key Priorities • Simplicity Is Not a Shortcut • The Arithmetic of Business • Vision CHAPTER 7 Aligning the Organization 127 Clarity of Focus • Identification of Systemwide Gaps • Aligning the Levers of Your Organization • Getting the Business System to Work in Sync • Your Organization as a Unique Ecosystem • Measures and Rewards • Structure and Process • Culture • People vi CONTENTS CHAPTER 8 Transforming the Culture 148 What Is Culture? • Cultural Persistence and Change • Culture at the Corporate Level • Six Myths about Corporate Culture • The Importance of Starting with Strategy • When Culture Fights Strategy • When Culture Supports Strategy • What It Takes to Create a Cultural Change • The Right Starting Point • A Sustaining Process • The Adaptive Culture • Knowledge Sharing as a Crucial Value CHAPTER 9 Overcoming Resistance to Change 184 Getting from A to B • Pitfalls of Change Leadership • An Equation for Successful Change • How to Lead Change: Six Golden Rules CHAPTER 10 Implementing and Experimenting 210 The Power of Mistakes • Fostering Innovation through Experimentation • Experiential Learning: The After-Action Review • Strategic Learning 365 Days a Year CHAPTER 11 Strategic Learning as a Path to Personal Growth 220 Emotional Intelligence • The Elements of EQ • Strategic Learning for Personal Renewal • Learn • Focus • Align • Execute • “The Proof of the Pudding Is in the Eating” • Two Real-Life Leadership Credos CHAPTER 12 Creating an Environment for Success 249 SOURCES 261 INDEX 266 ABOUT THE AUTHOR 272 Contents vii T he Strategic Learning concept presented in this book owes a lot to the two great learning laboratories that have shaped my ideas. The first was my two decades as a CEO. These years infused in me a strong sense of pragmatism. Life in the trenches, I discovered, is always messy. So the most important question to ask about any business idea is simply, Does it work? In these pages, I’ve tried to capture some of the ideas that do work, so that my colleagues in business leadership may benefit from them. My second learning lab has been the five years I’ve spent at Co- lumbia Business School as a teacher, consultant, and researcher— an opportunity to step back from the fray and try to make sense of it all. Columbia has been the avenue to a second career for me and a catalyst for my personal reinvention. I’ve received wonderful sup- port and encouragement from many colleagues at the school. In particular, I’d like to thank my good friends Bill Klepper and Mike Fenlon for their rich and generous contributions to my thinking, as viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS well as Victoria Marsick of Teachers College, Columbia University, especially for her scholarly guidance on learning theory. For the past five years, I have also had the great privilege of serving as chairman of the board of trustees of the Institute for the Future. This has been an education in its own right, for which my thanks go especially to the Institute’s president, Bob Johansen. Bob’s inspiring ideas, unstinting support, and wise advice have con- tributed enormously to this book. As every teacher knows, teaching is the greatest way to learn. I have learned a lot from the participants in the many programs I have taught, ranging from young and eager MBAs with their probing questions to seasoned executives with their no-nonsense chal- lenges. I owe them all a debt of thanks, but I’d like to express my ap- preciation especially to the people from CGNU, Chubb, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, Ericsson, Henry Schein, Inc., International Spe- cialty Products, SAP, and Sony. Strategic Learning has been applied, battle-tested, and honed in workshops with executives from all these companies. Responsibility for the content and ideas in this book is entirely my own. However, I could not have written it without the profes- sionalism, dedication, enthusiasm, and tireless work of a wonderful creative team. On the writing side, I initially had the expert help of journalist Alex Prud’homme. With Alex I formed the basic structure of the book and set out its key ideas. I am indebted to Alex for constantly pushing me to develop the stories and examples. After Alex left the project to join the staff of Talk magazine, Karl Weber, who had been serving as an editorial advisor, seamlessly took up the task of assisting me with the writing. Karl’s admirable writing skills helped him do a marvelous job of turning the work in progress into a final manuscript. He also developed a keen under- standing of the concepts involved and proved to be a valuable sounding board and intellectual sparring partner. On the research side, I had the invaluable help of Jeff Kuhn, an adjunct professor of organizational learning at Teachers College, Columbia University. Jeff and I often work together on Strategic Learning workshops. Thus, Jeff was also able to bring a keen pro- Acknowledgments ix fessional eye to the shaping of the manuscript. I’m grateful for his insights and suggestions. In addition, Jeff provided skillful work in developing many of the case studies. Thanks also go to my literary agent, Judith Ehrlich of Linda Chester & Associates. Judith has been a wonderful and very caring ally. She expertly steered the project from the development of a pro- posal to finding the right publisher and has remained engaged and committed throughout the process. My editors at John Wiley & Sons have been a pleasure to deal with. At the start, I worked with Karen Hansen, who provided su- perb guidance. Later, Airie Dekidjiev took over the project with en- thusiasm and expertly piloted it through to publication. Her help and advice have been invaluable. I leave till last the support of family. Writing a book, I’ve discov- ered, is an all-consuming project. One’s personal life must often go on hold when wrestling yet another revision into shape. Without the help of family, the effort would be nearly impossible to sustain. Many thanks to my grown-up kids, Chris and Sally, who kept rooting for me all the way. For more than a year, every conversation we had included a “How’s the book going, Dad?” (I think it’s done now, kids.) Even my sister Phoebe in far-away South Africa has been cheering me on from the sidelines. This affection and support from my family has sustained and inspired me. Finally, there is my wife Laura. Herself an author, Laura has been a pillar of support and understanding. She has also demon- strated a wonderful knack for injecting just the right idea at just the right time. And her sense of humor keeps me on an even keel, never letting me become too discouraged when things go wrong. Thank you, Laura. W ILLIE PIETERSEN New York, NY November 2001 x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS W illie Pietersen’s Reinventing Strategy fills a genuine void be- tween organizational learning and strategy, without the cum- bersome jargon of either field. In these early years of the twenty-first century, it has become increasingly clear that the old ways of creating and implementing strategy no longer work. At the Institute for the Future (IFTF), we’re reminded daily about today’s frenzied pace of change, most obviously in technology but also in the social, economic, and po- litical spheres. No wonder traditional methods of strategic plan- ning, which tend to assume that the future is more predictable than it really is, have largely failed. Consequently, finding ways to transform companies into adap- tive organizations able to respond intelligently to an ever-changing environment has become the top priority for business leaders. Reinventing Strategy offers a proven process for doing just that. It is a wonderful mix of theory and practice, plus commonsense rea- soning that works—for all the right reasons. Willie Pietersen’s background makes him an ideal guide to this xi FOREWORD TEAMFLY Team-Fly ® new process. He is both a gifted teacher and a practitioner—a pro- fessor of the practice of management at Columbia Business School with decades of experience at the helm of global companies. Think of Willie Pietersen as a player-coach. Having played the game of business at the big-league level, he has the respect of current play- ers and understands the realities they face each day. Thus, Rein- venting Strategy has the feel of a coach’s notebook, an energizing guide to the creation and implementation of winning strategies— not just once, but repeatedly. I got to know Willie Pietersen at a time of intense pressure for both of us. Willie was the chairman of the board of trustees of IFTF, while I was leading the largest research program at the Institute. An emergency forced the then-president of the Institute to leave us abruptly. I was the only easy choice for his replacement, but at first I was not enthusiastic about being president. During the accelerated search process that followed and the first months after I accepted the presidency of IFTF, I really got to know Willie as well as the principles of Strategic Learning he presents in this book. I learned that Willie is guided by principles. I once called him for advice about a sticky issue involving confidential information con- cerning two competing companies that were both clients of IFTF. Willie helped us articulate the issues, reminded us of the bedrock principles involved, and guided us in the process of learning how to draw the line between competitors clearly and fairly—without sac- rificing the business interests of any party involved. Perhaps the most valuable lesson I’ve learned from working with Willie Pietersen has to do with the crucial importance of in- sight. At IFTF, we focus on foresight—the art of forecasting the al- ways uncertain future. Willie Pietersen is all about translating foresight into insight—understanding today’s business environ- ment better and faster than competitors, so as to gain a crucial strategic edge. Most important, Willie has created a practical process to turn insights into action. Reinventing Strategy is an insights-to-action guidebook, leav- ened with engaging, revealing stories drawn from real-life compa- nies in many industries that vividly illustrate key concepts. In its pages, Willie Pietersen will teach you how to learn, focus, align, and xii FOREWORD [...]... successful companies are run, and it presents managers with both opportunity and peril The following statistics (adapted from Creative Destruction by Richard Foster and Sarah Kaplan) provide a call to action: ▼ By 19 87, 61 of the companies listed in the original Forbes 10 0 in 19 17 had ceased to exist Of the remaining 39, only 18 had managed to stay in the top 10 0 ▼ In the 19 20s and 19 30s, the turnover rate... chairman) to a nonprofit youth orchestra, an urban housing program, and a Florida drug-rehabilitation project—have applied it to their own specific needs The process has also shown itself to be a valuable framework for personal growth and leadership development, as I discuss at some length in Chapter 11 , Strategic Learning as a Path to Personal Growth.” Thus, Strategic Learning is proving to be a powerful tool... will be to move from a single-channel to a multichannel approach Hence, the rush to launch online sales and marketing venues to complement traditional retail outlets—the socalled “clicks and bricks” strategy But here’s the rub: To remain competitive today while also preparing for tomorrow, it’s not simply a question of getting out of one strategy and into another Rather, you must decide how to maintain... companies who are trying to compete in the new economy For these managers, I want to offer this thought: In today’s turbulent environment there is no more powerful tool for the development of winning business strategies than superior insight And to achieve such insight and use it to create and implement breakthrough strategies again and again, a company must have a practical and proven process 4 A... of operating principles and a leadership process aimed at accomplishing this, which I call Strategic Learning It is designed to provide a practical way to transform staid, established organizations into fleet, adaptive ones Strategic Learning has four key steps—learn, focus, align, and execute—which form a self-reinforcing cycle that combines learning, strategy, and leadership into one organic process... competitors may be the only sustainable competitive advantage.” This was an arresting thought, but perhaps it didn’t go far enough Learning for learning s sake—which is where this idea might lead us—will not provide a sustainable edge The real challenge is to learn strategically, to build an organization that continuously learns new things and translates them into breakthrough strategies Strategic Learning. .. stop In today’s global, fast-changing economy, companies must keep making the leap to adapt from checkers to video games to Web-based adventure games and to whatever games will succeed these—over and over again Because the environment in which we operate is continuously changing, we must respond by continuously innovating and adapting to it Thus, the central challenge facing managers today is to create. .. their hands and say, “The market is complex and changing fast,” and leave it at that That’s not good enough One of the most important roles of today’s business leader is to be chief sense maker for his or her organization—the person to whom others look for a clear understanding of the competitive environment on which a sound winning strategy can be based To create a winning strategy, we must understand... produced a steady annuity Today, GE Engine Services offers customers like Southwest Airlines “power by the hour,” an online service that monitors engine performance in flight and tracks all maintenance and repair data in real time Customers use GE Aircraft’s Customer Web Center to purchase spare parts and to access technical publications and warranty records Airlines also gain access to online remote diagnostic... maintain your profit margins and to keep from being squeezed to death But such improvement alone merely allows you to remain in the game You’ll never save your way to success To win, you must go beyond cost cutting to produce genuine strategic innovation that creates new and better ways of serving customers The Resurgence of Brands As a result of these forces, the battle for the customer has grown much more . REINVENTING STRATEGY Using Strategic Learning to Create and Sustain Breakthrough Performance WILLIE PIETERSEN John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ▼ ▼ Copyright. New York, NY 10 158-0 012 , ( 212 ) 850-6 011 , fax ( 212 ) 850-6008, E-Mail: PERMREQ@WILEY.COM. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject. Learning: The After-Action Review • Strategic Learning 365 Days a Year CHAPTER 11 Strategic Learning as a Path to Personal Growth 220 Emotional Intelligence • The Elements of EQ • Strategic Learning