It’s not about predicting the future, but to make it possible to imagine multiple futures in creative ways that heighten our ability to sense, to shape and to adapt to what happens in the years ahead of us. Farsightedness or Strategic Foresight is not what to think about the future, however, to figure out how to think about it.
How often does management presents strategic plans, cost & revenues estimates, budgets, investments and scenarios which seem to be not feasible, because the basic assumptions are wrong? How often do we fool ourselves with “spreadsheet management”?
Since the 1980s-1990s we have seen not that many new tools & techniques within the area of strategy and competitive intelligence. Research of SCIP during the last couple of decades confirms this. We still speak of Porter’s Five Forces, Where-to-Play & How-to-Win, Strategic Sweet Spot Analysis, Strategy under Uncertainty, Porter’s Four Corners Analysis, Extrapolation, Key Success Factor Analysis, Scenario Planning & Analysis and SWOTI. Most managers, professionals and leaders are familiar with these tools and techniques.In this article I argue for a totally new way of looking at strategic planning & competitive intelligence. And how I was able to implement this at our company.
In our Intelligence Briefing “How many SIPs does your organization face?” we explained the SIPs, ‘Strategic Inflection Points’. These SIPs are not easy to spot and you can’t hide from them. There are several strategy models that can be used to identify these SIPs: Strategy under Uncertainty, Strategy as Active Waiting, Where-to-Play & How-to-Win, Porter Five Forces and more. We need this kind of strategic models to understand the competitive arenas and to get access how you can best deploy your resources and competencies there.