Strategology

The foundation of the fourth chapter in the book Strategy Safari is on the ‘single leader’. The other chapters have been focused on management as a whole and all of those involved, but this particular school is instead focus on the individual and the mental processes such as intuition, judgment, wisdom, experience, and insight. All of these together promote one of the most important things- perspective. Perspective sets the tone and then inspires vision, which is the root of all businesses.

Most of the proponents in this field were economists. They understood the importance of entrepreneurship and how to implement it. Therefore, Karl Marx was a leading proponent of this school. He lauded entrepreneurs for being the catalyst of change in an economy. Another important proponent was Joseph Schumpeter. He presented the idea of creative destruction which helped to inspire and promote the ones with the business ideas, the entrepreneur’s themselves.

The basic model for this school comes down to one thing- vision. If it weren’t for someone’s vision, life would be very different. Vision starts out with a mental representation, then as time goes on, that vision adapts to what is realistic. All the steps taken from inception to the final product are all determined by what the end goal is. But, if at any point there needs to be a change, the vision is flexible and can be reworked. The premises for this model are as follows:

1) Strategy exists in the mind of the leader as perspective, specifically a sense of long-term direction, a vision of the organization’s future.

2) The process of strategy formation is semiconscious at best, rotted in the experience and intuition of the leader, whether he or she actually conceives the strategy or adopts it from others.

3) The leader promotes the vision single-mindedly, even obsessionally, maintaining close personal control of the implementation in order to be able to reformulate specific aspects as necessary

4) The strategic vision is thus malleable, and so entrepreneurial strategy tends to be deliberate and emergent

5) The organization is likewise malleable, a simple structure responsive to the leader’s directives, whether an actual start up, a company owned by an individual, or a turnaround in a large established organization many of whose procedures and power relationships are suspended to allow the visionary leader considerable latitude for maneuver.

6) Entrepreneurial strategy tends to take the form of niche, one or more pockets of market position protected from the forces of outright competition.

One of the main critiques of this school is that it spends so much time talking about the vision of the individual that it doesn’t give much time to talking about processes. Also, all this time that is spent on the individual, doesn’t leave any room to talk about what happens if that individual can’t make decisions or if he/she is untrustworthy.

This school, in our opinion was one of the most realistic school that we have read about. It didn’t have much structure, but it paid attention to the idea that a real human being has an idea that they want to pursue, not just some highly educated CEO.