UPFRONT Koru-shaped strategy

When western business folk are asked to ponder the shape of strategy, they’re most likely to think triangle and top-down flow; in other parts of the world spirals or circles might dominate.
So why does that matter?
Well, according to Victoria University’s new professor of strategic management Stephen Cummings, it’s all to do with how preconception can influence and limit the way companies think about their own strategies for the future. Failure to even spot other strategic shapes can render companies less adaptive and slower on their feet.
Citing an historic ‘for instance’, he cites the strength of Maori resistance during the New Zealand wars as “in no small part due to some quite novel strategies” (trench warfare for starters) that the British colonial forces didn’t even recognise as such let alone learn from or adapt to.
Similar blind spots become evident when western companies look at other cultures, and Cummings argues we must re-think the conventional shapes of strategy if we’re to think more effectively about successful strategies for the future.
It’s useful, he says, to focus less on what strategy is than on what it does – and that is to orient and animate employees. Mission statements can but don’t always do that.
He gives several reasons why he believes it’s imperative to rethink the conventional shape of strategies.
1 Older top-down options are too slow and too costly. People at lower levels need to feel involved in strategic initiative rather than seeing it as something that happens to them.
2 Conventional shapes tend not to foster creativity or difference – following others’ best practice can lead to dumbing down of creativity impetus.
3 They also promote too narrow channel of ideas – better to broaden the flow by getting everyone involved.
Companies, says Cummings, need to broaden their strategic influences – they’re not going to stand out from the crowd by repeating past conventions. New opportunities are more likely to be spotted by the “boundary riders” who see the links between previously unrelated spheres.
He sees New Zealanders as blessed with sort of “arrogant naivety” that makes them “bold enough to do their own thing and curious or naïve enough to be intrigued with what else is going on in the world”.
While either trait can trip us up – arrogance could lead us to believe our No. 8 wire patch up will do just fine while naivety could see excessive pursuit of me-too fads from overseas – the combination could also be very positive.
“I’d suggest that [New Zealand companies] must creatively blend ideas from elsewhere with their own sense of place… We need to grow our own shapes of strategy and take good ideas from abroad that suit us and develop them to suit our own particular sensibilities.”
The challenge is thinking beyond convention and moving from best practice to next practice, says Cummings.
“The future shapes of strategies are in our hands.”