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C H A P T E R 1 5
THE PRACTICE OF STRATEGY
Introduction
This chapter is inspired by the Strategy-as-Practice perspective in which four of the co-authors
have been involved. It features a different kind of material to that of many strategy textbooks,
Illustration 15.1
Wanted: Team member for strategy unit
1. What would be the attractions of this job for you? What would be the disadvantages?
2. What relevant skills and experience do you already have, and what skills and experience
would you still need to acquire before you were able to apply for this job?
The point of this illustration, as with Illustration 1.3 about Galina, Masoud and Chantal at the
beginning of the book, is to remind students that strategy is not just something an organisation
The second question obviously picks up this career planning aspect. This is a perfectly
legitimate issue, especially towards the end of the book. After all, our students are mostly
learning about strategy to further their careers rather than sheer intellectual interest. What is
worthwhile highlighting is how personal skills communications, teamwork, relationship
building, networking and so on are as important to this strategy role as more technical and
analytical skills.
Johnson, Whittington, Scholes, Angwin and Regnér, Exploring Strategy, 10th edition,
Instructors Manual on the Web
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Illustration 15.2
The Barclays Jam
1. What do you think were the direct and indirect benefits of Ashok Vaswanis initia-tives to
involve Barclays employees in the strategy?
The direct benefit was clearly the 650 ideas for business improvement. Even if these are not
2. If you were a smaller company, without the information technology resources of Barclays
and IBM, how might you be able to get employee input into strategy development?
The discussion of strategy communications, especially media and engagement, in Section
Illustration 15.3
Dinner with the consultants
1. Why are informal settings such as dinners useful?
2. Could the consultants have influenced the agenda in more formal ways? How?
3. If you had been one of the managers at the Italian restaurant, what would your views of the
meeting been?
This illustration not only prompts a discussion about the role of consultants but also encourages
students to think about the way in which the strategy development process may have informal
aspects to it as well as formal aspects.
Illustration 15.4
A tale of two workshops
1. Evaluate the design of the two workshops in terms of the guidelines in Section 15.4.1
The workshops at Hotelco illustrate well some of the issues raised in Section 15.4.1. These were
workshops with the intention of raising questions and challenges and developing new strategies
(especially the first workshop). The first workshop was relatively successful in this regard: it
employed appropriate concepts, had a specialist facilitator who encouraged open discussion and
helped diminish the normal strict hierarchy that prevailed. It was also apparently supported by
the CEO.
Question 3 asks the student to consider workshops in the context of a wider strategy
development process. They might, for example, see that workshops potentially have the
advantage of creating time for managers to have open discussions about strategy. They might
also see that, if conducted appropriately, such workshops might provide a context within which
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Illustration 15.5
Hypothesis testing at a bank
1. Select an important strategic issue facing an organisation that you are familiar with (or an
2. What data should you gather to confirm this descriptive hypothesis and how would you
collect them? Should the descriptive hypothesis be confirmed, what possible prescriptive
hypotheses follow?
The motivation for this illustration is, again, that strategy is a job that students might have to do.
Key Debate
What good are strategy consultants?
Students may have a lovehate relationship with strategy consultants. Because their work is
often highly paid and apparently glamorous, consulting is attractive to them as a possible career
run relationship with the client is helpful, both in terms of ensuring that the consulting team
understands the business and in reassuring the client that the consulting firm is not likely to risk
the relationship by doing a shoddy job. It is worth reminding students again that successful
strategy consulting or strategy work of any kind is not just about analysis, but the human side of
managing relationships as well.
Video assignment
Pearson
The video features Mark Anderson who is responsible for strategy and business development in
the international division of the Pearson group. He discusses his role as a strategist and the skills
needed as a strategist at Pearson. These issues are explained more fully in Section 15.3.
1. This question looks at what a strategist actually does the activities undertaken by Mark
Anderson in his role as a strategy and business development manager. Anderson is one of a
small team of people at Pearson that have a specific job title with strategy in it although
2. This question explores the skill set needed by a successful strategist and in particular how
Mark Anderson views this requirement. Of course the range of skills needed depends, to
some extent, on the exact strategic role being undertaken. For example, a general strategy
consultant from an external firm will require different skills to a specialist business analyst
Assignment 15.1
Researching a strategy career
This assignment is, again, designed to reinforce the sense that strategy is a kind of work some
people actually do, and not just top-level executives. Some students might well fancy
themselves as strategy consultants. The companies case studies of previous engagements will
give students a good sense of the range of strategy work in practice.
Assignment 15.2
Communicating strategy
Most organisations now have some kind of strategy statement. Examples are provided in
Illustrations 1.2 and 4.1. Indeed the students own university is likely to provide a good basis for
Assignment 15.3
Designing a strategy workshop
This assignment relates to the discussion of participation in Section 15.2.5 and workshops in
Section 15.4.1. In the first case of a major strategic threat, Figure 15.2 suggests a taskforce,
Assignment 15.4
Generating hypotheses and designing research
Here it would be good to guide students to the more extensive cases in the text and cases
Assignment 15.5
Business plans
A good way of learning to write business or strategic plans is to review and critique real ones.
The plans can be assessed against the criteria in Section 15.4.4. Often, though, students may
more easily appreciate the strengths and weaknesses of particular plans by inviting them to
compare different ones together.
Because students might easily get lost and frustrated by limited access it would be useful to
offer them some guidance about the Maryland archive. For example, they should browse by
business plan (rather than sector) and tick the unrestricted documents only box (even this is
not fail-safe). Companies with several documents available (two dots) are most likely to be
useful. You might want to point students in the direction of specific companies with extensive
business plans available: examples include 1-800-PartyShop, ActiveOutdoors and Fastchain.
Integrative assignment 15.6
Writing a strategic plan
This strategic plan exercise should consolidate learning from throughout the book, and is
therefore an appropriate one to finish with. Of course data will be missing, but, as in the
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Case Example
Setting Wychavons new strategy1
This is a case of public-sector strategising, so a useful supplement to the private-sector cases
that predominate. It speaks to the issue of who to involve in strategy (Section 15.2.3), in many
ways exemplifying the open strategy approach: there is both transparency and inclusion
described in this case. However, involvement requires active participation, and one irony of this
elected council is how hard it is to get ordinary citizens actively engaged.
1. What was effective about Wychavons 201216 strategy process and what was less
effective?
There are two contextual elements to consider here: first, the emergent nature of strategy
before the arrival of Jack Heggarty (things just happened); and the requirement for severe
cuts in expenditure (with some councillors wondering what the point of strategy is in these
1 The authors would like to thank Andy Bailey, University of Lancaster, for his suggestions on this
teaching note.
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Less effective perhaps were:
Representation of the electorate: for a democratically elected council, the role of the
politicians is rather weak. The strategy process is to an extent an officer-led rather than
politically-led process. Officers of course may be filling a vacuum left by an
inexperienced set of councillors (one third new), dominance of a single party (the
Conservative Party here) and the apathy of the citizenry (many council seats are
uncontested).
2. What would you do differently in designing Wychavons next strategy process?
Alternative ways of doing the strategy would probably flow from the discussion with regard
to the first question. Two elements would be important to highlight:
Increasing the participation and contribution of elected politicians, the parishes and
members of the public. Council leader Middlesbrough closes the case by saying:
Should we involve the public more? Is a more inclusive strategy a better strategy? We