Organic View of Business Strategy

Currently reading "The Strategy Book" by Max McKeown. Great overview of the business strateg subject with a collection of business strategy graphics in the last section. I got the book to help align my consulting efforts. I figured a timeline of what to do when and what's next would be a great tool and template to follow with each client. But reading this book along with collaborating with talented folks in the field has reminded me of my early evolutionary biology training and something one of my professors said to me. "Out there" he said as he peered out the window and solemnly continued, "there are no species", to the shock of each student in attendance. Then he continued still staring out the window, "The species are in here" as he pointed to his head with ne finger. Very dramatic. And very insightful. The world just is. We humans cut and dice it up into little pieces that suit our needs. We decide what characteristics make a species, where one begins and one ends.

Business strategy, an evolved and evolving process is the same. It just is and we humans try to make sense of it by slicing and dicing. None of the many approaches to understanding strategy is wrong, they're just different views from different perspectives. And the approach used may vary with circumstance. The best approaches, in my opinion, are the more general, the 10,000 feet ones that include a tool kit to draw on. It's folly to lay out the tools you'll need in the order you'll need them in. Life isn't like that. You plan an approach and use the tools throughout the process. There are steps to building furniture, a hobby of mine. But when one uses a saw or hammer dons't have a pre set sequence. You grab them when needed and apply to the project.

I plan to delve a bit deeper into this as I develop my own business strategy graphics as process and tool set.

Image credit: from wikipedia, Schreiner, a joiner.

Source: de:Eygentliche Beschreibung aller Stände auff Erden, hoher und nidriger, geistlicher und weltlicher, aller Künsten, Handwercken und Händeln ..." / from Jost Amman and Hans Sachs / Frankfurt am Main / 1568 / thanks to www.digitalis.uni-koeln.de