Skip to Content

Corporations Need New Ways of Doing Strategy

Martin Reeves of the Boston Consulting Group continues his discussion of Your Strategy Needs a Strategy with Knowledge@Wharton.

One interesting takeaway is how a leader can use multiple strategic approaches across one organization.

Somebody needs to diagnose and segment these different approaches to strategy in order to determine which approach applies to which part of the organization. And somebody needs to disrupt–in other words, to say, “that approach to strategy is not the approach that we need right now.” Somebody needs to coach and deploy — pick the right people and develop them so that they can be deployed against the right approach to strategy. After all, each approach requires a different cognitive skill set.

We also talk about the need for inquisition, for questioning. That is critical where we can’t have a stable instruction set. In that case, leaders need to be really good at getting to the bottom of things by asking the right questions. All of this essentially defines the skill set of the ambidextrous leader.

Watch the interview here: