PLEASE READ THIS ARTICLE and HELP ME TO ANSWER THE QUESTION AT THE END

All executives know that strategy is important. The plan is typically supported with detailed spreadsheets that project costs and revenue quite far into the future. This is a truly terrible way to make a strategy. It may be an excellent way to cope with the fear of the unknown, but fear and discomfort are an essential part of strategy making.

In fact, if you are entirely comfortable with your strategy, theres a strong chance it isnt very good.

Comfort Trap 1: Strategic Planning

Virtually every time the word strategy is used, it is paired with some form of the word plan, as in the process of strategic planning or the resulting strategic plan. The subtle slide from strategy to planning occurs because planning is a thoroughly doable and comfortable exercise. Even board members, who are supposed to be keeping managers honest about strategy, fall into it.

Comfort Trap 2: Cost-Based Thinking

The trouble is that planning-oriented managers tend to apply familiar, comfortable cost-side approaches to the revenue side as well, treating revenue planning as virtually identical to cost planning and as an equal component of the overall plan and budget. Except in the rare case of monopolies, customers can decide of their own free will whether to give revenue to the company, to its competitors, or to no one at all. Companies may fool themselves into thinking that revenue is under their control, but because it is neither knowable nor controllable, planning, budgeting, and forecasting it is an impressionistic exercise. The only variable amount in the revenue plan is the difference between new subscription sales and cancellations at the end of existing contracts. Similarly, if a company has long order backlogs, as Boeing does, it will be able to predict revenue more accurately, although the Boeing Dreamliner tribulations demonstrate that even firm orders dont automatically translate into future revenue.

Comfort Trap 3: Self-Referential Strategy

This trap is perhaps the most insidious because it can snare even managers who, having successfully avoided the planning and cost traps, are trying to build a real strategy. In identifying and articulating a strategy, most executives adopt one of a number of standard frameworks. He distinguished between deliberate strategy, which is intentional, and emergent strategy, which is not based on an original intention but instead consists of the companys responses to a variety of unanticipated events. Mintzbergs thinking was informed by his observation that managers overestimate their ability to predict the future and to plan for it in a precise and technocratic way. Instead, most use the idea that a strategy emerges as events unfold as a justification for declaring the future to be so unpredictable and volatile that it doesnt make sense to make strategic choices until the future becomes sufficiently clear. None of this is what Mintzberg intended, but it is a common outcome of his framework because it plays into managers comfort zone.

Escaping the Traps

Because the problem is rooted in peoples natural aversion to discomfort and fear, the only remedy is to adopt a discipline about strategy making that reconciles you to experiencing some angst. This involves ensuring that the strategy-making process conforms to three basic rules. There is no reason why a companys strategy choices cant be summarized in one page with simple words and concepts. At its very best, therefore, strategy shortens the odds of a companys bets.

Managers must internalize that fact if they are not to be intimidated by the strategy-making process. For that to happen, boards and regulators need to reinforce rather than undermine the notion that strategy involves a bet. Every time a board asks managers if they are sure about their strategy or regulators to make them certify the thoroughness of their strategic decision-making processes, it weakens actual strategy making. I have argued that planning, cost management, and focusing on capabilities are dangerous traps for the strategy maker.

Question 2 (READ THE Above ARTICLE FIRST!!!!!!)

You have been asked to suggest how the company you are working for should begin its strategic planning process. You have just read the article and have some ideas.

How to start the process?	Why?
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