- Implement the strategies.
- Monitor implementation and revise existing strategies or develop new
strategies as necessary.
This model of the process of strategy formulation should allow scope for iter-
ation and feedback, and the activities incorporated in the model are all
appropriate in any process of strategy formulation. But the model is essen-
tially linear and deterministic – each step logically follows the earlier one and
is conditioned entirely by the preceding sequence of events. This is not what
happens in real life, where the formulation process is likely to correspond
more closely to Whittington’s evolutionary and ‘processual’ models.
The reality of strategy formulation
It has been said (Bower, 1982) that ‘strategy is everything not well defined or
understood’. This may be going too far but, in reality, strategy formulation
can best be described as ‘problem solving in unstructured situations’
(Digman, 1990), and strategies will always be formed under conditions of
partial ignorance.
The difficulty is that strategies are often based on the questionable
assumption that the future will resemble the past. Some years ago, Robert
Heller (1972) had a go at the cult of long-range planning: ‘What goes wrong’,
he wrote, ‘is that sensible anticipation gets converted into foolish numbers:
and their validity always hinges on large loose assumptions.’
More recently, Faulkner and Johnson (1992) have said of long-range
planning that it:
was inclined to take a definitive view of the future, and to extrapolate trend
lines for the key business variables in order to arrive at this view. Economic
turbulence was insufficiently considered, and the reality that much strategy is
formulated and implemented in the act of managing the enterprise was
ignored. Precise forecasts ending with derived financials were constructed,
the only weakness of which was that the future almost invariably turned out
differently.Strategy formulation is not necessarily a deterministic, rational and
continuous process, as was pointed out by Mintzberg (1987). He believes
that, rather than being consciously and systematically developed, strategy
reorientation happens in what he calls brief ‘quantum loops’. A strategy,
according to Mintzberg, can be deliberate – it can realize the intentions of
senior management, for example to attack and conquer a new market. But
this is not always the case. In theory, he says, strategy is a systematic process:
first we think and then we act; we formulate and then we implement. But we
also ‘act in order to think’. In practice, ‘a realized strategy can emerge in
30 l The conceptual framework of strategic HRM