What value is strategy during the crisis?
What should strategy managers be doing today? Is strategy relevant during the current crisis? What is strategy responsible for at this time of greatest organizational need?
Right now, executives want rapid answers to basic operational questions. People are worried about their jobs. The planning horizon is days rather than years and it’s unclear how long the situation will last.
This is not the right time for formulating strategy. Strategy relies on stability in the business environment to set objectives and prioritize investment, followed by monitoring and adaptation.
However, there is a lot that strategy managers can do to add value to their organizations, based on their core skills and toolkit:
1. Analysis
Good decision making in an uncertain environment depends on the comprehensive and timely synthesis of available data and information to produce insights. Strategists excel at synthesis and can support operational and executive colleagues in gathering and analyzing dynamic situations, for example, about global supply chain contingencies as borders are closed in some countries around the world.
2. Options
Good decisions also depend on having well-defined problems, options, and criteria. Strategists are experts at structuring decisions and facilitating executive decision making. They have a key role to play in ensuring the quality of debate in the executive suite and accelerating response whilst preventing panic-based decisions with damaging long-term consequences, for example, to shutter facilities.
3. Communication
Keeping stakeholders informed and motivated is a key role for leaders during a crisis. Strategists should apply their expertise in setting out the corporate direction, plans and objectives to ensure shared understanding about the course of action being taken, working with colleagues in other functions to get the message out quickly.
4. Execution
Strategic priorities need to be set and then alignment established between functions and divisions to ensure effective execution. Strategists know how to develop and deploy scorecards and strategy execution frameworks, define and oversee programs of initiatives, and track performance, they can do that in the crisis response room.
5. Mission and Values
The strategy officer should uphold the mission and values of the enterprise through the crisis and ensure that key decisions are tested against these. This is critical to maintaining identity during the crisis and providing continuity into the recovery stage. For example, environmental principles that underpin the license to operate can’t be cast aside.
Strategy needs to step forward in a crisis. Business needs the strategic capabilities and frameworks of strategic management. This is strategy management at exceptional pace and compression, but there is no alternative.
