A 6P Framework

Chris Nichols

Once we thought that strategy was a planned and deliberate thing: you analysed, set a destination and monitored. Now things do not seem so sure. Ideas of complexity thinking, which have influenced the natural sciences for decades, are now being explored in the management sphere. The consequence is that a less mechanistic, less certain, view of organisational life is gaining ground. Increasingly writers are describing organisations as the product of the conversations and gestures that happen in them. Analysis has a part to play but it is through conversation that choices are communicated and implemented.

So the idea emerges that good strategy may actually stem from good strategic conversation. Conversely, flawed strategic conversations, may lead to flawed strategies. This proposition places a demand on strategic leaders and other facilitators of strategic thinking to know what good strategic conversation looks like and how you help it to happen.

In this article I draw on my strategic facilitation experience to offer a few – hopefully practical – pointers.

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