Strategic Acting

Chapter Three
Selvy Priskila
51811492
 STRATEGIC ACTING
• Strategic acting is making decisions to move forward while
keeping a focus on the external and internal environment and
making adjustments and changes as necessary. It is focused
on what is needed, what is emerging, and staying focused on
the goal despite distractions.
• Engaging in thoughtful action that is connected to the ideas
and possibilities that emerge from strategic thinking and
which build momentum, value, and advantage for the
organization, department, or team.
Strategy Acting

Uncertaint
Volatility
y

Complexity Ambiguity
Create Conditions for Others’ Effectiveness
Balance Direction and
1 Strategic
Autonomy leaders today must create conditions
for others’ effectiveness commensurate with
these new competitive conditions.

The challenge now is to balance the need for

structure and predictability with the need for
decisiveness and action, to balance the structure
and predictability of a strategic plan (or
alternative plans, appropriate to different
potential future scenarios) with the need to
be decisive and take the action required to
achieve strategic objectives.

Exhibit 3.3 offers ideas about how you can

review the balance
between direction and autonomy in your own
organization.
Create Conditions for Others’ Effectiveness
Reward Appropriate Risk -
2 Taking
Even if you can’t change the culture of the whole
organization, like the executives in our example,
you can take steps to change the culture and
behavior of people in your part of it.
As a strategic
leader you can create protected space for
prudent initiative and risk-taking by those who
report to you, even if you may not enjoy
that freedom yourself.
Create Conditions for Others’ Effectiveness
Measuring Capacity for Risk
3 To put it differently, you may be able to point to
things you’ve said or done to specifically reward
appropriate risk-taking.

Others, however, may see it differently. They may

even see ways in which, from their perspective,
you’ve actually stifled it. So the extent to which
you encourage appropriate risk-taking ultimately
must be determined on the basis of the impact
of the totality of your behavior on others.

In that regard, it’s useful to consider a broader

set of behaviors than whether after the fact you
believe you’ve rewarded appropriate risk-taking.
 Make Strategy a Learning Process

Test Conduct Learn from Your

Organizational Business Actions

Theories Experiments
Assessing the Level of Uncertainty

represents true ambiguity

4 this situation is quite rare and relatively transitory, as
conditions tend to migrate to one of the other levels
over time.

“a range of futures”
3 Numerous outcomes are possible along a continuum
defined by key variables, as distinguished from the
few discrete scenarios found in Level 2.

“alternate futures”
2 the future can be described in terms of a very small
number of discrete scenarios.

a “clear-enough” future
1 enough strategic certainty for managers to develop a
single
forecast that is precise enough for strategy
development.
Conclusion
• Without strategic clarity and focus it is nearly impossible to make wise
decisions about tactics.
• Strategy is about clarity of focus; it’s about knowing what not to do as
well as what to do, and understanding that the what not can be just
as important as the what to.
• Acting with the short term and the long term in mind involves not just
deciding what future investments need to be made but also what
present assets need to be preserved.