CATEGORY

The fundamental challenge facing business leaders is how to drive performance into the future - the 'dynamics' of strategy. To tackle this effectively, they need a clear understanding of what causes performance to improve or deteriorate, and what power they have to change this trajectory for the better. Without this understanding, they risk making poor choices about their future - failing to exploit promising opportunities, pursuing unachievable aims, or falling victim to competitive and other threats. The existing strategy tools most widely used help guide management's choices about where to compete, which customers to serve, with what products and services, and how to deliver those products and services to those customers effectively and profitably. Whilst these choices are important, the direction that results from these decisions is not often changed in any fundamental way - having found a reasonably strong and profitable position on these issues, few firms will, or should, set off in a new direction. But there is still much to be done to deliver that strategy, powerfully and sustainably over time. Many decisions need to be made, continually and holistically, across all functions of the business and adapted as conditions change from month to month, and year to year. Pricing, product development, marketing, hiring, service levels and other decisions cannot be made in isolation, but must take into account other choices being made, elsewhere and at different times.