I arrived at 5 arbitrary stages from observation rather than any specific analytical technique. To the best of my knowledge, there hasn’t been a research study that results in a maturity model for strategy professionals. There are, of course, many organizational titles in business (e.g., product strategy manager, strategic marketing manager, chief strategy officer) but they don’t directly address what important skills a person needs as their strategy responsibilities advance. Further, I am puzzled over how an organization evaluates their strategy performance. Of course there are business measures of revenue, profit, growth, etc. But what part of that is due to the effective performance of those in strategy positions?

Maybe your question is more about the prominence of “analytical methods”? If so, I would say that it is my consistent experience that there often is a poverty of approaches to problem solving in the organizations that I have been in. Typically, there are a couple of favored techniques that are used to (attempt to) solve most every problem. In competitive intelligence strategy, for instance, my organization had an abnormal preoccupation with SWOT diagrams. When pressed to explain their utility, no one could since they were poorly assembled, inadequately presented and never actionable.

I can see that my definition is quite loose. Perhaps substituting “rich, flexible strategy problem solving” might have met my intent better.

– Tom