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Feb
24

Strategists Maturity Levels

Tom Hawes Organizational Development 2009-02-24

In many disciplines there are professional maturity models. Sometimes they apply to an organization (see Capability Maturity Model for Software) and sometimes they apply to individuals (see the work done for architects done by Bredemeyer Consulting). In both cases, they trace the progress from an early development stage to a fully mature stage. The greater effectiveness comes as one moves toward the latter stages.

I have not seen such a formal maturity model for strategy leaders though I can infer one from my experiences. Here are the 5 stages that occur to me with some characteristics. What do you think?

1.  Getting Started – (no formal training, limited scope, no specific tools, department level thinking, part time focus, “promoted” from product management)

2.  Named Role – (limited training, group rather than personal credibility, department level thinking, mostly full time role)

3.  Known Owner – (analytical methods training, competitive awareness, recognized within business, initial external presence, access to decision makers)

4.  Leader – (mastery of multiple analytical methods, regular consultation with business leaders, key decision maker, significant external visibility, shaper of competitive responses)

5.  Visionary – (teacher of strategic analytical methods, high external visibility, influences adjacent strategies, considered key asset to company, well known in industry)

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2 comments until now

  1. James Bach @ 2009-02-25 10:22

    By what analytical method have you established that analytical methods are more mature? Or… was it a non-analytical method by which you arrived at that conclusion?

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  2. Tom Hawes @ 2009-02-25 13:41

    James,

    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

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