Making Strategy:
Mapping Out Strategic Success
Chapters 1 and 2
INTRODUCTION
Fran Ackermann and Colin Eden
© Colin Eden and Fran Ackermann: Lecture Notes
For Making Strategy: Mapping Out Strategic Success, Sage, 2011
Please note, these slides are
designed to be used in addition
to the book:
Making Strategy: Mapping Out Strategic Success.
by Ackermann & Eden, Sage, 2011
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They are not designed to be used in a ‘stand-alone’
manner, or to replicate theory and practice presented
in the book.
The assignment design represents one possibility for
a 20 credit MBA course (thus each of the 4 parts
represents approx 5 credits + Closure).
© Colin Eden and Fran Ackermann: Lecture Notes
For Making Strategy: Mapping Out Strategic Success, Sage, 2011
‘Making Strategy’ aims to…

Help you, as a manager with the involvement of your ‘top
team’, (or the TMT) determine the strategic priorities that will
gain your dept gain competitive advantage.

Become strategic thinkers and managers.

Use methods and tools employed successfully in public and
private, large and small, national and international
organizations.

Enable the use of the process with regard to its flexibility and
inclusiveness, ensuring that the priorities are based on sound
data, are widely understood, and have the commitment of a
dominant coalition within the MT.
© Colin Eden and Fran Ackermann: Lecture Notes
For Making Strategy: Mapping Out Strategic Success, Sage, 2011
What will happen?
Cycle between ‘lectures’ and group work
 Create a strategy for the future success of
the organisation – not-for-profit or for-profit
 ‘Submit’ the assignment as the seminars
unfold
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• Assignment details are provided in a separate
pack of slides

Complete a ‘peer assessment’ form
© Colin Eden and Fran Ackermann: Lecture Notes
For Making Strategy: Mapping Out Strategic Success, Sage, 2011
What is strategy?
Strategy is about
agreeing where to
focus energy, cash,
effort, emotion
© Colin Eden and Fran Ackermann: Lecture Notes
For Making Strategy: Mapping Out Strategic Success, Sage, 2011
What is strategic
management?
Implementing the
agreements about
where to focus energy,
cash, effort, emotion
© Colin Eden and Fran Ackermann: Lecture Notes
For Making Strategy: Mapping Out Strategic Success, Sage, 2011
Strategic Management
is about agreeing
where to practically
focus energy, cash,
effort, emotion
© Colin Eden and Fran Ackermann: Lecture Notes
For Making Strategy: Mapping Out Strategic Success, Sage, 2011
Strategic Management is
about making things happen
that will have desirable
outcomes for the sustainable
success of the organization
Implies understanding the nature of
success for this specific organization
(goals and competitive advantage) and
understanding causality of deliberate
actions to create outcomes (means-ends)
© Colin Eden and Fran Ackermann: Lecture Notes
For Making Strategy: Mapping Out Strategic Success, Sage, 2011
Making Strategy
in 4x~3hr workshops (2 days)….
Or single half day workshops

Workshop 1 – morning
• Strategy as the Prioritisation and Management of Key Issues
• Statement of Strategic Intent

Workshop 2 – afternoon
• Strategy as Purpose: Agreeing Goals and Aspirations for the Organisation
• Statement of Strategic Intent

Workshop 3 – morning
• Strategy as Competitive advantage
• Statement of Strategic Intent
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Workshop 4 – afternoon
• Strategy as Stakeholder Management
• Statement of Strategic Intent

DELIVERABLE OVERALL:
• Statement of strategic intent (SSI) encompassing: issue management,
purpose, competitive advantage, stakeholder management
© Colin Eden and Fran Ackermann: Lecture Notes
For Making Strategy: Mapping Out Strategic Success, Sage, 2011
Resources:

“Making Strategy: Mapping Out Strategic
Success” Ackermann & Eden Sage 2011

Other Resources
• Course Powerpoint handouts
• Decision Explorer (downloaded via Sage web site
on purchase of book)
• Key commands in Decision Explorer (2pp) – VERY
IMPORTANT to have available while undertaking
the seminars [available on the web site]
© Colin Eden and Fran Ackermann: Lecture Notes
For Making Strategy: Mapping Out Strategic Success, Sage, 2011
What you need:
To be a member of a small group of 3-5
persons
Decision Explorer downloaded and installed
[Use a Mouse for operating DE, not a
trackpad. It is much easier!]
© Colin Eden and Fran Ackermann: Lecture Notes
For Making Strategy: Mapping Out Strategic Success, Sage, 2011
Making strategy:
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Refer to Chapter 2
Commitment to delivering strategy is almost more important than the results
of analysis
But, there need not be a conflict, as long as commitment from the power
brokers is held to be paramount.
The power brokers, possibly a management team, are a social group. Agreeing
strategy is thus a social and psychological negotiation (changing minds and
relationships).
Good analysis must inform this negotiation where possible. However,
managing the negotiation to achieve emotional and thinking (cognitive)
commitment drives making strategy.
The designed social process, the ‘journey’, is what can determine commitment.
Negotiation that can lead to consensus, rather than compromise, requires a
number of important features:
• Start from 'where each participant is at' - their immediate and personal/role
concerns
• Seek to develop new options rather than fight over 'old' options
• Attend to 'procedural justice'
• Use a 'transitional object' - a picture/ model that is equivocal (fuzzy but meaningful)
and changing, and that encourages shifting of positions
© Colin Eden and Fran Ackermann: Lecture Notes
For Making Strategy: Mapping Out Strategic Success, Sage, 2011
Refer to Chapter 2 and appendix
Decision Explorer as a ‘Transitional
Object’ to facilitate negotiation
‘Post-Its’ work as a crude transitional object, but...
 We rarely rewrite and so not in transition!
 Anonymity is unlikely
 Problematic to ‘play’ with the data
 Difficulty moving data around to look for new patterns
 Impossible to conduct analyses of complex causal networks
‘Means-ends’ links do not move with new configurations
 No organizational memory
 Difficult to provide continual records of transition
SUCCESSFUL NEGOTIATION DEPENDS ON ALL OF THESE
ASPECTS
HOWEVER – SHOULD BE SO THAT ALL CAN EASILY SEE
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© Colin Eden and Fran Ackermann: Lecture Notes
For Making Strategy: Mapping Out Strategic Success, Sage, 2011
Your ‘simulation’…
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You are the strategy making team of one of
your group members ‘organization’ (dept,
division etc)
Address yourself to a part of your organisation over which you
have some influence (manager of a dept or division, or in a
position of power with respect to a manager)
Or, alternatively as a start up group with a
‘business idea’
 Each group member must have a realistic but
imagined designated role within the
‘organization’ (as if just hired by the
organization)

© Colin Eden and Fran Ackermann: Lecture Notes
For Making Strategy: Mapping Out Strategic Success, Sage, 2011
Getting Started…
Decide which part of the organisation the strategy is to be developed
With a realistic view of where you can intervene: Define the boundary of
your ‘organization’ (dept, group, division, operating company, etc)
Agree the strategy making team: Choose a ‘client’ and
key power brokers in the organization who will form
the strategy making team
You will count yourself among this group, indeed you may also
be the ‘client’ within your group
NOTE: IN THE SIMULATION YOU ARE LIKELY TO
HAVE LITTLE CONTROL OVER THE SELECTION
OF THIS TEAM
© Colin Eden and Fran Ackermann: Lecture Notes
For Making Strategy: Mapping Out Strategic Success, Sage, 2011
Your task…
Decide on organization and
work out roles (stay within
your own expertise as a new
member of the team)
© Colin Eden and Fran Ackermann: Lecture Notes
For Making Strategy: Mapping Out Strategic Success, Sage, 2011