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03/27/2023

Leaders Need to Get Comfortable

Collaborating on strategy

Through most of the 20th century, business strategy was usually developed by a small executive team who sat down to work out solutions to “strategic issues.” Typically, this team was composed of the CEO and his or her direct reports. They analyzed trends and changes, reviewed competitor activity, examined financials, and devised solutions, which they captured in a strategic plan.

It’s no longer feasible to rely on this industrial-age way of developing strategy. The internet age has produced highly informed, extremely well-connected user communities that have ever-stronger opinions about what businesses should do. The confluence of high-speed internet, social media, sophisticated search and mobile connectivity has given those users unprecedented access to knowledge, choice, and influence. Small wonder that senior executives at Proctor & Gamble have described the old top-down approach to innovation and strategy design as a “broken model.”

So why do so many companies cling to it and how can they make the shift to what has been described as the “participation age?”

Please select this link to read the complete article from the Harvard Business Review.

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