We think is is important to distinquish among three strategy roles arrayed among five organizational levels and one cross-functional level for the for-profit firm:
Three Strategy Roles:
Visionary – foresight and the ongoing leadership of strategy
Master Builder – operations
Architect – processes and cross-process impacts
Five Organizational Levels:
Enterprise Level– the corporate office level of the conglomerate or a tighly related multi-business unit organization
Business Unit Level – where the “line of sight” competition occurs among firms as entitites
Functional Department Level– examples are sales, manufacturing, R&D, HR, after-sales-service, etc.
Team – groups of five to more individuals who make up a team, and in our view hopefully have the attributes of a high-performance-team
Individual – people as individuals
Cross-functional “Level” = Processes – this is not a level per se, but a form of organizing that cuts across the functions to form cross-functional processes
StrategyBest will initially focus on the Architect Role at the Enterprise, Business Unit and Cross-functional levels. The Architect role provides the blueprints for organizational performance and effectiveness. The Architect role provides the processes, frameworks and their key linkages that are the foundation for the for-profit firm. The Architect role works at the root cause level of granularity. Just like the architect who designs your home or office building, get the foundation wrong and you are in a world of hurt, frustration, re-work, lost money and perhaps collapse.
StrategyBest will initially focus on providing knowledge and offerings for the Architect Role for the Enterprise, Business Unit and Cross Functional Levels. However, we will touch on all of the levels and all of the roles as they cannot really be seperated in practice and the strategy professional needs to know how to operate at all levels over the three roles.
As we continue to build this website, we will add valuable knowledge for the other two roles and other three levels in depth when we think we can add value for the strategy professional. We have active research and action projects going on now for these roles and levels and hope the findings will bear fruit for us and you.
All five of the levels and the process overlay over the functions and the three roles are crucial for strategy and sustained superior performance. We will just focus first on where we can add the most value.