STRATEGY SESSIONS  #2                      

A STRATEGIC PROCESS FOR MAJOR DECISIONS

by Dr. Steve Payne

Four major concerns need attention in making truly strategic career or life decisions.  The first concern is improved awareness of personal life values, characteristics, and goals.  The second major concern is analysis of external conditions that can influence pursuit of personal life values and goals.   A third concern is choice from various possible strategies to reach personal goals, given existing and future external conditions.   The last concern is management and on-going evaluation of these strategies.  Many of my future posts on this blog site involve discussion of this basic four-step process.

Let’s start to examine this four-step strategic process with an example of a common goal that many people have.  That goal is finding the “right” job or employment opportunity.  Volumes of advice might be given here, but several key questions should be answered:   

1) What do you really like doing?   What types of activities capture your continuing interest or passion and link into your short- and long-term life goals?

2) What are you good at doing?  For what types of activities do you display levels of talent or skill relative to those of others?

3) What jobs or employment opportunities exist that allow you to do these activities and what are projections for future supply, demand, and compensation for these jobs?

These questions are simple to state, but take some time and effort to answer well.  Answering questions, such as the first two above, is part of a first step in a strategic process for career and life decisions.   

It’s still difficult for many Americans to have honest self-conversations about what truly give them more personal fulfillment and satisfaction. Old habits and fears get in the way and channel us away from healthy reflection. Americans tend to have an action orientation, even if in a misguided direction or in a stumbling fashion. “Navel gazing” or worse pejoratives are often associated with even finding a quiet time to think, prepare, or plan.  Also there are many people who have multiple jobs or responsibilities, who are in toxic workplace environments, or who are stressed by personal financial threats.  For them and others, finding a little opportunity for introspection or strategic thinking can be difficult.

Some view strategic decision making as a very methodical, analytical, and time-consuming process. There are definitely those who undertake strategic analysis in business and technology who apply very analytical and detailed methods. Exposure to advanced analytical models and methods in school, though, can be a turn-off for some.  These people largely reject analytical methods for personal decision making, preferring instead more intuitive or spontaneous ways to address life challenges. What I’m advocating is not detailed analysis or calculations, but rather the use of a basic framework that supports and encourages more intuitive and creative thinking. Once a particular situation is identified and studied by applying this framework, it’s time to step back from this initial analysis to find a quiet time for intuitive and creative impulses to arise and to inform a broader generation of decision alternatives and means to implement these decisions. “Eureka” moments in strategic decision making occur when intuitive insights and possibilities emerge. 

Intuitive insights, and possibly creative decision options, must be tested though.  For example, I had a friend who made several distinctive stabs at entrepreneurship while he was still attending college.  These new businesses weren’t successful, and his attention was so distracted from a demanding academic program of study that his grades slipped and he withdrew from the university.  His multiple academic and entrepreneurial failures in achieving major personal goals sapped some of his later enthusiasm and self-confidence.  Another friend had a long history of attention deficit disorder (ADD), and like the first one was often excited about new entrepreneurial potentials.  It took some time and negative experiences for him to recognize these challenges better and to discover several tactics to allow him to take better advantage of his intuitive energies.

Strategic success requires recognizing personal goals and how existing personal characteristics can support or detract from goal attainment. The first step in this recommended strategic process can lead to recognition of a need to develop a few new personal habits. Large-scale behavioral change can be unrealistic to expect. Selecting and starting to apply one or two new habits, however, can be manageable for many people, particularly if these promote improved strategy setting and follow through. Some might need to plan a little time periodically for reflection concerning their deeper values and life goals. Some might benefit from gaining the insights of caring others to discover possible areas of their own self-deception in evaluation of personal strengths and weaknesses. A basic analysis of personal goals, values, strengths, and weaknesses should be in moderate depth and be fairly accurate if it is going to be useful for strategy formulation.

                                          

STRATEGY SESSIONS  #1   

BECOMING MORE OF A STRATEGIST IN TOUGHER TIMES

by Dr. Steve Payne              

[This series of 24 blogs offers a "mini-course" on strategic decision making for coping with important life and career challenges.  These essays appeared in the weekly Winn Parish Enterprise (LA) newspaper from September 2012 through March 2013.]

A recent Federal Reserve report reveals that the Great Recession has claimed 40 percent of Americans' wealth.  This lost wealth came from the mortgage crisis, drop in home values, and falling incomes and stock-based accounts. U. S. income and employment levels have been close to stagnate in recent years.    

Issues such as European debt problems and lack of political consensus about economic direction continue to force tough times on large segments of the American population.  What can Americans do to cope with these tougher times?  My response is that there is greater need than ever before for truly strategic thinking.  Unfortunately, many in America possess little knowledge or experience in actually formulating strategies for their own career and life challenges.

Most American business schools for decades have required senior business students to take a course in “strategic management.”  Many of the basic approaches that are covered in these courses could really help struggling Americans better conduct their own personal evaluation of career and life prospects.  Having a Ph.D. in management and teaching strategic management courses for many years prior to retirement a few years ago, I would counsel that many who are frustrated by lack of career opportunities or life direction would benefit from reading almost any worn copy of an undergraduate strategic management textbook. 

When I taught strategic management courses, I took concepts from business and corporate strategy covered in textbooks and applied these concepts for basic issues for which college students were much more familiar.  Choosing a major in college, finding an initial job after graduation, or even deciding on dating or relationship choices are examples of decisions for which strategic concepts might well be helpful.  Competition in games and sporting activities can certainly have certain strategic elements.  I had students read a short essay concerning Billy Beane of the Oakland Athletics, long before the movie Moneyball appeared.  Beane employed different strategies to make a small-market baseball team more competitive and successful. 

I found in discussions with college students that some readily used basic elements of planning or strategy in their own decision making.  Most students, though, were hardly strategic in confronting even key decisions.  Intuitive insights are certainly helpful in personal and business decision making, but many students seemed almost to fear anything like a basic and systematic review of their key decisions.  Certainly too much or the wrong kind of analysis can produce confusion, “paralysis by analysis,” and poor decision consequences, but I was encountering many students who seemed to have completely opposite tendencies.  Their basic values and goals seemed largely submerged, and these weren’t actively informing or guiding their decisions.   What friends or others with different values, needs, or goals had been doing often had great influence upon their own decisions.  There were a lot of reasons or excuses given why these students had not taken much time nor given much attention to a process for decision making on key issues.   They occasionally visited faculty advisors after they became frustrated with the consequences of a decision.  Unfortunately, these students were often looking for someone else to analyze a decision and to help them to make a decision that reflected their own unique needs, values, and goals.  While outside review can be helpful in offering some possibly unrecognized options and planning tools for decision making, an outsider’s perspective is a very limited substitute for personal strategy setting and decision making.

If many college seniors display an unwillingness or resistance to apply basic strategic thinking for key personal decisions, it’s likely that many people with less exposure to strategy or management courses often have a weakly-developed grasp of strategy and decision-making basics.   Adding more of a strategic perspective to personal decision making seems even more necessary in what has been called “new normal” times.  The quantity of attractive jobs or income opportunities available in some fields has become more limited in recent years and the competition from others seeking those opportunities is often fierce.  Passive or laid-back approaches to competing for those opportunities will not as often be successful as these were in the past.    

This series of blogs offers no miracle cures or easy answers, but insights from management and strategy courses can provide needed rationality and clearer thinking for many who are now increasingly confused and fearful about the future.   My goal here will be to share many strategic concepts and approaches for coping with future life and employment challenges.