Strategic Thinking

Strategy, strategic planning, strategic management and strategic leadership are often used as if they meant the same thing, and the confusion changes what an organisation does under pressure. This module defines strategy as a plan to create value, after Oberholzer-Gee, introduces Rich Horwath's three disciplines of acumen, allocation and action, and uses the Kodak and Fujifilm case to show why strong planning cannot replace strategic thinking.

Much strategic failure comes from applying a good tool to the wrong kind of problem. This module helps you name your situation before choosing how to act, using VUCA and Cascio's BANI, Dave Snowden's Cynefin framework and its five domains, and Rittel and Webber's wicked problems. It applies Cynefin to the member and officer relationship and treats homelessness strategy as a worked example of a wicked problem.

Even where competition feels like the wrong word, understanding the forces that shape your room for manoeuvre is essential. This module builds on Michael Porter's work: strategy as choosing what not to do, the difference between operational effectiveness and positioning, and the Five Forces translated into public service. The Netflix and Blockbuster case shows how an organisation can compete hard in the wrong contest, and the module closes on Porter's limits.

This module moves from reading context to deciding what to do, using three models. Kim and Mauborgne's Blue Ocean Strategy, with the eliminate, reduce, raise and create grid and the Cirque du Soleil case, shows how to redraw an offer. Richard Rumelt's strategy kernel and warning signs of bad strategy help you tell strategy from a wish list, and the McKinsey Seven S model checks whether the organisation can support it.

Real public service decisions are messy, interconnected and made under political pressure. This module introduces tools built for that mess: John Friend and Allen Hickling's Strategic Choice Approach and its four modes, Jonathan Rosenhead's robustness analysis, and Colin Eden and Fran Ackermann's cognitive mapping. It closes with multi-attribute decisions and the doability and desirability indices, helping you choose what to commit to now and what to leave deliberately open.

Much poor decision-making comes from using a tool built for certainty or manageable risk on a decision made under deep uncertainty. This module separates certainty, risk, uncertainty and ambiguity, introduces Herbert Simon's bounded rationality and satisficing, a six-step decision process and cost-benefit analysis, and shows why risk tools break down when the odds are unknown. The practical thread is matching the tool to the condition.

You can choose the right tool and gather good evidence and still reach a poor choice, because people apply the tool. This module draws on Daniel Kahneman's System 1 and System 2, examines anchoring, sunk cost, confirmation bias and groupthink at board level, and uses Dr Jonathan Huish's Cranfield research, adapting the Kakabadse Top Team Framework, to show how judgement forms in top teams. It ends with three practical debiasing habits.

Artificial intelligence has not solved strategy, and it is not a fad. Drawing on Harvard Business Review research, this module argues that strategy's old constraint was bandwidth, sets out three practical shifts AI brings, expanded options, real-time modelling and depoliticised stress-testing, and explains what holds, what gets riskier and what gets easier for established tools. It closes on where real advantage now sits and why more options still need human judgement.

English local government is working through genuinely new strategic terrain. This module treats the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026 and the Best Value Duty consultation as live strategic-choice problems rather than compliance updates. It sorts the Act's demands into what is mandated, shaped locally or easily missed, applies Cynefin, Five Forces and the Strategic Choice Approach to it, and contrasts compliance responses with strategic responses.

A council or health body can reach a defensible strategic choice and still find, eighteen months later, that little has changed. This module draws on Alfred Chandler's finding that structure follows strategy, explains why the order is so often reversed, and introduces Target Operating Models with five core elements: process, organisation, technology, people and service. It shows how to pressure test a design and keep it traceably tied to Rumelt's kernel.

A strategy that is never implemented is no strategy at all. This module examines the say-do gap, the four places implementation breaks down, ownership, translation, competing priorities and review, and applies the doability and desirability indices at frontline level. It looks at who can quietly stop a strategy through inaction, draws on strategy-execution research including Sull and colleagues, and closes on fewer priorities, named owners and honest review.

Frameworks are easy to admire in isolation and harder to recognise when they operate together under political pressure. This capstone introduces no new theory. It tests the toolkit against three documented cases: the London Congestion Charge, Aldi and Lidl in the United Kingdom, and DONG Energy's transformation into Orsted. It names four ways the toolkit is misused and reduces the whole topic to four questions to carry into real decisions.