Jungle

Issues and circumstances are considered as complex when individual elements are linked in such a way that it becomes impossible to predict the consequences. Complexity manifests itself in the Jungle when the strategist comes face to face with multiple elements that are interlinked and subject to a certain time frame.

The Thicket of Complexity is about identifying key factors and using them to keep the strategy under control.

An honest appraisal of yourself in the mirror is important. This allows an assessment of where your business stands and why, and provides the point of origin from which the distance between the current strategic position and the future strategic position can be measured.

This point of origin can be used during the strategy-finding process to evaluate different strategic options and to gauge them realistically from an inside perspective.

Every strategy revolves around servicing a certain market and its customers. In order to be successful, two essential questions must be answered: Who is my customer? What exactly constitutes my market?

In the Customer's Palace these questions are answered. You also decide whether a strategy should be based around your customers' needs or whether you should take a more indirect approach i.e. based around resources or competition.

This Fog can surprise you at any point during the course of strategy development. It always emerges when the strategy team suddenly loses sight of reasons and goals.

When uncertainty surfaces, it is best for the strategist to be flexible about the chosen path and to present the team with appropriate tools to lead them back to safe ground.

The Scenario Park is used whenever uncertainty runs high within the strategy team, and you would like to give your fellow travellers the feeling that all relevant alternatives have been considered and evaluated and that the right decisions have been made.

Scenarios are used to gain certainty, to generate new strategic options and to make decisions pressure-resistant.

When elaborating a strategy, it is often very tempting to grasp at the most self-evident opportunities and obvious solutions, and to turn these into a strategy. In most cases, however, strategic opportunites are a lot more multi-facetted and varied than this.

The Temple of Options is used to let go of the established, easy and obvious options which the team usually first comes up with. A bigger space is opened up to welcome a variety of options that are subsequently considered and evaluated.

Without well-defined business goals and clear-cut knowledge of the goals envisaged by your fellow travellers, it is not possible to develop a strategy. You are the hub or the fixed point for all strategy, because you determine what the strategy should achieve.

The magic that is inherent in goals is derived from their great importance for the whole strategy-finding process. Goals are an incentive and can be used to evaluate possible strategic options. This is why clearly-defined, transparent goals are of the essence for the strategy process.

During the strategy-finding process you will step into Swamps of emotions and viewpoints whenever you are dealing with a highly complex, contraversial or pressurised situation within your company. This can be for time or economic reasons.

As a strategist you can tactically avoid Swamps, and create delays in dealing with emotions and viewpoints by first concentrating on establishing a framework of possible options.

This station is for companies whose strategy requires competition-based evaluation. Take care, however! Frequently, this is used to view your own competitive position through rose-tinted glasses. The competitive arena only makes sense if you are prepared to invest the requisite amount of time and honest effort to identify those elements that should be the focus of your attention within your own business. This means that your business operates on a playing field limited to a certain set of companies and that this will remain unchanged in the near future.