Most of what passes for strategic planning is not strategic at
all. It is long-range planning or comprehensive planning, or in
some cases just program or project planning. The result is a
relinquishment of control to external conditions and circumstances,
the perpetuation of obsolete systems, and organizational
fragmentation and internal conflict. The opportunity to create new
possibilities and realities--the ultimate object of strategy--is
lost. Cook maintains that even to attempt strategy there must first
be a strategic system, a system that deals with strategic issues,
decision-making, and strategic action, which is preceded by
strategic thinking. Cook combines these three aspects of strategy
into a coherent, powerful concept that reinvigorates strategy with
its original forceful meaning: strategos--to lead an army. In this
way strategy becomes the means by which communities continuously
create artifactual systems to serve extraordinary purposes. His
book contains sound, pragmatic theory, original insights into
strategic issues, and detailed hands-on guidance on all phases of
strategic thinking, planning, and action.
Cook explains that stragetics can be expressed as thinking,
planning, and action. Strategic thinking will always embrace five
arenas: the definition of strategy, the meaning of leaders and
leading, the distinction between condition and cause, the nature of
systems, and the characteristics of organizations. Strategic
planning, as a currently popular management practice, is not what
it was originally. The definition has changed. The only definition
that captures the original intent is: the means by which a
community of people create artifactual systems to serve
extraordinary purposes. Dr. Cook points out that strategic action
is seldom included in any contemporary intepretation or application
of strategy, yet action is both the realization of strategy and the
creation of new possibilities beyond strategy. In that sense,
strategic action is the end and the beinning of strategics. Thus,
Cook takes the traditional idea of strategic planning, infuses it
with strategic thinking, and carries it to strategic action.
Instead of merely improving what already exists, organizations can
create new systems that are capable of what he calls constant
emergence--always vital, always creative.
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