Be able to master the strategy development process is not a privilege of few successful companies. In fact is a day-to-day process of many companies in developed countries. Frameworks, methodologies, process and tools are available to every director or CEO willing to adopt a strategic approach in its organisation. PEST analysis, SWOT analysis, BCG matrix, MABA analysis, Porter’s five forces, Ansoff’s grid, Balance Scorecard, Strategy mapping are only few examples of the existing analysis models.

Ask yourself the following questions:

• What is causing my industry’s structure to change?
• How strong is my company’s strategic position?
• What are the key determinants of my organisational resources and competences?
• What are the key factors shaping my organisation?
• Is the current strategy helping to create durable competitive advantages?

If there is no easy answer to these questions, your organisation is a good candidate to enhance its strategy development capabilities.

What is a strategy-focused organisation?

A strategy-focused organisation can be defined as an organisation capable to successfully implement its strategy. Many of you could say that have the right strategy is more difficult than implement it. This is not completely true.

In 1999, Fortune magazine published an article about the reasons why CEOs fail. Around 70% of the interviewed CEOs mentioned bad implementation as the main source of failure rather than having the wrong strategy. There is not available data to support a similar result in Tunisia. However, if this situation is extrapolated to Tunisia, it would give a warning over the cause of difficulties faced by many companies. If implementation is so important, what is required to be able to implement an strategy successfully?.

Kaplan and Norton, the world wide recognised authors of The Balanced Scorecard, suggest two areas where companies should excel: alignment and focus. Alignment is related to the capacity of an organisation to place in the same direction resources, people and information. Focus is about the ability to concentrate actions on those areas critical for achieving the objectives of the company. They also suggest that in order to develop these two areas, a company should follow the following five principles:

• Translate the strategy to operational terms
• Align the organisation to the strategy
• Make strategy everyone’s everyday job
• Make strategy a continuous process
• Mobilize change through executive leadership

They propose a new way to manage organisations. In particular, the fifth principle places a key role on directors and CEOs as the main catalyst factor for change.

The challenge ahead : the strategy-focused mind.

The change on the way organisations are managed make us to ask ourselves a key question: what is the main barrier that Tunisian companies need to overcome to prepare for the opening? A cultural change toward a strategy-focused mind.

People make organizations. Strategy-focused organizations are all about strategy-focused people. There is still a big number of companies with an opportunity-based approach to business. They are hooked in the "traditional way of doing things" which prevents them to take more long-term, strategy driven actions. Strategy development is a concept still with relative low value for traditional managers.

Managers need to open their minds to new knowledge, new ways of understanding business and new ways to make decisions. The growth of an organisation depends on the intellectual growth of its own people and this only depends on their willingness to learn. We must never forget that "a person is considered old when stops learning, whatever his/her age is".

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