EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

We need to talk about strategy: How to conduct effective strategic dialogue

Alaric Bourgoin, François Marchessaux and Nicolas Bencherki

Business Horizons, 2018, vol. 61, issue 4, 587-597

Abstract: As researchers and consultants, we have spent the last few years helping a dozen major public and private organizations understand what went wrong with their strategic planning. We discovered that executives have a hard time with strategy because they are at a loss when the time comes to engage in strategic dialogue. Either their teams debate the organization’s values and goals when such issues should be settled, or they waste time on the details of specific projects that have yet to receive the green light. But whether the conversation is too broad or too narrow, strategy stays out of view. Drawing on recent developments in strategy-as-practice and decision-making literature, we propose a model that executives can follow to take control of strategy meetings and keep their teams on track. We ask them to focus on the right decision purpose, adjust the meeting’s communication style, and cast the right leader for the job. When these three simple rules are followed, the pillars of successful dialogue are aligned, and executives can finally talk about what matters most to them: strategy.

Keywords: Strategic communication; Strategy; Strategy as practice; Decision making; Communication; Strategic dialogue (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0007681318300600
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:bushor:v:61:y:2018:i:4:p:587-597

DOI: 10.1016/j.bushor.2018.03.008

Access Statistics for this article

Business Horizons is currently edited by C. M. Dalton

More articles in Business Horizons from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:eee:bushor:v:61:y:2018:i:4:p:587-597