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Strategy in

1,000 Words

– with Roger Martin

A new four-part article series – published every two weeks – with original takes on how strategy often gets misunderstood and how companies can get it right.

Professor Roger Martin is a writer, strategy advisor and in 2017 was named the #1 management thinker in the world. He is also former Dean and Institute Director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto in Canada.

PART 1

The state of strategy today

Today, companies all too often confuse strategy with strategic planning. Here, world-leading strategy expert Roger Martin explains what strategy really is, how it gets misused, and why real strategy is so hard to do in practice.

PART 2

The secret sauce of strategy creation

Roger Martin talks to ReD about the importance of deep customer understanding in successful strategy creation and why these human insights should sit at the executive level of an organisation.

PART 3

Strategy frameworks for tomorrow’s CEOs

Strategy is becoming a lost art as the firms that used to lead in the production of useful techniques now practice project management instead. So whose job is it to create the next wave of strategy frameworks for tomorrow’s CEOs?

PART 4

Strategy at human scale

Roger speaks to ReD about building organisations at a human scale, winning the war for talent, and implementing strategy at all levels of an organisation.

LISTEN

ReD Associates podcast

Companies use the word “strategy” more than ever, while strategy consultants with MBAs march the halls of companies penning sensible “strategic plans” that boards enthusiastically approve. Yet companies with a unique perspective on why customers spend with them and how they will win in their chosen space are in the minority. In this special edition of the podcast we speak about strategy with Roger Martin, one of the most influential minds in business and a trusted strategy advisor to global CEOs. In conversation with ReD partners Filip Lau and Iago Noguer Storgaard, Roger outlines the sorry state of strategy today and explains why it is in danger of becoming a lost art. What is the difference between a “strategic plan” and an actual strategy? Why are traditional strategy consultancies actually selling project management services? And how might revisiting the teachings of Aristotle help us come up with better strategies in today’s business world?

Host: Eliot Salandy Brown

Guests: Filip lau, Iago Noguer Storgaard, Roger Martin