Finding the master strategist within

The UCT Graduate School of Business is launching a pioneering course this October that is designed to enable people to find the master strategist that - according to Jon Foster-Pedley, the brain behind the course - lives within all of us.

According to Foster-Pedley strategy is a misunderstood phenomenon and, as a result, it is a tool that very few people use effectively.

"If they aren't intimidated by strategy then people are frankly bored by it," says Foster-Pedley. "For too many, strategy is something cold and sterile that is written on a piece of paper but that has no real application."

In fact, this perception of strategy is not incorrect. An estimated 80% of strategic plans fail because nobody knows how to implement them. No wonder then that strategy is usually relegated to the dusty shelves of most people's minds.

But Foster-Pedley is a man with a mission. He believes that but that the ability to think and act strategically is a vital skill for any person in business. More than that, he thinks that everybody has it within them to be a master strategist and to bring strategy to life. To unleash their strategic potential, he says that people need firstly to reframe the way they think and do strategy.

"Strategy not a set of sterile plans, it's a creative force. We have to move from seeing strategy as planning and as something that is contained within a document to strategy as intelligence and something that is contained within people," he says.

At its very simplest - strategy is about how individuals and organisations plan to get from one point to the next - and then how they actually do that.

Notice, says Foster-Pedley, that deciding how you are going to do something is not outsourced to a specialist. It is something that anybody can do.

"Most people are already strategists but they don't know it," he says. "Think about it. In most things you do you'll have a mental model of what the effect will be - a theory of cause-and-effect. That's strategy.

"Strategy is about acting, reacting to feedback from your environment and adjusting your behaviour accordingly as you move towards a desired end result - your intention."

Looked at like this - strategy is not a science or a theory - something that can be gained by reading a book or taught in a classroom. Strategy is more of an art form. It is a skill and like all skills it can be acquired.

Foster-Pedley says that while some people may be naturally better at it than others, all people can hone their skills and actively improve their strategic ability. This is the second step towards unleashing the master strategist within.

"In the same way that a musician will practice scales, a strategist can practice strategy in order to refine their technique," says Foster Pedley.

It is with this in mind that Foster Pedley has founded South Africa's first-ever strategy master academy, which he says is, in essence, a forum where people can literally practice strategy

"Its and old adage but a true one - that practice makes perfect," says Foster-Pedley. "Another way of looking at it is it is better to fail early and often. If something is worth doing then it is worth doing it badly to begin with," he says.

The idea behind the academy, which will get under way towards the end of October, is that it provides a controlled and confidential environment in which people can feel safe enough to try things out. During the year-long modular programme, participants also get unbiased feedback from their peers and from an academic perspective. This combination, critically, helps to build confidence and like any skill, confidence can make the difference between success and failure.

So what else can people do to maximise their strategic ability? Aside from changing the way they think about strategy and not being afraid to try and fail, Foster-Pedley says that the third most important thing that people can do is to ensure that the environment that they are in is supportive of creativity.

According to Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Classes, a tolerant environment that values innovation and diversity is one of three enablers of creativity which in turn, he shows, is a key driver of economic growth.

Business literature is littered with examples of companies from the Hewlett Packards to the small home-grown businesses that have recognised and enshrined this principle and reaped the benefits as a result.

"Undoubtedly unless people are given the space to be a bit playful with their strategic thinking and can dare to think creatively about how to solve problems, then that master strategist will never truly emerge and our people, our organisations and society will be the poorer for it," says Foster-Pedley.