Business Strategy: An Overview of Bryson’s Strategy Change Cycle

This continues our series outlining how business strategy can change your business

John M. Bryson authored Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations. While his title suggest that the concepts only apply to public and nonprofit organizations, they may help your business. He writes “How can the leaders and managers of public and nonprofit organizations cope with the challenges that confront their organizations, now and in the years ahead? How should they respond to the increasingly uncertain and interconnected environments in which their organizations operate? How should they respond to dwindling or unpredictable resources: new public expectations or formal man-dates; demographic changes…upheavals in international, national, and local economies?

Benefits of a Strategy Change Cycle

Bryson writes “We can use strategic planning to help us think, act, and learn strategically—to figure out what we should want, why, and how to get it. Think of strategic planning as the organization of hope, as what makes hope reasonable.” (p 32)

“The strategic change cycle may be thought of as a process strategy, processual model of decision making , or activity-based view of strategizing, in which a leadership group manages the main activities in the process but leaves much of the content of individual strategies to others.” (p 32)

“The Strategic Change Cycle becomes a strategic management process—and not just a strategic planning process—to the extent that it is used to link planning and implementation and to manage an organization in a strategic way on an ongoing basis.” (p 31)

Steps of the Strategy Change Cycle

Bryson outlines a thorough and fairly complex cycle:

1. Initiate and agree on a strategic planning process
2. Identify organizational mandates
3. Clarify organizational mission and values
4. Assess the external and internal environments
5. Identify the strategic issues facing the organization
6. Formulate strategies to manage the issues
7. Review and adopt the strategies or strategic plan
8. Establish an effective organizational vision
9. Develop an effective implementation plan
10. Reassess strategies and the strategic planning process

We will explore each step of the cycle and how it applies to your business.

Tuesday we will examine how to initiate and agree on a strategic planning process