There are different ways of intentionally deciding upon a strategic direction. This may include:
- Strategic leadership,
- Strategic planning, or
- Perhaps even having the strategy imposed on you from outside your organisation.
However, the strategy may emerge over time, the result of:
- A bottom-up process / experimentation / innovation (typical of a learning organisation),
- A political process,
- A consequence prior decisions, or even
- Organisational systems.
Whatever way (or combination of ways) is used to arrive at the strategic direction, the organisation's leaders and managers should have been asking questions. The PDF (below) gives a framework for discussion, which hopefully gets you thinking.
20150317_Strategic_analysis_questions