STRATEGIC THOUGHT The radical transformations investing the market demand the productive world new cathegories of thought and methodologies of action. What does it mean to plan what has been interpreted as a produced system, without the risk to lessen it or the pretension to wear it out? And, above all, "is it conceivable, and in which terms, to devise, to study the execution or performance possibilities of what has been perceived and meant chaotic, multipolar, depending on risk, difficult to manage, to control, to preview, to predetermine, to delimit"? The way looks hard. But from more careful analyisis it seems that, as J.L. Moigne wrote, "Complexity is in the code and not in the nature of things... and so... if built, the most intricate complexity becomes plannable". The produced phenomenon itself is not simple either complex; therefore it is who observes it that perceives it, on the base of its knowledging and emotional experience, in terms of disorder, variety of elements, difficulty... "The problem of the observer planner", asserts Edgar Morin, "seems vital, critical, decisive (...) he needs a method that allows him to design the variety of the points of view and then to go from a point of view to another. He must despose of theoretical concepts that instead of closing and isolating the entities, allow him to circulate productively". And still: "we have to walk on four legs: the leg of empirism, that one of rationality, immagination and the one of control. Complexity demands a methodology able to get the links and the articulations established inside it, and, above all, able to get the inputs emerging on its way, changing, if necessary, according to them". It is all about, as Giuseppe Ciribini wrote some time ago, "to go from logos, meant as rational power, to metis, strategic-conjectural power". So Strategy as password to face the complexity of reality "There is no simple recepie for complexity (...) complexity needs strategy, because only strategy can let us go into what is uncertain and undetermined". In business language the word strategy shows up at the beginning of the 60's expression of the necessity to unify and coordinate the policy of the single functional areas (finance, production, marketing) and to connect the distinctive competences of organization with the characteristics reference area. But the definitive contribution for the explanation and the acheivement of such concept comes from the debate that, during the 70's, developed at epistemologic level. A debate that is born from the consciousness of the end of the "Great Tales" and that leads to the conscience of the irreducibly plural aspect of points of view and to the consequent idea the decay of science as only kind of rational acquaintance of the truth. Let's just think about some examples, as the decisive contributions of Popper, Lakatos and Feyerabend for the overcoming of the Cartesian Syndrome. The complex thought, with Morin, gives back to the word strategy the force and the richness of its original content: The art of war is a strategic art because it is a complex art, that has to consider not only the uncertainty of the movements of the enemy, but also of what the enemy thinks we think. The word strategy does not indicate a predetermined programme that is enough to apply ne varietur in the time(...). It allows us, starting from an initial decision, to assume a certain number of scenaries for the action, that will be able to be modified according to the informations coming during the action and according to the accidents that will happen and will disturb the action itself. The planning that seemed to constitute, under a managment point of view, the only conceivable approach in order to manage the future of an organization is overcome by strategy, that in a certain way represents its opposite. The obsession for control leads to a dislike for risk and changings or innovative ideas. "The entire approach to planning is focused on the correspondence of existing resources and costumers' demand and on competition. All this leads to imitation strategies instead of innovation ones and, consequently, makes the enterprise more vulnerable for the competition of innovative rivals". So, strategy as competitive model...

Text by: Giuseppe Lotti I. II. III. IV. V. VI. VII. VIII. TOP