Advancing Strategy as a Core Competence

We are heavily into competence these days, quite rightly. No more gifted amateurs, long tenure, competence ladders, skillpools, frameworks. Overwhelming, and generally good.

When I post a job on OR I am offered an array of skill groups to choose from. I never knew there were so many flavours of HSE or Mechanical Engineering. Amazing.

So what can I use. Ah, not so simple. Strategy is not there! Nor is competitive intelligence. There may be something about portfolio, but that sounds like finance or deal doing to me. So, believe it or not, I end up with General Management - Global. Sexy, yes. Accurate and descriptive - no.

Is this a problem? After all we are a technical company not a business consultancy. And we have more analysis and clever people than we need, and want fewer. The last thing we want is another overhead silo.

I beg to differ. What are the most important things any business does? Where is the difference between stellar performance and mediocrity? What do analysts reward? Well innovation, technology, operational excellence, finance management, they all help, but, maybe you would agree, strategy should be on the list.

Apparently we have 150 people doing strategy jobs in Shell, and a number of others doing jobs which have a strategy element. Meanwhile, the bill for business consultants annually reaches 9 digits. We have outsourced one of our most important core competences to McKinsey!

It is worse. Of the 150, how many can we call strategy professionals, in the same way as GSP would class a projects professional? I venture to suggest we could count them on one hand, maybe two. And it would be a devil of a job to find them. And they probably never talk to each other.

Most people in strategy jobs in Shell - sorry for this - are in some development role on the way up or some parking lot on the way down. And - sorry again - most of us haven't got a clue.

Announcing that you want to be a strategy professional amounts to career suicide, as well.

For strategy is just like GSP or GSEM, at least in key dimensions. There are tools, there are methods. Some you can teach. You need mentors, coaching, external exposure. You need to work in associated areas to be able to manage interfaces. Most of all, you need practice. Experience. More practice. Lots and lots of experience. Anyone can fill in a SWOT or plot out a project plan. Only people with mature expertise know when to apply what tool, when to push, when to pull, how to frame a question, how to turn an idea into impact. Just like GSP.

But we don't bother with any of that. And - sorry again - it shows. The analysts are not fools.

We are amateurs, and not very gifted ones at that. We invented scenarios and many of the brilliant strategy innovations forty years ago. It is a travesty. For GS we can get away with it, maybe. Shell can't.

And no-one seems to care. I do! Do you?