JAMES_H_CARRINGTON wrote privatly to me:
>Just in case you didn't catch it, here's an excerpt from "McKinsey 7S
>model LO15301" from Mariann Jelinek, Ph.D. and Richard C. Kraemer
>Professor of Business Administration, Graduate School of Business
>College of William and Mary
snip
(The following refers to KcKinsey 7S model and I also say what I
understand what the word "Hypercompetition" could mean in the context of
strategic management. So I have to make clear, that I have not read the
book of D'Aveni and therefore can not refer to the meaning of
"Hypersompetition" as intended by him.)
Thank you James for taking care of me.
I've seen the mails on 7S.
According to the target system in 4 dimensions I mentioned in my starting
mail on this thread (strategic management), 7S is a popular leading system
(3rd Dimension), especially for big companies. I guess that the "old" and
"new" 7S are different in the degree of agility.
The best fitting leading system depend on vision, competencies and
environment - it must be consistent to these and should lead to a
competitive advantage, therefore it should be different to the systems of
the competitors. To become unique, one need to find the logic of realising
ones vision. This logic is inherent to the vision and cannot be found
outside. 7S is helpful as a checklist, but not more.
Trying to do things better than others is competition, trying to do things
better than others on a high level and with very short cycle times and
more intuition than analysis is "hypercompetition". The earnings of this
kind of competition is usually unsatisfying, because the competitors try
to do things better than you do as well. Only doing things different or
doing different things can lead to competitive advantage and can become a
sustainable value to society.
This has implications for learning as well: As I have tried to stress
several times here, learning must not only be a two loop feedback circle
to improve things one is doing since ever (although this is necessary and
important too) but learning must have a direction worth to follow. There
is no sense in becoming perfect instead of just good in distroying our
biosphere.
This reminds me of the three keys to systems thinking: structure, process,
pattern. Business Reengineering design the processes to improve time
competitiveness and therefore restructure the underlying organisation to
support the processes. Unfortunately the emerging patterns are not
questioned, for instance the pattern of consumption. Focussing on process
does only accelerate the realisation of these patterns. Vision focusses on
patterns and lead to a different logic of processes and structures.
Anticipation of new pattern (a new game) is the first phase of
competition. Implementing the new logic (rules of the game), i.e. design
the new processes and structure, is the second phase of competition namely
differentiation. This is the basis and necessary homework for the third
phase of competition, the positioning (only members of the value chain can
play this game). No differentiation without anticipation, no positioning
without differentiation and survival will become hard in the (hyper)
competition without positioning.
Best Regards
Winfried.Dressler
--Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>