Many people aware of the strategic dimensions approach used in strategic consulting ask how to use the strategic dimensions approach to the real-world news. I try to provide some tips in this article.
First of all, I find it extremely useful and sensible to think of the strategic dimensions in any and every situation and piece of news that you come across. Whether it is about separate businesses or companies, or industries, or virtually whatever topic you see when reading or watching the news.
Second, about the approach itself. The strategic dimensions approach is defined in many articles that are available all over the internet. Mostly these are on the websites of consulting companies or individual consultants. There are a bunch of articles that were published by myself. Just feel free to search them on the internet.
So, let’s suppose that you’re aware of the strategic dimensions approach, you know how to use it when making the major management decisions. But how do you apply this approach to something less important or less massive? How to apply this approach to the actual news? Like a short piece of news, a note of maybe a couple of sentences, or a comment on a financial statement.
Basically, when you read a piece of news, with some practice, you can obviously see, which type of business or which company or which industry this statement is about.
1. The first step is to define or find out what essential dimensions the news is about. For example, if there is a piece of information about a company in the food chain industry, (maybe McDonald’s or Burger King), you understand that this can be either about products of these food chains, or maybe their production tech, or the promotion and marketing.
2. The second step is to pick out one or two dimensions that are essential in the context. And after that map this company on the chosen dimension line or a multi-dimensional map. Then try to add at least a couple of their competitors in the current situation.
3. Within the dimension line (or the dimension map) you can obviously see the current position of the company along with its competitors. So now you can evaluate how this piece of news could influence the overall standing. Changes in the strategy of the company, some new actions of the corporate management, or the quarterly results – how they change their position compared to the competitors.
4. In the final step, you could make some projections. Alternatively, you could think of several scenarios of how the company would be successful or not with the coming strategic move. Or how the competitors would react and how these reactions could change the overall trends in this particular industry or business.
In conclusion, the strategic dimensions approach may sometimes seem a bit too overwhelming, or intimidating to apply to real-world situations. However, with some practice following the steps that I described above, you could easily discern the essential areas in which a piece of news is making changes. At the same time, it helps to understand how the upcoming information influences the big picture and how it sways the strategic picture of this business or this industry.