Companies find it difficult to change strategy for many reasons, but o
ne stands out: strategic thinking is not a core managerial competence
at most companies. Executives hone their capabilities by tackling prob
lems over and over again. Changing strategy, however, is not usually a
task that they face repeatedly. Once companies have found a strategy
that works, they want to use it, not change it. Consequently, most man
agers do not develop a competence in strategic thinking. This Manager'
s Tool Kit presents a three-stage method executives can use to conceiv
e and implement a creative and coherent strategy themselves. The first
stage is to identify and map the driving forces that the company need
s to address. The process of mapping provides strategy-making teams wi
th visual representations of team members' assumptions; those pictures
, in turn, enable managers to achieve consensus in determining the dri
ving forces. Once a senior management team has formulated a new strate
gy, it must align the strategy with the company's resource-allocation
process to make implementation possible. Senior management teams can t
ranslate their strategy into action by using aggregate project plannin
g. And management teams that link strategy and innovation through that
planning process will develop a competence in implementing strategic
change. The author guides the reader through the three stages of strat
egy making by examining the case of a manufacturing company that was l
osing ground to competitors. After mapping the driving forces, the com
pany's senior managers were able to devise a new strategy that allowed
the business to maintain a competitive advantage in its industry.