Strategy Making as Polyphony: How Managers Leverage Multiple Voices in Pursuing Agility

What is it about?

Although agility is often associated with rapid speed and flexibility, having processes for “deep reflection” is also crucial. This includes the need for collective dialogs across and outside organizations to build greater awareness of, and attention to, strategic issues. How do managers involve a wider range of stakeholder voices in strategy as they pursue agility? This article identifies three practices that synergistically contribute to agility and conceptualizes them in a framework for managers called the “Strategy Making as Polyphony Wheel.” The work outlines several implications for managerial practice and research.

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Why is it important?

------------------------------------------------------- Contribution to Academic Scholarship ------------------------------------------------------- In existing academic literature, agility is mostly associated with rapid speed and flexibility. However, there are emerging streams of work that emphasise how and why organisations and managers must also have processes for ‘deep reflection’ that can enable agility. This includes the need for collective dialogues across and outside organisations around strategy to build greater awareness of, and attention to, strategic issues. However, there remains a need to better understand the precise ways in which managers include the many 'voices' of diverse stakeholders groups in strategy-making and how this helps organisations to be more agile. This study draws on empirical evidence from 39 organisations to identify three practices managers use to leverage different stakeholders voices as one of many fine-grained activities used in organisations to pursue agility. These represent and contribute to our understanding of distinct micro-activities and capabilities that underpin agility. In agility, such activities are numerous and multi-faceted, and it is important to unpack these in more detail. ------------------------------------------------------- Contribution to Management Practice ------------------------------------------------------- As organisations and managers are facing a more multi-faceted and uncertain world, driven by various macroenvironmental factors and by the expectations and demands of key stakeholders, they can benefit from including a wider range of stakeholders in strategy-making. This allows managers to tap into diverse ideas, opinions, and knowledge, which can help them to better understand their environment. However, how do managers involve a wider range of stakeholder voices in strategy as they pursue agility? This paper identifies and carefully details three ways managers can do this and conceptualises these in a framework – the strategy as polyphony wheel. Managers can draw on the developed framework as a practical tool to understand how to include different stakeholders in strategy. This research also details numerous benefits in doing so, such as for managing or responding to macroenvironmental issues and the disparate demands and tensions of stakeholders, whilst benefitting from fresh ideas, and know-how. On the other hand, this study also identifies potential pitfalls for agility that managers need to be aware of when including diverse stakeholder groups in strategy-making. ---------------------------- Author Perspective ---------------------------- This research is motivated by the increasing changes to strategy-making in organisations, and how strategy is becoming a role that includes many different stakeholder across, and outside, organisations. This offers great potential for organisations to better understand stakeholders needs, and to collect a wider range of opinions and ideas that can inform strategy. This is all about capturing the voices of stakeholders, and using the rich information gathered to shape strategies that are better aligned and more coherent. This is important as organisations seek to understand their environment in times of turbulence, and to ultimately make them more agile to changes. However, there is still much scope to distil the precise ways that managers leverage voices and to uncover the benefits, and potential pitfalls, for agility in more detail.