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58 Part 1 Introduction

Mini Case Study 2.1 The Marine Corps demonstrates strategic agility

Professor Donald N. Sull is an Associate Professor of Management Practice on the Strategy and International
Management faculty at the London Business School.

Professor Donald Sull of London Business School talks about
Figure 2.2 strategic agility
Source: www.ft.com

In the first video tutorial, ‘Fog of the Future’ on strategic agility (visit www.ft.com/multimedia and search for
‘London Business School’), he asserts that traditional management models of creating a long-term vision
are flawed since our knowledge of the future is always imperfect and marketplace conditions are changing
continuously. Rather than being the captain of a ship surveying the far horizon, analogous with the top-down
model of strategy, the reality for managers is that their situation is more akin to that of a racing car driver on
a foggy day, constantly looking to take the right decisions based on the mass of information about their
surroundings coming through the fog. He believes that having a clear long-term vision, particularly where it
isn’t based on environment analysis isn’t practical in most industries. Instead he says that companies should
‘keep vision fuzzy but current priorities clear’. He gives the example of the failure of Microsoft to respond
sufficiently fast to the growth of the Internet.
In a second video tutorial, ‘Strategic Agility’, he explains the basis for strategic agility. He explains that all
knowledge of the future is based on uncertainty, but that managers must act now so they need to put in place
US Marine Corps-style reconnaissance missions as an army would in order to make their battle plans. He gives
the example of Dell, explaining how they spend relatively little on research and development, but are instead
constantly probing the marketplace, trialling new ideas with multiple probes into the approach. He stresses the
importance of finding anomalies in the marketplace where it doesn’t appear as expected and these may repre-
sent learnings or opportunities. Detailed customer insights and business performance are necessary to iden-