Babson Strategic Management Professor Jeff Ellis has developed an entirely new course from original IP and self authored materials for Babson’s graduate and undergraduate programs titled Accomplishing Strategy.
Accomplishing Strategy helps participants achieve superior results. The course exploits the natural and indigenous dynamics that constitute strategic management, not just top management direction and the execution of a plan. Adopting this unusual perspective enables participants to comprehend uncertainty more presciently, pursue initiatives more proactively, and take actions more preemptively. Usually a premium devolves to practitioners who persistently display greater timeliness compared to peers. "Next generation" strategy tools drive the course using original concepts, case studies, and exercises derived by the instructor from his field research.
New Perspective: Rather than simply assuming that what appears as rational does work, the work behind this course instead focused on what actually materialized and asked how those results were obtained. This shows that the simple conviction that a good plan results in strong results is severely misplaced except when special conditions exist. With reflection, few managers and students of business are surprised that the truth is more complex in deeply significant ways.
New Tools: Course participants benefit from original tools that help them comprehend the future for more powerful insights, prepare them to obtain superior results, and achieve more preemptive action. The tools are practical and apply to nearly all types and nearly all levels of an organization. The intent is to equip participants with original Babson derived advantages that are more powerful than those available from other institutions.
Entrepreneurial: While embracing the usual focus in strategy on industry, competitors, and resource-based views of the firm, this course goes beyond to a more commanding and more entrepreneurial view. The course does not accept that static arrangements such as plans, control systems, balanced scorecards, and organization structures provide an adequate basis for accomplishing strategy. Instead, we embrace uncertainty in the surrounding environment to the fullest extent and explore deeply the dynamic processes that create outcomes in organizations. This simple difference transforms strategic work from “static flatness” to “dynamic vitality.”
New Units of Analysis: To draw students closer to the real dynamics of accomplishment which are so often overlooked, we stress new units of analysis: the drivers that shape the external environment, the initiatives that develop organizations, and the managerial processes that produce outcomes. Empowered by this knowledge, people at all levels in a business can contribute more substantially to the success of their enterprise and to their own success. Similarly, top managers can succeed better by facilitating the real processes by which strategy is achieved rather than relying too much on analysis, planning, and control. This vantage point can move dull and slow organizations to innovation and progress.
Original Research Base: The theoretical basis of the course is unusual. The instructor’s extensive in-depth field observation of major corporations and smaller and start-up businesses revealed that analysis, planning, measurement, and control provided only a minor, although highly visible explanation of results. Instead success arose from subtler though more important processes in and around the firm. The more successful managers held an innate command of these seldom and only partially described but fundamentally important processes. Practical tools introduced in this course capture and articulate these natural and indigenous mechanisms. The course draws previously invisible forces into overarching concepts that can drive people and their organizations toward the future.
New Materials: There are surprisingly few teaching materials from other institutions that get close enough to the real dynamics of accomplishing strategy to meet the aspirations for this course. Consequently, nearly all of the concepts, tools, case studies, workshops, readings, and presentations are original and the intellectual property of the instructor. We study cases that examine superior accomplishment in major and smaller companies. These and several readings provide real descriptions of business practice.
