How to create a future-proof strategy in a rapidly changing digital world

Designer
Publication date: 11/26/2024

For businesses, organizations, and governments, responding to the opportunities and challenges of digital advancements is crucial. But how do you ensure a strategy that stands the test of time? Wolter Lemstra, lead faculty member for Digital Strategy and Transformation at Nyenrode Business University, offers five practical tips:

1. Explore the future with a broad leadership team

Look far enough ahead to move beyond today’s limitations. Investigate how customer needs can be met in the future and identify potential value propositions, while keeping sustainability goals in mind. Revisit and, if necessary, adjust your mission, vision, and objectives. Then design a fitting strategy. Toolkit: Futuring and Foresights

2. Test the strategy’s resilience with alternative futures

Recognize that multiple plausible futures can unfold. Work with your leadership team to identify key “drivers” shaping the future—technological, economic, political, and societal. Focus on the drivers with the greatest uncertainty and impact, then build four possible scenarios. Test your strategy against these scenarios. If it doesn’t align with one of the extremes, define “early warning signals” to adjust the strategy in time. Toolkit: Scenario Planning

3. Recognize internal and external factors that impact strategy execution

Leverage the collaborative culture by involving a broad leadership team to ensure buy-in. Translate the strategy into actions across all organizational units and make progress measurable. Continuously align the strategy with the changing environment to prevent “strategic drift.” Don’t just discuss results—secure them. Establish a feedback loop to learn and adapt. Toolkit: Operating Model & Strategy Execution Office, Strategic Drift, and Strategy as Practice

4. Develop digital capabilities and foster digital leadership

A new era requires new skills. Understand digital technologies and learn when and how to apply them. Distinguish between “hype” and reality. Collaborate with experts in areas such as big data, AI, machine learning, blockchain, and ecosystems. Identify digital disruptions and design new value propositions in response. Toolkit: Expert Faculty from Nyenrode and Beyond

5. Understand the organization as a set of paradoxes and learn to manage them

If the organization resists change or seemingly perfect solutions don’t work in practice, the underlying issue is likely a paradox, not a problem. Paradoxes are apparent contradictions that can’t be solved but can be managed for optimal results. Every organization operates within a framework of 11 strategic paradoxes. Learn the upsides and downsides of opposing poles and use the “infinity loop” to manage them effectively. Toolkit: Strategy Synthesis, Strategy Profiler, and Polarity Management

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