Systemic Strategic Management

Organizations increasingly face rapid changes and complex challenges such as environmental disasters (forest fires, heat waves, floods), supply chain disruptions, immigration growth, public health issues, digitalization, and economic insecurity. These issues impact communities and organizations worldwide. Current practices are unsustainable, exceeding ecological limits and failing to meet essential social standards.

Organizations recognize the need for change but struggle with the mismatch between these dynamic issues and traditional management practices that have contributed to the crisis. To address this gap, organizations need to transition to strategic management practices that match the complexity of the challenges they face.

At REFOCUS, we help you evolve three elements of strategic management: strategic functions (including strategic planning and performance management), relationships with stakeholders, and the organization’s culture and capabilities, which support the other elements.

Within these elements of strategic management, we address the need for strategic decision-making amid uncertainty through systemic management practices that are more integrative, collective, and adaptive.

Integrative Practices

Conventional Management: Tackle complex, interconnected issues separately from each other, and aim for the organization’s success and goals without considering how related systems and people influence or are influenced by these actions.

Systemic Management: Integrative management practices which recognize interconnections and consider the organization’s impact on wider systems through unintended consequences or co-benefits.

Opportunity: Improved decision quality and system understanding.

Collective Practices

Conventional Management: Arms-length, transactional collaboration with a limited set of stakeholders.

Systemic Management: Building collaborative relationships with all stakeholders, sharing power, and empowering diverse actors to design and build the future.

Opportunity: Better collaboration across departments and with external stakeholders, mutual trust-building and empowerment.

Adaptive Practices

Conventional Management: Reactive, top-down responses to challenges after they unfold.

Systemic Management: Proactive anticipation and preparation, and an organizational culture that values experimentation and learning from failure.

Opportunity: Greater resilience through strategic flexibility and adaptability.

Transforming Strategic Management Practices

CONVENTIONAL MANAGEMENT PRACTICES...	SYSTEMIC MANAGEMENT PRACTICES...	OPPORTUNITY
Compartmentalized & Internally-Focused	Integrative	Improved decision quality and system understanding.
Pursue goals with limited consideration of external stakeholders Address complex, interconnected issues separately	Consider how the organization depends on and impacts wider systems Recognize the interconnections between challenges and opportunities Consider potential consequences and benefits cross-organizationally
Controlling & Insular	Collective	Better collaboration across departments and with external stakeholders, mutual trust-building and empowerment.
Independently pursue goals within siloed departments Strive to maintain power and control Engage stakeholders in a consultative, risk-averse manner	Pursue objectives within flexible, trans-disciplinary teams Share power and collaborate with internal and external actors Foster healthy, equitable, and cooperative relationships
Linear & Reactive	Adaptive	Greater resilience through strategic flexibility and adaptability.
Mainly respond to symptoms of challenges after impacts are observed Short-term oriented and reliant on historical data and experiences Maintain inflexible processes and structures and focus on consistency	Anticipate and aim to identify root causes of complex challenges Design processes and structures to be responsive to change Embrace experimentation and failure to enable learning and innovation

Conventional Management Practices	Systemic Management Practices	Opportunity
Compartmentalized & Internally-Focused: tackle issues separately from each other, and don’t consider how their actions influence or are influenced by related systems and people.	Integrative: recognizing interconnections and considering the organization's impact on wider systems through unintended consequences or co-benefits.	Improved decision quality and system understanding.
Controlling & Insular: arms-length, transactional collaboration with a limited set of stakeholders.	Collective: building collaborative relationships with all stakeholders, sharing power, and empowering diverse actors to design and build the future.	Better collaboration across departments and with external stakeholders, mutual trust-building, and empowerment.
Linear & Reactive: top-down responses to challenges after they unfold.	Adaptive: proactive anticipation and preparation and an organizational culture that values experimentation and learning from failure.	Greater resilience through strategic flexibility and adaptability.

Discover the foundational values that drive our commitment to innovation, environmental responsibility, and ethical practices at Modurch Green.