Need for adding humility in strategy programs

Strategy is a fascinating management discipline. It involves a lot of excitement, fun stuff, and money. Many executives and aspiring executives want to work in strategy and strategy consulting. Strategy is also quite complex and challenging. Compared to other business management disciplines, strategy is a younger and still evolving subject.

To meet the needs of the private sector, government, and civil society, many strategy programs exist, such as strategy subjects in MBA or Doctoral programs, strategy specialisations in MBA and doctoral programs, short—and long-term management development programs, and so on. These programs cover a wide range of strategy concepts, frameworks, and theories. This growing interest and availability of programs is good for the discipline of strategy.

Also Read: Need for more experiential learning in MBA programs

To make these programs more successful and create impact, one aspect that needs to be integral is the inclusion of humility as a key skill to be imparted to the participants. Some of the reasons to support the argument are as follows.

The strategy has a tremendous failure rate, with some studies claiming up to 90 per cent, i.e. out of 10 strategies, 9 are failures. Even if a strategy is successful, the sustainability of this success is getting shorter as others try to copy and even improve upon it. The concept of sustainable competitive advantage is no longer present in increasing industries. In such a scenario of high failure rates and short-lived successes, arrogance is fatal for strategists and the organisations they work for. When a strategist is not humble, she will stop listening and learning, which is dangerous in the rapidly evolving and complex business environment in which strategy must navigate.

The latest frameworks and models are good to include in strategy programs, but a strategist must also include humility as a skill. Luckily, humility is a skill that can be taught.

By learning humility as an essential skill in strategy, some of the mistakes made by strategists can be addressed, resulting in a reduction in strategy failures. This will be good for the strategist, organisations, and the discipline of strategy. At the end of the day, strategy needs to deliver and add value.