Creative Strategy: Reconnecting Business and Innovation

CHAPTER 15

Seven Virtues of Strategic Organization

If there is some end of the things we do… clearly this must be ‘the good’. Will not knowledge of it, then, have a great influence on life? Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon what we should?

Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics

Mindful of the fate of In Search of Excellence's first seven principles, the fate of Icarus, and following Aristotle's approach to mapping virtue, we outline seven virtues of strategic organization. These are what we, in our experience across a wide range of creative and commercial enterprises, believe to be important organizational characteristics for fostering creative strategy. They should not be the last word, and there will be many exceptions to these seven virtues. But, as Aristotle suggests, it is useful to give the content of good organizing (loosening and focussing) an aim.

As the summary table below shows, each requires finding a balance between two extremes rather than pursuing excellence, and that balance will be relative to the organization and its context. Our virtues of strategic organization relate to seven domains: culture, politics, learning, idea generation, job orientation, organizational architecture and orientation to change.

• The first organizational virtue is a strong culture that holds things together and provides focus but which is also adaptive to environmental changes and new ideas.

  Table 15.1 The seven virtues of strategic organization