Forums

Hi there,

First time I post, congratulations guy for tremendous site!!

I read this morning an article about Leadership and the author mentioned something about having the 7´s for Strategy, do you know what are these?

Tks a lot.
Regards from Mexico

Omar.

Mark's picture
Admin Role Badge

The 7 S Model comes from McKinsey, the leading strategic management consulting firm. It supports Value Based Management, which is a soft side approach to things, more about holistic and integrated management of financials and people.

The 7 S's are:

Shared Value - the central tenet. What do we stand for?
Strategy - Planning for the future with limited resources. Market, competitors, customers
System - Processes and procedures
Structure - how we're organized - matrix, layered, vertical, flat, whatever
Staff - how many and which types
Style - how we work
Skill - what we're good at.

WGW's picture

The 7S framework is a good model, but I think that as a representation of strategy, it would be more relevant if it included an "S" for "simoleons," in that in order to develop an appropriate model using it, you really would also need to consider current resources, which are to some extent reflected in Staff and Skill, but not to the extent that would be desirable. A $200 million a year company that recently survived a Chapter 11 reorganization and is in a declining market has to use very different strategies from those of a Citigroup or an ExxonMobil. Of course, adding an 8 S would destroy the elegance and simplicity of the 7S model, so an alternative approach might be to discard 7S altogether in favor of a more general recognition of what strategy is.

Regarding the four Ps, they've already been extended to something like 15, by throwing in people, process, et cetera. It reaches a point where this type of model ceases to be a useful framework and instead becomes a laundry list of responsibilities for persons of X function.