The Prometheus Process Concept Overview
here is a huge difference between strategy and tactics, but most of us, when you assume positions that require strategic thinking, tend to extrapolate and scale up our tactical lessons. This sometimes works just as blind pigs occasionally find truffles, but you don’t want to count on it..
The most important job for a leader or manager is to develop and execute a sound strategy. A good strategy will allow success even if the organization does not have the best tactical capability (products, sales, etc). Conversely, a bad strategy can easily overcome the best tactical capability in the world.
There are four words that capture the essence of strategy:
Where do you intend to be in the future?
What are you going to apply your resources against?
How do you intend to apply your resources?
Exit plans available and ready for execution?
The Prometheus Process draws on the natural laws of strategy to provide a methodology for an organization to develop good enough strategy, to understand how it did so, and to get organizational commitment to the strategy.
The Prometheus Process works back from the future as it starts with development of a Future Picture—exactly where the organization intends to be at a point some distance in the future.
To get to the future, it is necessary to change two major systems—your own internal system and external system in which you function—your market. It is necessary to change both in parallel; failure to do so will significantly reduce the probability of success (Ps).
Planning and operating in the open (a Cardinal Rule) is the best known method to come up with good-enough plans that will be understood and executed appropriately by the organization.
The Prometheus Process is an especially useful strategy planning process because it can be used at all levels of an organization; the same system used in the board room applies equally well for the smallest project.
As people in an organization learn the process and the vocabulary, they find that they have a way to communicate strategically across the whole organization.
In the final analysis, strategy has two overwhelmingly important functions: raising probability of success and reducing the cost of error.
Creating Good Strategy
Creating good strategy can seem overwhelmingly difficult—until you break it down into its component parts and into manageable building steps:
Scope the Environment: Understand the major factors in your operating environment that will affect your business
Develop a Future Picture:In this step, you go forward in time (normally 2-7 years but the time frame can be more or less depending on your situation) to describe exactly the future you want for your business.
You will answer 12 questions to ensure that you have a high resolution view of your future. Then, you will write strategic measures for each aspect of your Future Picture so that you know you are on track and will know when you have arrived.
Write Guiding Precepts: You now decide what you want to stand for as a business, what your big philosophical ideas are, and how you want to behave. Nordstrom’s “the customer is always right” is a good example of a guiding precept.
Configure your External System (your market environment): Determine the confines of your market and decide what it must be if you are going to be successful.
Map the External Centers of Gravity: Find, or create, the Centers of Gravity (the leverage points) you will need to affect in order to make the External System do what it needs to do for you to reach your Future Picture.
Build Strategic Impact Plans: Decide what each of your Centers of Gravity must become (their Desired Effect) and by when to ensure the needed External and Internal system change.
Build the Phase Plans: You are unlikely to have sufficient resources to affect all of your Centers of Gravity simultaneously (the ideal approach) so you need to decide the order of attack which will be based on your understanding of systems and parallel operations (covered in following lessons).
Create Campaigns: In this step you divide up the work on your Centers of Gravity and assign them to teams of people if available or to time periods where you will work on them.
Optimize Your Organization:As you plan and act strategically, you will probably find that you need to change your organization (even if you are a single owner!). Now is the time to do it.
Develop Exit Points and Exit Plans: If all goes perfectly with no unexpected problems, you will realize your Future Picture. This would constitute an exit point by definition. Decide now what your strategic actions will be at this point.
On the other hand, it is possible you will encounter problems along the way or that your products are not selling as you thought they would.
Think now about these contingencies and develop the plans you will follow if the exit points occur. Of course, this also helps you take actions to reduce the probability of adverse exit points occurring.
Red Team:Step back now from all your planning and look at it with an ultra-critical eye. Come up with all the things that are weak about your plan, then either fix them or restart your planning.
Campaign to Win:Make the Centers of Gravity do what you need them to. Determine the actions (the tactics) to make them change, then put the people and resources needed against them. During this step, keep a careful eye on your strategic measures to make sure you are on the right track.
Follow the Cardinal Rules: If you work at following the Cardinal Rules, you really improve your chances of success. Regularly review how well you are adhering to them.
Open Plan, Measure, Review, Modify, Exit:Keep your operations visible to your team (and to yourself!) by continuing to plan and operate in the open, continually measure your progress and adjust as required, and exit promptly and cheerfully as required.
Enjoy the fruits of your labor as you realize your Future Picture—or as you apply your lessons and resources to another endeavor.
Strategy Trumps Tactics
Throughout history, there have been a number of examples of where a state or a group with a good strategy was able to defeat an opponent with significantly greater tactical capability (numbers, weapons, etc).
- David versus Goliath
- Alexander versus Persians
- Julius Caesar versus Pompeii
- Washington versus British
- Wellington versus Napoleon
- MacArthur versus Japan
- North Vietnam versus United States.
In business, firms with relatively few resources are typically the ones who introduce major innovations that end up disrupting whole industries and markets.