Organizations, even ones that have been in existence for decades, sometimes argue that they are not mature enough to take a particular course.

The Capability Maturity Model describes the maturity of organizational processes. Five levels of maturity are defined starting at the initial or chaotic, repeatable, defined, managed, and optimized: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_Maturity_Model.

This is very curious. I don't know any individual who runs a company who publicly acknowledges that they are not mature enough to do their job. How is it that an organization that is run by mature individuals can argue that it is immature? If it really is immature, why is this said with a shrug? Surely the recognition of immaturity should be treated as a major crisis!

This issue around immaturity is now being addressed by business coaching. Coaching provides an organization with a common language and set of frameworks. It enables an organization to reflect on the causes of the immaturity and discover ways to transform them.

Once an organization has agreed a context, it is very tempting to jump straight into implementation. By taking the time to craft a strategy, the implementation phase will go more smoothly. It does mean that you have to slow down to speed up, and this can feel frustrating. We know what the problem is. Why not just jump in and fix things along the way?

Context answers the why question. Strategy answers the what question: what are we going to do differently? Implementation answers the how question.

In the remainder of this book, we will describe the key aspects of the strategy in more detail. The strategy document can be divided into sections in accordance with the key aspects of the strategy, namely:

Here is an example of what a strategy overview might look like: