Chapter 10
The strategic thinking log

This chapter is quite short, because it is a bit like the eye of the storm of this book. In a way, all the subjects treated in the other chapters revolve around the strategic thinking log, which is the keystone of the system that we propose. However, we have chosen not to repeat here what has been seen in the other chapters, and therefore, this chapter in the center of the book is not understandable without having read the whole.

Fonctioning of the stategic thinking log

Content

Each entry in the strategic thinking log indicates:
Who, When, What strategic question is asked.
Next comes the reasoned description of the resources allocated to answer the question.
Then, the content of the study itself, with its analysis part, then its conclusions and recommendations.
Finally, the report on the implementation of the conclusions.
And possibly, in addition, the methodological evaluation of the quality of the study.

Here are some examples of strategic questions:
Our working premises are ill-suited and generate recurring problems, should we move or start renovation works, which ones?
Should we change our computer system which poses such and such recurring problem?
We are getting too big, should we outsource part of our business, which part, or should we split, how?
For an organization responsible for regional development:
How can we ensure local independence for all basic food products?
Take stock of our waste circuit. What transformations should be brought to production and distribution to limit their production at source?
Study the particular live curse of some young people who have dropped out of society. How adapted was the support that has been set up?

Creation of an entry

Anyone in the organization can decide to open a new entry in the strategic thinking log to submit a question.
In addition, the president is responsible for periodically conducting surveys in the problems log, to determine recurring subjects, and possibly deducing strategic questions which would allow these problems to be dealt with with greater height, means, and therefore relevance.
We also saw in the previous chapter, that a disagreement at the level of the people involved in the solution of an entry in the problems log, will often lead to creating an entry in the strategic thinking log, to conduct the study which will arbitrate the disagreement.
Finally, we will see it in the next chapter, the auditors carrying out operational control can decide to add new entries to the strategic thinking log, and possibly fix the corresponding study means.

Allocation of means

The president completes the allocated resources box of each entry in the strategic thinking log, the content of which he decides, and specifies to whom the study is entrusted. These two decisions have to be reasoned.
The people involved in the study can be the president, members of the organization or outside people. It is the president who decides, and he is required to entrust this study to one or more people whose strategic rating is in line with the issue related to this strategic question. The president is also required to allocate some studies of lesser importance to less experienced people, that is to say with a lower strategic rating, inside and outside the company, to allow all citizens to be periodically evaluated.

This point is very important. In a society that has become extremely complex, true democracy no longer depends on the fact that everyone votes, because the effort to study the question asked is too weak to not be easily disturbed by targeted and demagogic information using cognitive dissonance to pervert the system. The British Brexit of 2016 is a perfect illustration of this. True democracy is due to the fact that all citizens are led to periodically carry out strategic studies for the benefit of all, and led to gradually demonstrate their capacity at this level. In other words, in a very technologically developed society, the subject is no longer so much to protect the homeland against external invasions via regular military periods on the Swiss model, as to protect society against the breakdown of trust, via a periodic involvement of all citizens in the collective decision-making system which is no longer external, political, but integrated into the production system. The strategic rating assigned to each citizen is a reflection of this new organization of decision-making power.

Conduct of the study

Next comes the study signed by a main author, who commits his credibility, and will be evaluated with the methods we will see in Chapter 11, with the main effect of adjusting his strategic rating.
The study consists of an analysis part, then a conclusions and recommendations part.
In addition, there is a section "Overall effects on the long run" and a section "Reduction of the organization's future room for maneuver".

Validation

The president validates the conclusions, or justifies his rejection and allocates new means for a new study of the same question.

From the above, we note that certain entries in the strategic thinking log, may have been created by the president, allocated to him by him, and finally validated by him. There is therefore the risk of a hegemonic president.
In the long term, the counter-power is operational control which carries out the methodological evaluation of strategic studies, including those carried out by the president himself, and can, in the event of major shortcomings, go as far as dismissing the president.
In the short term, if a person in the organization does not agree with the validation decision made by the president, he can conduct and propose a counter-study leading to different recommendations. Obviously, this counter-study may concern only part of the initial study, and the recommendations may simply be complementary or suggest minor adjustments.
The president can first of all decide to validate the counter-study. On the other hand, if it rejects the content, then it is the strategic rating which determines the outcome. If the strategic rating of the president is higher than that of the person carrying out the counter-study, the rejection is validated. On the other hand, if the person carrying out the cross-study has a higher strategic rating than that of the president, then it is a person from a neutral third organization who will carry out the arbitration, i.e. who will validate or not the counter-study and its conclusions. This third party must have a strategic rating at least equal to that of the president.

Let us recall at this stage that the president of the organization is elected, in accordance with the ballot described in chapter 8. The recourse to an external arbitration which we have just described corresponds therefore to the case where two legitimacies clash: on one side, that of suffrage, on the other, that of the strategic rating. On the other hand, we took care to avoid resorting to voting for arbitration, because that would encourage too much a strong return to the game of alliances.
With this mode of validation of decisions, we favor the emergence of the figure of the sage, that is to say a person who is not necessarily very active and very popular, does not hold the role of president, but who, from made of its high strategic rating linked to its rigor of reasoning gradually demonstrated, can at any time intervene and change a decision, provided that this intervention is validated by a third party outside. We have thus put in place an effective counter-power vis-à-vis the power of the president, resulting from suffrage, and consequently vis-à-vis the suffrage itself.

Implementation

An entry in the strategic thinking log having followed a normal course ends with a section for monitoring the implementation of the recommendations, which will be completed by the director and not by the president.

Conversely, an entry can be closed at any time, and in this case we will simply end with the date of withdrawal and the reason. It is the author(s) of a strategic question who can unanimously decide to close it. The reason may possibly be its replacement by a new strategic question which may possibly be asked by more people.

Subsequent evaluation

The last box of an entry in the strategic thinking log is reserved for the possible subsequent methodological evaluation of the study, the modalities of which we will see in more detail in Chapter 11. Let us simply note now that when the study is evaluated, the quality of the questions in the stategic thinking log, the relevance of the resources allocated by the president for the study, as well as the quality of implementation of the recommendations with regard to the quality of the conclusions, are evaluated at the same time of the study.

Restoration of margin of maneuver

The president also has the role of ensuring that the decisions taken do not limit the organization's future room for maneuver too strongly, and of launching strategic reflections to increase them as much as possible.
In other words, it is not enough to conduct each strategic study correctly from the point of view of rationality, as mentioned at the end of chapter 7. Still, one must not allow oneself to be trapped in a situation where all decisions become dictated by previous choices which excessively reduced the room for maneuver. This is especially true for digital. There is therefore a fundamental work to be carried out to restore these margins, which must be organized by the president. Obviously, this work has an equally significant effect on the solutions applicable at the level of the problems log.

External effects on the ecosystem

Finally, note that certain organizations have the raison d'être of conducting studies and making decisions on behalf of third parties. In this case, their entire production will also have to conform to the formalism of the strategic thinking log, in order to be able to be audited in a socially impartial manner.
The existence of these organizations is explained by the fact that in Chapter 8, we favored organizations with a workforce of around one hundred people. So in certain sectors of production requiring massive resources, certain organizations will have a role of pure coordination of the activity of other subcontracting organizations.