Chapter 10
The journal of strategic reflections

This chapter is quite short, because it constitutes a bit of the eye of the storm of this book. In a way, all the topics covered in the other chapters revolve around the strategic reflection journal, which is the keystone of the system we propose. However, we have chosen not to repeat here what has been seen in the other chapters, and as a result, this chapter in the center of the book is not understandable without having read the whole.

How the strategic reflection journal works

Content

Each entry in the Strategic Thoughts Journal states:
Who, When, What strategic question is asked.
Next comes the reasoned description of the means 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 premises are poorly adapted and generate recurring problems, should we move or undertake work, which ones?
Should we change our computer system which poses such and such recurring problem?
We are becoming too big, should we outsource part of our activity, which part, or should we split up, how?
For an organization responsible for regional development:
How can we ensure our independence on all basic food products?
Carry out an assessment of our waste circuit. What transformations should be made at the level of production and distribution to limit their production at the source?
Study the particular journey of some young people who have dropped out of society. Is the support that has been put in place appropriate?

Creating an entry

Anyone in the organization can decide to open a new entry in the strategic thoughts journal, to submit a question.
In addition, the president has the responsibility to periodically carry out surveys in the problem log, to determine recurring subjects, and possibly deduce strategic questions which would allow these problems to be addressed with greater depth, 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 problem journal, will often lead to creating an entry in the strategic reflection journal, to carry out the study which will arbitrate the disagreement.
Finally, as we will see in the next chapter, auditors carrying out an operational control can decide to add new entries to the strategic reflection journal, and possibly set the corresponding study resources.

Allocation of resources

The president completes the allocated resources box for each entry in the strategic issues journal, the content of which he decides, and specifies to whom the study is entrusted. These two decisions must be reasoned.
The people involved in the study can be the president, members of the organization or external 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 stakes linked 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 not to be the toy of targeted and demagogic information using cognitive dissonance to pervert the system. The British Brexit of 2016 is the perfect illustration of this. True democracy is due to the fact that all citizens are led to periodically carry out strategic studies in the interest of all, and are 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 disintegration of confidence, 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 reflects this new organization of decision-making power.

Conduct of the study

Next comes the study signed by a main author, which commits its credibility, and will be evaluated using methods that we will see in Chapter 11, with the main effect of changing its strategic rating.
The study consists of an analysis part, then a conclusions and recommendations part.
A section 'Overall, long-term effects' and a section 'Reduction of the organization's future room for maneuver' must be added.

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 journal of strategic reflections may have been created by the president, allocated to him by him, and finally always validated by him. We therefore have the risk of a hegemonic president.
In the long term, the counter-power is the 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 significant breaches, go so far as to dismiss the president.
In the short term, if a person in the organization does not agree with the validation decision taken by the president, they can conduct and propose a counter-study leading to different recommendations. Obviously, this counter-study may only concern part of the initial study, and the recommendations may simply be complementary or propose minor adjustments.
The president can first decide to validate the counter-study. On the other hand, if it rejects its 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 who carries out the counter-study has a higher strategic rating than that of the president, then it is a person from a neutral third party organization who will carry out the arbitration, that is to say 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 external arbitration that we have just described therefore corresponds to the case where two legitimacies confront each other: on the one hand, that of suffrage, on the other, that of strategic listing. On the other hand, we have taken care to avoid resorting to voting for arbitration, because this would encourage a strong return to the game of alliances.
With this method of validating decisions, we favor the emergence of the figure of the wise man, that is to say a person who is not necessarily very active and very popular, does not play the role of president, but who, of made of its high strategic rating linked to its progressively demonstrated rigor of reasoning, can at any time intervene and change a decision, as long as this intervention is validated by an external third party. We have thus put in place an effective counter-power to the power of the president, derived from the vote, and consequently to the vote itself.

Implementation

A strategic reflection journal entry that has followed a normal course ends with a section monitoring the implementation of 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 withdrawal date 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 with a new strategic question which may possibly be asked by more people.

Subsequent assessment

The last box of an entry in the journal of strategic reflections is reserved for the possible subsequent methodological evaluation of this study, the modalities of which we will see in more detail in chapter 11. Let us simply note from now on that at the moment when the The study is evaluated, at the same time the quality of the questions in the strategic reflection journal, 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. of the study.

Restoration of room for maneuver

The president's role is also to ensure that the decisions taken do not limit too much the organization's future room for maneuver, and to launch strategic discussions to increase them as much as possible.
In other words, it is not enough to carry out each strategic reflection correctly from the point of view of rationality, as mentioned at the end of chapter 7. We must also not allow ourselves to be locked into a situation where all decisions become dictated by previous choices which excessively reduce the room for maneuver. This is particularly true regarding digital technology. There is therefore fundamental work to be done 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 problem log level.

External effects on the ecosystem

Finally, note that some organizations exist to conduct studies and make decisions on behalf of third parties. In this case, their entire production must also comply with the formalism of the strategic reflection journal, in order 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 staff of around a hundred people. Therefore, in certain sectors of production requiring massive resources, certain organizations will have a role of pure coordination of the activity of other subcontracting organizations.