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The future cannot be measured. foresight is largely a matter of conjecture, and at the heart of conjecture lies conversation. Organizations are essentially networks of personal interconnections based on conversation. Thus, in enabling complex adaptive organizations to look ahead, conversation, in one form or another, becomes a key component of strategic planning. This article describes the range of interview methods from structured to more active and creative methods and the emergence of “the strategic conversation”. The use of this technique is illustrated by examples.

This paper investigates the ways managing directors (MDs) in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) involve employees in strategic conversations. The paper examines how managers interact with employees in strategic conversations, and why the managers do so (or do not), to generate empirically grounded knowledge about the nature of internal openness in SMEs.

This study employs a general inductive approach and is based on in-depth interviews with 60 Swedish MDs with development and growth ambitions.

The paper develops a model of employee involvement in strategic conversations based on the nature and intensity of the MD–employee interaction. A key finding is that SMEs exhibit wide variation in terms of employee involvement, from virtually no employee involvement to, in some cases, far-reaching company democracy. The reasons for this variation are complex, but personal preferences and company size are shown to have an impact, as does, to some degree, ownership structure. In contrast to existing research, the limitations and drawbacks of involving employees in strategic conversations are outlined.

The study provides important insight into MDs' views and practices of internal openness in strategic conversations in SMEs. A model of employee involvement in strategic processes is outlined, and potential limitations of internal openness are highlighted.

To conceptualize and theorize dialogue's diagnostic as well as generative functions for strategic innovation and organizational change.

Conceptual development with case illustration.

Strategic innovation requires shifts in existing mental models of organizational actors that underlie the overall strategy paradigm of a firm. Dialogue as a form of reflective conversation enables actors to alter managers' mental models through conscious, critical exploration.

Conceptual framework introduces reflective dialogue, as a crucial processual element for encouraging shifts in mental maps and as a necessary, but not sufficient condition for strategy innovation; provides an analytical framework for enhancing understanding of the emergent processes of strategic innovation, and for studying shifts in organizational actors' mental models.

Provides organizational change agents and strategists with perspectives and frameworks for appreciating and fostering reflective dialogue in the context of strategic thinking and innovation.

Concept of reflective dialogue and associated frameworks link micro‐levels and macro‐levels of strategy innovation and address critical process elements.

This chapter presents a theory for developing an adaptive high commitment, high performance system of organizing, managing, and leading. It is a synthesis of my 50 years of action and field research presented in my books and articles. It operationalized and makes actionable the ideas of Lewin and systems theorists. Its features are three organizational outcomes that must be achieved simultaneously, features of the system that must be targeted for change, six silent barriers to change, a governance system for continuous learning, change in large complex systems, and elements of a system that needed to immunize it against ultimate destruction.

This paper aims to increase corporate social responsibility (CSR), including business acting in an ethical and transparent way, through the prism of strategic conversation with applying the author’s convergent methodology that ensures the integrity, purposefulness and sustainability of development of corporations in the external environment.

The methodology is based on the integration of following approaches and methods: international CSR standards, strategic planning, networked virtual collaboration, group cognitive (conceptual) modelling, inverse problem-solving in topological spaces, categories theory, control thermodynamics, big data analysis for cognitive models verification and quantum semantic approach.

The convergent methodology helps to visualize the strategic situation in a corporation and gives more chances to get a clear feeling for every employee that his or her social responsibility helps to achieve not only his or her own goals but the goals of the company. This approach helps to accelerate the raising of the level of CSR.

The strategic situation for raising the level of CSR has to be represented during strategic conversations. The strategic process should cover all the employees of the corporation. Groups can be hierarchically organized. The number of participants of one group can be about 35, and the duration of one conversation is up to 5 hours.

The convergent methodology was applied many times for creating a high-level CSR atmosphere by the collective building of companies’ strategies.

The convergent approach provides proactive identification of adverse effects of the external environment on the level of CSR and prevention of such impacts. The approach also provides acceleration of corporate strategic planning, processes of network democracy and group decision-making processes.

The main developing problem, which is beyond the state of the art, is that the CSR situation cannot be described in a clear, logical and formalised way, and a traditional computer model cannot be created for this case with formalised approach. The proposed convergent methodology with cognitive modelling helps to do it.

This paper makes the case that customer feedback is a valuable input to a company’s strategy development. The paper also suggests a process for capturing and using this input. By following this process, a company is more likely to identify a strategy in sync with customer and market demands. Closer relationships will also grow between the supplier and customer as a result of the consultative approach to collecting feedback from the customer. The article is based on the author’s experience working with companies to develop fresh information about their businesses before undertaking strategy development. Customers of a company are involved in the market every day and have a different point of view than the company itself. Their observations on issues including new technologies, offerings by competitors, and market demands can help a company prepare for the next threat, or exploit a developing opportunity. The article describes in steps the path to follow if management decides to seek out customers’ views to obtain fresh information for strategic development. By introducing the concept and benefits of strategic customer conversations, and by outlining the steps to take to implement such a system, the reader can now embark on a process of extracting fresh information from customers in order to build or fine‐tune their own strategy. This will help the CEO, VP strategy, head of marketing, or business development head as they plan product, market or service strategies.

The understanding of strategic learning processes seems to be fragmented and tangled in many disciplines. To construct a meaningful understanding of strategic learning, various disciplines were reviewed and synthesized, and a strategic learning model was developed based on the analysis of previous models. The purpose of this paper is to provide a deeper understanding of underlying theories of strategic learning and its model.

The theory of strategic learning is an evolving theory so that first, the literature that helps conceptualize the strategic learning, second, the founding pieces of the literature that composite the theory; and third, the most emerging literature in the strategy discipline are selected to explain the strategic learning model. Based on the thorough review of the literature, new conceptual model of strategic learning is introduced.

In both strategy literature and organizational literature, the existing strategic learning models can be evaluated to fully capture the distinctive aspects of learning in strategy process. Various learning theories are encompassed to construct the model.

This extended strategic learning model requires empirical testing to identify dimensions of strategic learning.

The extended strategic learning model will be useful to bring about strategic change, conversation, and behavior.

This conceptual model integrates many theories and important concepts. The foundational theories identified in this study also open up new research ideas for scholars using both quantitative and qualitative approaches.

This article aims to explain why sometimes separating strategic budgeting from strategic planning can be advantageous for library staff as a means of reshaping debate about operations. Strategic planning is a popular concern for library leaders of all types. Budgeting is commonly a component of the strategic planning process.

When, why and how to begin strategic budgeting conversations are explained with detail given toward seven specific goals appropriate for budgeting discussions above and beyond common strategic operational matters related to services, collections and/or facilities.

Consultant intervention, and restructuring periods, are clear times to introduce the concept of strategic budgeting to library staff. Fundamentally, however, immediate implementation of fiscal strategy development is recommended for a smooth and effective transitional process to take shape.

Budgeting does not have to a piece of overall strategic planning. Depending on the need or the focus of the organization, forsaking strategic planning in favor of strategic budgeting can be a superior program for the advancement of library initiatives.

Visuals are a crucial part of strategizing, whether it be through the use of body gesture, the crafting of strategy presentations, or the use of new media technologies from videoconferencing through to data visualization. Yet studying these aspects of the strategy process is methodologically challenging and requires careful attention to how the data is collected and what questions the data analysis can address. In this chapter, we lay out choices for scholars and the opportunities these afford to new and promising agendas in strategy and management research.

Traditional approaches to strategy have failed to deliver the hoped for benefits of transformation in too many cases. They do not engage people and they do not foster inventive thinking. This paper aims to declare an exciting new alternative called “strategic conversations” based on the symbiotic disciplines of design and conversation.

The paper develops the new approach through the twin arms of theory and practice. The theory is that the Western world bought the wrong thinking system from Aristotle. It has become seduced by the art of analytics and consequently strategy has become an analytic art. However, Aristotle ' s art for transformation was not analytics but rhetoric which is the ancient forebear of design. Strategy in ancient Greece was an art of rhetoric not an analytic science. The paper pursues how a strategic process built on rhetoric would work based on a major case study from the Australian Navy.

The case study illustrates the practical success of this new approach. It is one of hundreds of such assignments that the author ' s firm has accomplished. The success is measured against three key factors: a growth in agency or shared intent across multiple players; development of possibilities or new options for actions; and the emergence of a community of action.

This approach suggests a major shift in the strategy process, and in leadership skills, towards design and conversation.

The core theory underpinning the paper of the “Two roads to truth” is stunning and broadly applicable approach to thinking skills. A very small group of academics understand the significance of rhetoric, but this paper applies it much more broadly to business and organizations, in a pioneering way.