Complex and unpredictable environment

Nowadays, no one can predict the price of energy in the coming years, nor the availability of qualified employees and the associated wages; most companies do not yet know how the new technologies will affect their business and do not yet understand the behaviour of the new generations; politics at all levels is unpredictable. This presents opportunities and risks and requires flexibility and reactivity.

Unplannability requires strategy
Paradoxically, it is not that unplannability is incompatible with planning. On the contrary, because one should be prepared for foreseen events in order to recognize relevant unplanned developments at an early stage and have thought of possible options thanks to scenario thinking. You don't have a solution yet, but you will be able to find and implement the solution much faster. Strategy also enables all relevant players in a company to know the direction of travel in order to identify new deviations and unplanned risks themselves. For example, a procurer can identify and report a new surprising development that would be relevant for marketing.

Strategy as a compass between conflicting goals
Good and useful strategies are instruments for making well-founded, coherent, predictable and understandable decisions in situations of conflicting goals. There are rarely decisions that are positive for finances, quality, environment, society, and this in the short and long term. Especially not important decisions. To be able to have the necessary information to make decisions and the levers to implement them, integrated management is essential. Without strategy, it is impossible to stay on the right course when larger waves obscure the view of the next stages of the journey

Aspects of integrated management necessary for the strategy
Strategic work requires two main aspects of an integrated management approach:

• Analyses of the relevant aspects for the company in the areas of finance, market, stakeholders (social), environment, quality, safety, technology, etc.
• Coherent target system for the implementation of the strategy (e.g. Balanced Scorecard) and the corresponding linked "Management by Objectives" approach to make the targets usable throughout the workforce; this allows each level/department to address the conflicting targets coherently with the strategy.

Without these two basic conditions, there is a high risk that a strategy will not take important aspects into account and/or will not achieve any effect in reality.

Integrated management without strategy: a tiger with teeth but no brain
Good integrated management captures information on the relevant aspects in different topics. It simplifies the processes in this sense that all relevant aspects are integrated in the same guidance and procedure, specification and other management implementation tools. Without strategy and strong leadership, the risk of ineffectiveness is high. Indeed, then everyone decides independently based on the information they have (what is right and the goal), but without any coherence. Thus, departments develop new subcultures, management becomes unpredictable, conflicts between people can be poorly regulated

Strategy is the single and most important link that prevents disintegration and enables coherence between individual local optimizations. The strategy is the part of the brain of an organization that can control the non-reflex actions.

Expression of non-integrated management
A non-integrated management system can be recognised by a number of characteristics:

• The annual report does not contain any information and key figures on environmental and social aspects; in the sustainability report, the corporate strategy is only mentioned in passing.
• No one in management is responsible for quality, the environment or social aspects.
• They have little or no knowledge of the aspects of corporate strategy that are relevant to the workforce.
• It is not clear which aspects of the environment are relevant to the company and which are not.
• The vision or corporate policy contains banalities in the environmental field; the relevant aspects are not specifically highlighted.
• The strategy does not offer any assistance in prioritising and regulating the trade-offs between finance, quality, environment, society and between short- and long-term perspectives.
• New projects and developments are only examined at the very end (or not at all) for their indirect effects on the environment and society.

Strategy and integrated management in harmony
Ultimately, it is not a question of whether the strategy or the management system is more important. Both are needed. And not in parallel and independently, but closely intertwined, coherent and struggling together or continuously against each other.