[MUSIC] The strategic lenses were developed by authors Johnson et al 2008. Now the strategic lenses you could think of these lenses as bifocal glasses or you could think of these as putting on four different pairs of glasses. Because essentially, the strategic lenses provide managers with four different lenses in which to view strategy. So they help in terms of identifying strategic development, and they help in terms of identifying different ways to view strategic problems. So there's four lenses, we have the design lens. I'll write them all and then we'll go through each one. The experience lens. The variety lens, which used to be called the ideas lens and then finally, the discourse lens. Managers can adopt any one of these lenses when they're wanting to approach a strategic problem. And I think it will be easier to explain it to you if we use an actual, a real life issue if you like. So if an organization has realized that the market that they're operating in has become saturated. So there's no further growth opportunities in the market that they're operating in at this point in time. So if we look at the design lens, the design lens is a very rational approach to viewing strategy. It's also logical, it's about analyzing the environment, collecting data, reviewing that data in a very logical, rational, practical way. Shareholders and stakeholders like the design lens because we're using the language of strategy. So the external environment, the internal environment, what's going on around us, but it assumes that organizations are rational beings. And of course, we know that organizations aren't always rational beings. They do change. They do have to be responsive. Sometimes they're reactive, sometimes they're proactive. So it's a logical, rational way of assessing the environment and developing a strategy. So in our context then, if we took the design lens approach we would be reviewing possible new markets. We'd be gathering data on the size of the target market. We might consider launching into a new country. We'd gather all the information about that country, the GDP etc, etc. So we approach things in a very rational, logical way. The second one is based on the experience and this leans very closely to culture. And this may be the case in your organizations that when we're presented with a challenge, we're presented with a problem the immediate things the managers do is look back over in time, we look back over in history. Has this problem happened before, what have we done? And that's informed our strategic position and our strategic choice, in terms of the actions that we're taking. We talk about here, culture because this lends, is very much reliant on the existing culture of the organization. So if this is an organization that wants to maintain the status quo is reluctant to change. Doesn't embrace innovation then they're going to base their choices and their approach to strategy on something that's already existed. They're basing it on their experience. The problem with this and you may have already guessed, is it does stifle innovation. It can prevent innovative change. The experience lens seeks to preserve, if you like the status quo. If we can carry on as we're doing of we can copy what we did before, let's take that approach. So in terms of the saturated market. They may look back and think okay what actions did we take when we wanted to launch into the market we're currently in that's now becoming saturated? The problem is there that may have been 10, 20 years ago and the environment has completely changed. So it has its place but we have to be careful that we're not too much guided by old practices. Another approach is the variety lens and this really links to innovation and ideas. Now, if we set the design lens and also the experience lens to a degree, it's a top down approach in terms of the formulation of strategy. The choices that we want to make, the approach we want to take. The variety lens, they argue bubbles up from the organization. So this is where the employees are encouraged to come up with innovative ideas. The organization is more about risk, taking on new challenges, embracing new concepts. Challenging the state as go as questioning it. Organizations that come to mind table would be I would think the likes of Google, Apple that always coming up with new innovative ideas that bubble up within the organization rather than coming down and from the top of the organization. So the variety lens is all about change innovation. And then we have the discourse lens. The discourse lens is where managers use language as their resource. So I've written language there because language, if you like that shapes the strategy. And what we're talking about here is managers deciding on what strategic decision, choice that they wish to make. And then actually selling that to their work force or selling that to investors. So it's language is the biggest resource in the discourse strategy. And it's when the people within the organization they're not really taking any of these approaches. It's what they want, their agenda and then they use language to sell it to the rest of the organization. Now if we apply this in context in general Johnson et al would say that managers need to be able to utilize all four of these lenses and they need to do that smartly. So depending on the audience, depending on the situation, they may use a mixture of these lenses, which is why it's always good to think about the metaphor of bifocal lenses. Because we can very quickly flick to the different lenses to see what's gonna be the best approach to solving this strategic challenge. [MUSIC]
