The Q-Methodology - an Introduction
The Q-Methodology is based on a:
• Qoogols approach
- asking innumerable questions
- reflecting eclectic tools & techniques
• Quartenary of strategic schools
- positioning & entrepreneurial
- cultural & power
Synthesisizing elements from these four schools in order to ask a client the right series of questions is the crux of the Q-methodology to forming -- and implementing -- a powerful strategy.
Qoogols,1 i.e. innumerable questions, need to be asked systematically. Posing the right series of questions is orders of magnitudes more powerful than random "shots in the dark." Of course, applying one strategy dogma may well spell success for an individual firm. However the same dogma is unlikely to be universally effective when applied across the board to other companies with their own innate characteristics in entirely different industries and environments. Therefore we prefer an eclectic approach to crafting strategy.
The basis for Bridge´s Qoogols is shown at Services on the subpage "Tools & Techniques." The correct combination of Qoogols facilitates "bridging the gap" from where one is, to where one ones to be. A "Qoogol Bridge" may take many forms, as the example below depicts.
©*
A taxonomy of the strategy schools of thought is presented in Strategy Safari, A Guided Tour Through the Wilds of Strategic Management, by Henry Mintzberg, Bruce Ahlstrand, and Joseph Lampel, Free Press, 1998. In this seminal work, nine traditional schools are discussed, and an all-inclusive tenth Configuration School added. One school was omitted: the "what-me-worry" Alfred E. Neuman Mad Magazine Strategy School and its ad hoc practitioners. They are more prevalent than one might think.2
The ten different schools are not mutually exclusive.3 In fact there is considerable overlap among them. For the purposes of strategy coaching, Bridges subsumes the ten schools into four:
The Positioning School for forming strategy has its origins in military writings and is the home of some of the most famous thinkers in strategy: Bruce Hendersen, Michael Porter and Kenichi Ohmae to name just three. This school is reflected in the elements of the subpage "Tools & Techniques" at Services. That subpage also discusses the assumptions and some of the weaknesses of taken a purely positional approach.
The Entrepreneurial School, home of the Grand Vision is reflected in the subpage "Start-up (EBO) Strategy" at Services. Translating the vision into action is treated at "Execution" at "Corporate Strategy" under Services. Grand Visions gone awry -- and when their failures can be spectacular indeed -- are treated at "Strategy Repair" at Services.
The Cultural School emphasizes three spheres of influence. The first is how decisions are made by acting as a perceptual lens or filter. The second is in the resistance, or overcoming it, to change. The third is in key values such as the attitudes towards customer service, product quality and innovation. Some of the most influential work appears in Building Cross-Cultural Competence, How to Create Wealth from Conflicting Values by Charles Hampden-Turner and Fons Trompenaars, John Wiley & Sons, 2000. The cultural school is treated in a brief slide presentation: Corporate Culture Circles Culture. Culture and power reflect one another.
The Power School emphasizes strategy as a process of negotiation. This school is out of the academic mainstream, a somewhat unappreciated stepdaughter. She is conspicuous by her absence at most strategic balls. However Bridges strongly feels that courting her makes sense. Therefore she is considered at length at "Negotiation Strategy" and its subpages at Services.
1 The word Qoogol was coined by the author April 18th, 2006 in a flight of whimsy to stand for innumerable questions. A googol (not Qoogle) is the figure 1 followed by 100 zeros, or ten to the one-hundredth power. That is a large number, larger than the number of elementary particles in the observable universe, for which estimates of 1079 to 1085 have been made.
The Wikipedia articles (2010) on Google and Dr. Edward Kasner (1878 - 1955) give an interesting etymology. In 1920 Kasner (1878-1955), an American mathematician who had earned his PhD at Columbia University, was taking a walk in the New Jersey Palisades with his nine year old nephew, Milton Sirotta. He asked for suggestions to name a very large number, viz. 1 with 100 zeros. Milton suggested "googol" and followed with another suggestion for an even bigger number, "googolplex" for a "one, followed by zeros until you get tired." Kasner formalized the definition of googolplex to 10 to the tenth to the one-hundredth power, which is the largest number in common usage. (In theoretical mathematics there are specifically defined larger numbers written with tetration.)
The googol was introduced to the public in a book Kasner wrote with James Newman, Mathematics and the Imagination, 1940, which has been reprinted by Tempus Books of Microsoft Press in 1989, where the googol story appears on p. 23. Google, the Internet search engine, is derived (misspelt?) from googol. The company´s headquarters in Mountain View, California is named Googleplex.
2 Mad Magazine is an American humor and satire magazine founded in 1952. The iconic Alfred E. Neuman is featured on its covers. He has jug ears, a missing front tooth, and one eye higher than the other. His motto is "What, me worry?"
3 Each of the ten schools emphasizes a different aspect of strategy formation. They are the Schools of:
(1) Design, a Process of Conception
(2) Planning, a Formal Process
(3) Positioning, an Analytical Process
(4) Entrepreneurial, a Visionary Process
(5) Cognitive, a Mental Process
(6) Learning, an Emergent Process
(7) Power, a Process of Negotiation
(8) Cultural, a Collective Process
(9) Environmental, a Reactive Process
(10) Configuration, a Process of Transformation
*© 北京颐和园的高梁桥 Gaoling Bridge of the Summer Palace, Hennessy, Bejing, China 27. Feb. 2006, WIKI GFDL-GNU Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 1.0 Generic License (www.creativecommons.org); Gyan Web Design