If the only advantage to strategic conversations were better strategies and more useful business models, that alone would be justification for using them. But strategic conversations confer other substantial benefits. Employee engagement, organizational alignment, learning, organizational agility, leadership development, talent management, and brand are all enhanced when strategic conversations are practiced consistently. Effective strategic conversations, and the strategizing process they engender, can become the business’ central organizing principle. Activities that once seemed distinct – creating strategy, people management, change management, learning – converge into a seamless value-creating dynamic of managing and value-seeking under uncertainty.

EMC provides a prime example. We spoke at length with Jon Fay, EMC’s Vice President for Executive Development. Fay, who holds a degree in economics from Harvard, originally came to EMC as a consultant to help with executive development. Fay recalls that CEO Joe Tucci figured out “before us mere mortals” that the tech industry works on an approximately fifteen-year cycle: first mainframes were dominant, then desktops, then the internet, and now cloud computing. Tucci’s coup d’oeil has serious implications. The transition between cycles is often hard on incumbents. When mainframe dominance ended, IBM stumbled for a while and other mainframe-oriented businesses were either absorbed into other companies or failed altogether. Tucci was under no illusions that he, or his EMC colleagues, could predict the future, but if the company could get better at just peeking around the corner it could at least have a shot at shaping events rather than being completely at their mercy.