Jon Foster-Pedley does not come across as your average academic. "I'm a strategist, get out of my way," he booms as he strides into the lecture room.
He is, of course, taking a less-than-subtle swipe at those business strategists and academics who have promoted strategy to the level of high science.
"Strategy has become a stick to beat people with. For too long it has been locked in an ivory tower, where it has been used to control, intimidate and disempower the average person," says this free-thinking academic. "Strategic plans have become untouchable and people are expected to follow them blindly and slavishly."
Of course this becomes counterproductive as people lower in the hierarchy become less and less certain of what they are doing. They dare not ask questions because many are just a bit scared of strategy.
So what remains of a carefully thought-out strategy is the shell of a process that is no longer living, and which people have stopped thinking about. "This is a sterile and unproductive place for strategy to be. Thirteen years into the new SA it's time our business thinking on strategy changed to reflect the realities of the world around us."
Strategy, Foster-Pedley says, should be young, funky and multi-ethnic. And it must be within the grasp of ordinary people.
This is especially relevant in an emergent economy, where scarce resources and stiff global competition make it important to minimise waste caused by inaccurate thinking.
With this in mind, Foster-Pedley will be presenting a novel course at the UCT Graduate School of Business this month. "I want people to get the joy of thinking again, the pleasure of trying out possibilities and making the problem the event." He believes it is not just possible but necessary to improve thinking at every level of business, turning all staff into strategists and enabling companies to do more with less.
"The challenge for today's business is to develop the capacity of its people to think strategically and then to harness that thinking into a collective intelligent mind'."
He believes that much of what is taught in business schools around strategy is outdated because it propagates an old-style expert approach.
"Successful innovative companies like Apple and Google and even our own SA Revenue Service all display the ability to think intelligently about how to overcome challenges and create extraordinary products and services," he says.
But companies can emulate this success and the place to start is by improving strategic thinking across the board. Thinking more strategically enables you to move from a place where you react to symptoms and fight fires to a place where you can address the source of problems or obstacles.
Foster-Pedley likes to provide people with a basic toolkit of strategic models to help them get into the habit of thinking laterally, to look at a situation in different ways and create possibilities. "Strategy is a powerful tool and it belongs to everyone."
In line with his irreverent approach, he is also working with comedian John Vlismas, "probably the most intelligent man I met last year", to present a double act of comedy and strategy to companies. "Comedy is, after all, nothing but a repackaging of reality," he says.
