The Framework & the Evidence

The missing half of strategy — what we propose, and the research it builds on.

The missing half

Every year more than 200,000 MBAs graduate, hundreds of strategy books are published, and billions are spent on consultants. Yet genuine strategic success remains rare. We believe the reason is structural: strategy has been treated almost entirely as an analytical process, while the human, dispositional half — the orientation of the people who actually carry strategy out — has been left largely unstudied and untaught.

The dual framework

Strategy-as-Process is the analytical half: frameworks, planning, positioning, and resource allocation. It is well developed and widely taught.

Strategy-as-Attitude is the missing half: the largely subconscious orientation that determines whether analysis becomes insight or empty ritual. It is the half this institute exists to study.

The constructs we study

Within Strategy-as-Attitude, we propose that a small set of subconscious orientations shapes the quality of strategic judgment. We are working to define, measure, and empirically validate four of them

Customer Perspective

perceiving reality from the standpoint of those one serves, rather than from one’s own position.

Giving

orienting toward creating value for others as the route to advantage, rather than extracting it.

Productive Attitude

a disposition toward contribution and results over status, comfort, or appearance.

Responsibility

the felt ownership that activates and sustains the other three.

These are propositions, not settled findings. Establishing whether they can be reliably measured, and whether they causally affect strategic outcomes, is the heart of our research agenda.

Our long-term aim is to develop this framework into a tested, teachable theory of strategy — measured, validated, and able to be taught.

Where this sits in the research

Our work does not reject existing strategy traditions; it builds on them and tries to complete them. Several established literatures point toward the same gap we are studying

Mintzberg’s schools of strategy already distinguish prescriptive, analytical approaches (design, planning, positioning) from descriptive, human ones (cognitive, learning, cultural). The human schools have remained marginal to how strategy is taught — the imbalance we aim to correct.

Dual-process cognition (Kahneman; Kahneman and Klein on intuitive expertise) shows that much of expert judgment runs on fast, non-conscious processes — consistent with our claim that the engine of strategic judgment is largely subconscious.

Behavioral strategy (Lovallo and Sibony) has shown that subconscious biases systematically degrade strategic decisions, and that better decision processes improve outcomes — evidence that the dispositional layer is decisive.

The psychology of learning (Dweck’s work on mindset; experimental studies on training strategic thinking) supports our second premise: that strategic capability can be deliberately developed, not merely selected for.

Open questions — our research agenda

We hold our own framework to the standard we ask of others. The questions we are working to answer

Construct validity

can the four constructs be defined precisely enough to measure?

Measurement

can we build a reliable instrument that distinguishes a high-attitude strategist from a low one, and does it predict outcomes?

Causation

does cultivating these attitudes cause better strategic outcomes, or do effective strategists simply tend to display them?

Teachability

can the attitudes, and felt responsibility, be installed through a curriculum, and do they transfer to real decisions?

Researchers and Fellows

We are currently collaborating with researchers and academics around the world. Their names are not being disclosed at this stage.

We welcome researchers, universities, institutions, partners, and supporters who share our mission. Let us explore the missing half of strategy together.

Email: manager@ganzorig.org