Dr. Saqib Qureshi

A fresh voice

The joy and insight of Reconstructing Strategy is that it is a different take from an observer who has maintained an outsider’s perspective (despite being immersed in the field). Saqib Qureshi looks at the state of the art and the masters of the science of strategic consulting, and sees gigantic holes. Prejudices. Hubris. Just as economic models constantly fail because they replicate only current conditions, so foreign policy and corporate strategy consultants fail because they represent a complete lack of objectivity. Qureshi says their claimed objectivity is as far from the real thing as can be imagined. The book grew out of his doctoral thesis, where he analyzed Pakistan’s foreign policy as molded by American self-identity.

He delineates three areas for strategy: personal, corporate and (national) foreign policy. He then posits a single, major, overlooked commonality: self-identity. If you can accurately describe the self-identity of a body, then future actions become easier to see and to choose. And be successful. Harmfully slow decision-making can be avoided. Idiotic decisions as well. Know thyself, someone once said.

Qureshi has to lay a lot of careful groundwork to make these claims. He shows the western canon of philosophy is blinded by its onesided view of the way the world works. He dissects Michael Porter’s and Hans Morgenthau’s work the same way, showing stunning hubris that they are right without backup. It’s just their word, based on the white western viewpoint. Like Alan Greenspan’s hubris of managing economic prosperity with perfect balance forever, so Porter’s gigantic claims to mastering corporate strategy have, Qureshi says, no basis anywhere. In a simple example, he shows that a biologist and a chemist look at the same flower and see totally different things. They both think they’re being objective; they both think they’re right. Analysis, Qureshi says, is inherently value-laden. In one last flourish of finger-pointing, he says there’s a drought of critical thinking and conceptual latitude in business academia. The know-it-all reductivists are in charge. But nothing is ever that simple.

He points out the differences between means and ends, which he proves the gurus have confused in their pontificating. Porter’s haranguing emphasis on competition is often irrelevant, Qureshi says, because many situations have no competition factor. I have the same critique of marketers, who constantly harp on the relationship to the brand, as if everyone lives to relate to brands. Some of the strongest brands in the world have no need of relationship, or worry over competition.

Unfortunately, after the surgical precision of his dismantling of strategy, Qureshi then uses a blunt instrument to describe endless variations of self-identity. About two hundred pages’ worth of examples. It kills the pace, and dulls the effect of all the earth-shaking points he scores up front. The book would be just as powerful with a hundred fewer pages.

David Wineberg… (altro)