STR.Preface:1 - Problem frame - Direction and commitment under changing conditions

This language serves people making or advising strategic choices for an organization, a public service, a professional practice or another bounded System. It helps when a material change, uncertainty, new possibility or conflicting commitment makes the current direction worth reconsidering, or when a worthwhile contribution still has to be found.

In its broader use, strategizing includes searching for a worthwhile result and a Method for obtaining it when one does not yet know what to do. This framework develops the narrower connection among a subject’s contribution, direction, capability, resources and bounded commitments. A useful answer may be a provisional problem, a direction, explained alternatives, a sufficient comparison, a bounded preparation or a justified stop.

Keep the Method for obtaining the subject’s contribution separate from the Method used to search for, compare or reconsider it. Explaining how a customer could receive a diagnostic result is one question; improving the team’s strategic search routine is another. STR.5, STR.6 and STR.13 make their different entries and first results explicit.

Use a direct decision, operating or professional Method when it already answers the whole question. Strategy is useful where the connection among direction, business model, capability, uncertainty and commitments remains unresolved. Advising, engineering, management and development keep their own professional questions and Methods.