In the face of increasing turbulence in the business environment, strategy-making no longer relies on allocating resources through planning. We argue that strategy making now occurs within transformation projects. To understand how, after characterizing organizational transformation strategizing from a theoretical standpoint, this article describes its reality based on the reflections-on-action of consultants who have delved into strategizing through the conduct of transformation projects. This dialogue between the academic and practical knowledge of strategizing offers fruitful contributions to our current understanding of an important but overlooked aspect of strategy.
By demonstrating that the way strategy is taught has evolved according to the history of strategy, this article explains that our dissatisfaction with current strategy teaching stems from a focus on strategy that has become irrelevant to the current turbulent environment. To move forward, we propose shifting the teaching of strategy to the teaching of strategizing by having students learn the process by which strategy actors deliberately transform their organization to realign it with its environment during transformational projects, because the ability to formulate and implement strategy in transformational contexts has become paramount in today's turbulent environments. To this end, we describe a learning process based on students' reflection on action in which they learn how to strategize organizational transformation. By developing the pedagogical outcomes of the learning process, we contribute to current debates about the teaching of strategy, on the skills that strategists need, and on the practical relevance of strategy research.
