Deep strategisation: the schlock of the new

As you can see, it's very important that this be a diagram – rather than a list of Good Things for instance. Because in the diagram you can have a circle rather than a rectangle, or a hexagon for instance. And Elton John wrote a song called "The Circle of Life" and it was huge– just HUGE! If he'd written "The Rectangle of Life" do you think he'd be mentioned in this piece? No. Frankly, it would have gone nowhere. If he'd called it "The Hexagon of Life" people would think they were going to see the movie "The Bee King". Then Concepts would have insisted it be "The Bee Queen" because there are no bee kings. And then where would we be? Who'd want to see "The Bee Queen"? Who'd want to even fund it? Probably not Disney, though their Diversity division might take a second look. And then we're back to where we were with the rectangle of life – pretty much nowhere.

But I'm being silly. The point of the shape (well so long as you disregard its shape)is that the area in the middle that dominates the diagram of the framework allows us to see structural relations between ideas. So you can see the three propeller blade-like things radiating out from the circle with each triangular segment of the circle focusing on the two domains defined by the propeller blades. (The blades aren't rotating at this stage. Please pay attention, and if you are having any trouble, just think of planes that are sitting in a hangar or in Mussolini's air-force.) So pillar one is between the two propeller blades "firms" and "people", so naturally it doesn't relate to the third propeller of "places". It's just "Invest in people and places left behind, providing equal opportunities". Well pretty obviously that's not true – it does relate to places, and not so much to firms. But you get the general idea.

Likewise you'll see a context. The context is fourfold. Contexts tend to sit towards the top right-hand corner of strategic diagrams, often in oblong shapes of dark blue – as here. That helps us think about – well context – I hope you're following me here. It's really pretty easy when you get the hang of it. For simplicity's sake, there are no other oblong shapes of any colour anywhere else in the diagram. It's quite important that they not be just splashed any old where, as they help us think about difficult things – and 'Context' is quite enough for one diagram. In fact, most of the OECD's diagrams have just one oblong though often they don't have just four points in them – three-point and five-point oblongs are not unknown in the OECD's diagram oeuvre.

Are there any questions?