Editor's page

Citation

Randall, R.M. (2002), "Editor's page", Strategy & Leadership, Vol. 30 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/sl.2002.26130aaa.001

Editor's page

Dear Colleagues

Allow me to introduce myself to all readers of Strategy & Leadership. I am Robert M. Randall, the journal's "new" editor, returning after more than five years. This is my reintroduction to longtime readers who knew the publication back when it was called Planning Review, and I served as managing editor.

In the years I was away I wrote and edited books, white papers, and articles about corporate strategy and management tools. My two latest books are The Portable MBA in Strategy, second edition (Wiley, 2001) and Learning from the Future: Competitive Foresight Scenarios (Wiley, 1998), both collaborations with dozens of distinguished management thinkers.

My introduction means it is time to congratulate our retiring editor, Marilyn Norris. I know that I speak for a host of readers when I thank Marilyn, a former executive of J.C. Penny who took over the editorship in 1995, for her successful efforts in keeping the journal focused on ideas that matter to practitioners. Well done!

My first day on the job I reminded everyone that, "Ever since the publication was founded in the 1970s it has been known as the idea exchange for the whole strategic management community." That was true in the pre-Internet era, and I hope it will be even truer today when e-mail greatly facilitates professional conversations.

This concept of a virtual strategic management community means a lot to me, and for a number of different reasons. As a practical matter, this journal's survival depends on the support of a worldwide community of reviewers, contributing editors, consultants, professors, managers, and senior executives. Working in concert such a fellowship can attract an exciting mix of innovative conceptual articles, how-to advisories, case studies, senior management interviews, research summaries, conference reports, book reviews, and op/ed commentary. Because such a virtual community also needs a "town council" to help vet submissions, I have appointed a number of new contributing editors, senior reviewers, and editorial board members. I expect to recruit more talent, especially young managers and academics, in the near future.

Another benefit of a virtual strategic management community is its back talk. Managers, consultants, and academics need a virtual "town square" where informed readers can e-mail their questions to authors or fire off letters to the editor that foster debate, challenge, and fresh thinking. Welcome, all commentators!

The notion of community also has an emotional meaning for us New Yorkers after our beloved bustling island was attacked on September 11, and our worldwide colleagues rallied in support. (For fresh strategic thinking in this issue relevant to the attack, note Tom Bonnett's insights on the consequences for political influence management in the USA and also Adam Kahane's article on scenarios for solving stalemated social and political conflict.) The articles and cases on the issue's general theme, "Strategies for troubled times" explain how to perform "fast, focused, and simultaneous" repositioning of a weakened business, painstakingly reinvent a trouble unit, carry out workforce reduction in a downturn, and discover new opportunity for a company that's beset by new competition but seemingly has nowhere to grow.

In preparing future issues, I intend to continue the journal's tradition of offering readers exciting new concepts and practitioner-tested insights and of providing corporate practitioners, academics, and consultants a hospitable place to publish.

Robert M. RandallEditor