The management transformation is to have everybody do what they think is right rather than have them doing what it is they are told to do. For Davidson, the key to this transformation is the development of a strategic management process that emphasizes an executive focus on change, concern on renewal and response on innovation. The overall goal of the fifth wave of organizational life is to avoid The Poisoned Inheritance that the previous third and fourth wave organizations experienced in their failure to respond to change. From Davidson's Grand Strategy approach we can discern seven golden rules of the new management paradigm. The planners must be doers.
Action speaks loader than plans.
Strategic thinking is Risk Management. People are the primary organizational resource. The organizational goal is to maintain change. The power in Davidson's message about grand strategy and the prescription for executing it is in the emphasis that is placed on the shared values and beliefs that the organizational systems uses in deriving a mission, competitive strategies, performance criteria and the mechanisms for change. While not explicitly stating it, Davidson leans toward a leading edge concern for knowledge management.