Case-study anchor: BP p.l.c. · the 2020–2025 strategy reset, from Bernard Looney's net-zero pivot to Murray Auchincloss's reset back towards hydrocarbons.
Three things to carry forward
- The model's force is in the connections, not the elements. A change in any one of the seven elements ripples through the other six. Effectiveness depends on mutual reinforcement, not on the strength of any single element. The 7-S model does not prescribe a configuration; it tests whether the one you have hangs together.
- The board's task is not choosing direction, it is testing capacity to deliver it. BP could defend either the 2020 pivot away from hydrocarbons or the 2025 reset back towards them as a coherent reading of market conditions. The difficulty is that successive pivots left the soft elements, shared values, skills, staff and style, lagging the hard ones. Approving direction is the easy half of strategy oversight; testing capacity is the harder half, and it is the half 7-S was built to support.
- 7-S gives the board three questions, not one. Which elements are currently misaligned, on the record and not by narrative; what the plan is to realign them element by element, with named owners and a sequence; and over what timeframe, with what evidence, the soft elements can move at the pace the plan assumes. The third question is the one most often skipped, because soft-element change is hard to evidence in advance, and it is the one that separates approving a direction from testing whether the organisation can occupy it.
A reading
Foundational text
- Waterman, R.H., Peters, T.J. and Phillips, J.R. (1980) 'Structure Is Not Organization', Business Horizons, 23(3), pp. 14–26. The original argument, and the twelve pages worth reading first.
- Peters, T.J. and Waterman, R.H. (1982) In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America's Best-Run Companies. New York: Harper and Row.
- Pascale, R.T. and Athos, A.G. (1981) The Art of Japanese Management. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Applied analysis
- Ravanfar, M.M. (2015) 'Analysing Organisational Structure Based on 7s Model of McKinsey', Global Journal of Management and Business Research, 15(10), pp. 6–12.
BP case · primary record
- BP p.l.c. (2024) Annual Report and Form 20-F 2023. London: BP p.l.c., March 2024.
- BP p.l.c. (2025) Strategy Update: Focused, Simpler, Higher Value. London: BP p.l.c., 26 February 2025. The test case to read alongside the 1980 article.
- BP p.l.c. (2025) Capital Markets Day Transcript, 26 February 2025. London: BP p.l.c.
Market and press
- Bloomberg News (2025) 'Activist Elliott Said to Build Stake in Struggling Oil Major BP', Bloomberg, 8 February 2025. The external signal that arrived roughly two and a half weeks before the reset.
- Raval, A. and Sheppard, D. (2023) 'BP retreats from green energy targets as profits surge', Financial Times, 7 February 2023.
A question
When did your board last receive a structured alignment assessment of the seven elements against the strategy currently approved, and was the soft side evidenced or asserted?
If the soft side, shared values, skills, staff and style, was asserted rather than evidenced, the board has approved a direction without testing whether the organisation can deliver it.
The wider library
This Note is a diagnostic framework explainer. It sits inside the BP-anchored Strategy set and pairs with the outward-facing analysis next door:
- Strategy Room Note 03 (Porter's Five Forces). The outward-facing counterpart. Five Forces identifies where a defensible position exists; 7-S tests whether your organisation can occupy it. The two belong on the same agenda.
- Strategy Room Note 15 (BP Strategic Stack · BP). The synthesis Note, where the BP-anchored frameworks, 7-S among them, are read together as one strategic picture.