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Distillations in this newsletter: What to do if your strategy has stalled; New training course on ‘Stakeholder Engagement in Strategy’; How AI is transforming strategy development.
STRATEGY DISTILLED:
A monthly concoction of insight, learning and things you might have missed for anyone who works on strategy, works with strategy or just loves strategy.
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This month …
- So-called truths about strategy.
- Strategy snippets you may have missed: Four types of executive teams; Hand signals for meetings.
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So-called truths about strategy
It is a constant challenge for professional strategists to explain what strategy is and isn’t. This is a classic communications challenge: if only we all thought the same way, our work together would be so much easier.
I’ve recently come to realise that part of the problem in this communications challenge is the aphorisms we use to communicate the essence of strategy. An aphorism is defined as ‘a pithy observation which contains a general truth’, such as ‘the grass is always greener on the other side (of the fence)’. This is a great aspiration – to make an observation about strategy that is simple and memorable yet contains an underlying principle that is profound and valuable. Which is probably why aphorisms about strategy abound.
Yet, what if those general truths are not quite as general and not quite as truthful as they first sound? What if they are part-truth and part-falsehood? Or, if not outright falsehood, maybe misleading?
Here is my favourite example from Michael Porter, the ‘father of modern strategy’:
“The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.”
Whilst I am in no doubt about the underlying truth in this – indeed, it is the quote I reach for whenever a client reaches the tenth page of their draft strategy – it also has hidden dangers. It comes from the ‘checklist school of strategy’, which suggests that strategy is a matter of projecting forwards to define where in the future you might end up, and then crossing off the futures you choose not to pursue.
My problem with this is that it denies, or at least understates, the role of creativity in imagining the future you might be able to create by means of your strategy. Where are the hypothesised futures that are beyond the scope of mere projections or extrapolations from the present? The checklist school of strategy lies in the world of planning and analytics. The best strategy overlays design thinking on top of the planning and analytics to imagine the incalculable.
This quote from Henry Mintzberg makes the point well:
“Strategic planning isn’t strategic thinking. One is analysis, and the other is synthesis.”
Another aphorism I have issues with is from AG Lafley and Roger Martin:
“Winning should be at the heart of every strategy.”
The issue here is that ‘winning’ has several possible meanings, some of which make this a good aphorism and others which make it less good. Where ‘winning’ means receiving something positive, such as approval, loyalty, or income – because you have earned it – this is good. All strategy should be about delivering tangible benefits in the future. If, on the other hand, ‘winning’ means being victorious, coming first or defeating others – this can be more problematic. It frames your strategy as being competitor-based, which wouldn’t please Jeff Bezos:
“If you’re competitor-focused, you have to wait until there is a competitor doing something. Being customer-focused allows you to be more pioneering.”
It also suggests that strategy is always a zero-sum game: you can only win if someone else loses. This is what Mauborgne & Kim describe as ‘red-ocean thinking’ which is in contrast to their blue-ocean-strategy-thinking, which they describe as follows:
“Value innovation is the cornerstone of blue ocean strategy. We call it value innovation because instead of focusing on beating the competition, you focus on making the competition irrelevant by creating a leap in value for buyers and your company, thereby opening up new and uncontested market space.”
The final issue I have with strategy aphorisms is that they don’t cover what I consider to be some of the most important truths about strategy. Here, for example, are two that I’ve had to create myself because I couldn’t find anything that quite captures these particular truths:
“A poor strategy might just be your organisation’s biggest wasted opportunity.”
“Having a strategy and then not using it to drive meaningful, value-adding change to your organisation is worse than not having a strategy in the first place.”
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Strategy snippets you may have missed
Four types of executive teams
Yet another great thought-provoker from NOBL which resonated with me because I wrote about the six roles required for strategy development in The Strategy Manual (available online here).
The combination of the two set my mind racing on how different types of strategy and different approaches to strategic planning would work best for these different types of executive teams. Maybe one to explore in a future Strategy Distilled?
Hand signals for meetings
Getting all voices heard in meetings is difficult and I loved this idea of agreeing a set of hand signals and their meaning at the start of a meeting (or more generally, as part of agreed organisational culture). These hand signals, according to Wikipedia, originated in the Occupy Movement but I feel a variation of them could be usefully used in any meeting.
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Goal Atlas facilitates the development, adoption and measurement of your strategy in ways that work for you.
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