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13
Back to the Future

So far we've encountered a few nasties on our journey, but the two main villains would have to be the Curse of Efficiency and the Delusion of Progress. It's thanks to these two that we find ourselves locked into default thinking, which — if we're not careful — will see us descend into irrelevance and meet the Inevitable Kraken of Doom.

Of course, we need default thinking — it's how we learn, and life would be ridiculously inefficient without it. In fact, our defaults would serve us brilliantly in all facets of business and life, if only things were static and never changed.

But stuff does change. And in a strategic context, the biggest opportunity and threat facing any enterprise today is the sheer complexity of our dynamic and uncertain future. It's the fact that an infinite number of possible futures exist within and beyond reasonable probability — and any one of them may render your current business model and identity unviable.

But! Thanks to the fact that our strategy is augmented by pioneering leadership and an ongoing quest for enduring relevance, we have a sense of what lies ahead. What's more, we have a range of viable alternative strategic options to consider in addition to our defaults.

TOWARD COHERENCE

When we catch ourselves progressing within our defaults, the most important question we can ask ourselves in any given moment is, Is this contributing to meaningful progress?

We can find plenty of opportunities to delude ourselves with meaningless progress — but what constitutes meaningful progress? What does it look like? And how do we know if we're making it?

In the context of strategic decision-making, we can consider meaningful progress to be anything that serves to optimise coherence within emerging future contexts. Coherence is where our business model and identity make sense within a context.

Once upon a time, advertising on the television and in physical phone directories made a certain kind of sense. But now the internet renders such approaches incoherent. Such outdated approaches don't make any logical sense in our current context. They are incomprehensible.

The trouble is, without Quest-Augmented Strategy, people only have the past and their current context within which to make decisions. Sure, some folks might have some guesses as to what may come about in the future, but the picture will be patchwork, and it's hardly an enriched way to go about strategy. In fact, this is what strategy can look like without the enrichment of a quest.

UNENRICHED STRATEGY

So! Things are humming along, and everyone is busy. At some point you realise it's been a while since the team got together to discuss strategy. But that's okay — all of the right key performance indicators are being met, and your leadership colleagues can be trusted to look after their respective units. The current business model and organisational structure is optimised to support this.

Then, on a flight you happen to read an article that describes a new startup seeking to ‘disrupt' the industry you're in. You scoff at it, and shake your head — but you keep the article. Maybe it's something to bring up at the next strategy meeting. Speaking of which, when is that?

You shoot an email out to your team asking when everyone can get together to review the strategy. It quickly becomes a mess so you get your assistant to try coordinate timing. Your colleagues question the need to meet in person and suggest a teleconference instead. You're busy too, and a teleconference does seem a lot easier — and so it is organised. Most of the team make it, but time is short and everyone seems to only be concerned about elements of operational efficiency. When you mention the startup, you are met with arrogant dismissal. And so the meeting continues — everyone defends their accountabilities and talks about inefficiencies in the enterprise software. You all agree that alternatives should be explored, and someone agrees to get their team onto it.

Things resume back to business as usual. It's still busy, and you're still generating wins — but you still have this nagging sense that you're missing something. You follow up on that startup you read about, and it turns out they were acquired by a larger company. Interesting, you think.

Months later, you attend a conference which features a futurist speaker. Normally you're dismissive of such folks — anyone can play a set of videos to dazzle us about fancy things in the future. But the things she is talking about trigger that nagging hunch you're harbouring. We're missing something here …

After the conference, you take another look at what's happening in your business and notice that a couple of key customer accounts have moved. You have a good relationship with one of them, so you give your contact a call — only to hear they're now using that new technology you scoffed at nearly a year ago!

After the call, you immediately contact your team for an urgent strategy meeting. This time is must be in person. Figuring out a time is challenging — and everyone makes a point of highlighting to you how busy they are — but you make it happen.

Knowing the opportunity cost of bringing your leadership colleagues together from across different cities — not to mention the actual cost of flying and accommodating them — you work up an agenda to ensure you make the most efficient use of the time. You also send through some reference material — a scattering of articles — so that your team can come ‘prepared'.

The team arrive. You know you've only got a day so you get right into it, explaining that key customers are beginning to adopt this new technology, and that your enterprise is not doing anything about it. The immediate response is defensive downplay and denial. You suspect that your colleagues were too busy to read the briefing notes in detail — they likely only skimmed the surface. After spending time explaining the problem, you realise that it's morning tea time already. Your colleagues are already ducking out to make calls, and some are working on email.

When they come back in, you decide to rally everyone together to focus on solutions. The team jump in with a range of quick fixes and short-term tactics. People offer differing perspectives, and things get angsty. Someone says, ‘Let's build an app!' — which prompts someone to remember that the enterprise software issues still haven't been addressed. The leader responsible cites legitimate reasons for the delay — and now the conversation shifts into familiar territory: how can we upgrade or innovate our software, so that we can be more efficient?

Lunch time comes, but this renewed focal point has alleviated the angst. Your leadership colleagues are now working on the features needed within this software. People are chiming in with ‘cool factoids' — ‘It's gotta be responsive,' someone says with a nod. ‘Make it sync with wearable,' someone else one-ups.

You look at the time and — crap! It's now mid-afternoon. You bring people's attention back to the original problem — ‘The business landscape is shifting, and we're not prepared,' you stress. But rather than explore the problem, people resume offering predictable solutions. By the end of the day, you're staring at a set of goals not dissimilar to your existing strategy. These include: improve the efficiency of enterprise software, review offerings to re-engage existing customers (while expanding into new markets), and redouble efforts toward all existing goals and targets. Some clear accountabilities are established, and people leave the meeting feeling as though they've made some good decisions. Maybe.

But by then it's all a case of too little, too late.

Those competitors using newer technologies eat deeper into your market share. Steep discounts are required to retain customers, and diminishing margins put more efficiency pressures on leaders and their people. Your new enterprise software is deployed, but because everyone is so busy, no-one has the time to learn or use it properly — and so they default to the old system. Your team becomes even more fragmented, and seemingly more concerned with meeting their own individual targets than they are with working together to secure the enduring relevance of the enterprise. Some, you suspect, are just waiting for an opportunity to jump ship — they can see the shadow of the Kraken already …

… and so on.

Let's not take an approach like this.

Just because you lead a large and established enterprise does not mean you need to constantly be stumbling to keep up with the pace of change.

You could be leading it.

GET STRATEGIC ABOUT STRATEGY

Before we get into the process of reviewing options and making strategic decisions (covered in chapter 14), let's first ensure that the context for strategic thinking and decision-making is effective. The following sections outline a few things to consider.

Ritualise it

When everyone is busy, things like strategic development, review and decision-making can easily become haphazard and sporadic. But, when we make these a ritual — a routine held with reverence — they become an elevated priority, and part of the fabric of your enterprise culture. In chapter 21 we review the rituals of pioneering leadership — developing, reviewing and renewing strategy is one of the most critical.

Two days: the absolute minimum

If you're ever going to develop strategy, two days is the absolute minimum time you'll need. You can review strategy in a day, if people have their act together and good conversations have been happening in the lead-up to it. But to develop strategy, you need at least two days.

The reason for this is the dinner, and the sleep.^[1] After the first day of previewing our emerging future context, the anticipated incoherencies and the strategic options available, you'll need time for non-rushed discussion. This conversation can extend over dinner — and the contextual shift from workshop room to non-rushed dining can do wonders for the discussion and the debate. ‘Sleeping on it' also allows us time to reflect, and to let any tensions that may have emerged among the team to be placed back into perspective. The refreshed review of strategic options after an intense day of discussion and debate is always clarifying. Clearer decisions can be made and, thanks to the time leaders have had to connect with each other over a meal, team spirits are renewed. This can then translate into greater courage and support in the leading of pioneering strategy.

Invert learning and get into conversation early

In the past we would learn in the classroom together, and do our homework alone at home. Now the modern classroom is inverted — we do the learning at home (online), and our homework together in the classroom. In a strategic context, this means that discussions occur in the lead-up to any strategic immersion. This is an opportunity to share relevant insights about emerging futures and potential incoherencies, and to ensure that everyone is abreast of the viable alternative strategic options available. Rather than swagger into strategy meetings pretending to know everything — or using the time together to cover basic elements — people can ask these questions in the lead-up.^[2]

This is particularly important if some leaders do not possess the literacy relevant to the options under review. For example, if senior leaders do not possess digital literacy or an awareness of emerging phenomena such as ‘the sharing economy', they will be ill-equipped to make strategic decisions. But with an inverted learning process, they can be on-ramped. This also serves to prime collective acuity early — more folk will be more open to any learning or observations relevant to strategic development.

Establish intention and pre-frame behaviour

Discussion during time set aside for strategic development can easily descend into debates around quick fixes for operational issues, or box-ticking activities in which we simply replicate existing thinking. But if you establish a clear intention and a contextual mantra^[3] to go with it, your chances of staying focused can be increased.

Likewise, if you know that your team has the tendency to get distracted by emails or phone calls — or if you know of other specific, observable behaviours that diminish the efficacy of your meetings — you can pre-frame your expectations before they occur. With one team I worked with, the CEO simply declared that they were going to be running with phones off during the workshop, and that he trusted folks could manage their time and organise their work to be available and fully present for the workshop. This behaviour was then reinforced throughout the workshop.

Build space and slack into the agenda

In design, white space (or negative space) is important. If you're reading the physical version of this book, you'll notice the white space on either side of the body text. Even more white space is used when we introduce a new chapter. The reason for this is that white space helps to enhance attention, focus and comprehension. Apple does this very well in almost all of its designs — including its website and any keynotes. Google is pretty good at this too — compare google.com with yahoo.com and you'll instantly see what I mean.

The agenda for strategic development is much the same. In fact, it's probably one of the main things I find myself coaching my clients on before running any strategic workshop. The Curse of Efficiency and the size of the investment means that people want to get the most out of the time together. The paradox is that we get more by focusing on less. So, instead of trying to do everything (which achieves nothing), we focus on one thing (which achieves something). Rather than focus on content, we focus on context.

The other thing we need to do when preparing for strategic development is build in slack. In project management, ‘slack' refers to the amount of time that a task can be delayed without causing a delay to subsequent tasks or the overall project. In strategic development, factoring in slack allows us time to explore emergent discussions — important conversations we otherwise could not have anticipated, and that are too important to be rushed or steamrolled by the agenda.

With these principles in mind, we can proceed to review options and make sound strategic decisions.

Notes

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