Strategy-Towards Hypotheses, Experiments, Involvement & Learning
Filed under: Leadership, Leading Change, Organizational Transformation, Project Management, Strategy
Few would argue that a nimble, quick-to-learn and quick-to-adapt organization is a bad thing. Given the rate of change in our world, those characteristics are increasingly table-stakes for survival and success.
Why then has the approach to strategy and the notion of “strategic planning” in so many organizations remained mired in a 1960’s kind of static, top-down event-focused model?
Many firms practice a style of strategic planning that might have worked in a different time and place, but today, fast-to-try, fast-to- fail and fast-to-learn are essential for survival and success.
Give Me an Epiphany, Darn-It!
Rarely does just the act of thinking through circumstances, opportunities and strategies yield the epiphany that allows a firm to carve out a competitive advantage.
In my experience, the management teams who have pursued the “strategy as event’ approach with the annual or semi-annual meeting(s) serving as the time to talk strategy and decide, are often frustrated with the time investment and disappointing outcomes. Few epiphanies…a lot of time…a lot of bickering and ambiguous outcomes with no clear next steps. Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?
Hypotheses and Informed Experiments, Please!
The best outcome of the front end of any strategy process is one or more (a limited number, please) of ideas…hypotheses, that can quickly be turned into and managed as experiments.
True value in the form of learning accrues to the organization from working through the strategic experiment, assessing outcomes and refining the ideas. Because these workplace and marketplace experiments require people to implement, manage, and assess them, the act of engaging the employee population creates understanding, involvement, excitement and importantly idea sharing.
It Feels So Good When We Stop!
I’ve worked with teams who were accustomed to and frustrated by the “event” orientation of planning. When refocused on assessment, analysis and importantly, hypothesis generation, the unreasonable expectation of finding the magical answer was replaced by high quality dialogue around generating ideas for better serving customers and beating competitors. After a series of these discussions over time, and with some focused facilitation, the teams were able to zero in on one or two strategic hypotheses to invest in and learn from.
The Project Management Art of Building out Strategic Experiments:
While I frequently reference this phase as the Execution phase, I prefer Experiment…both because it doesn’t sound so fatal…and it implies Doing, Measuring, Learning and Refining (DMLR). In my estimation, its in the DMLR cycle where the real work…and the real “Ah Ha” moments of strategy occur.
Six Ideas for Implementing an Effective Doing, Learning, Measuring, Refining Program:
1. Treat each strategic experiment like a project. Assign a Project Manager and use Best Practices PM to charter, scope, engage stakeholders, define the work, assess the risks, plan and estimate the work, implement the work, monitor and communicate. Yeah, that’s a mouthful. Your Project Manager in this case is priceless.
2. Ensure that there’s a strong sponsor in place for every experiment. Yes, best practices project management again. If this is important enough to be betting your strategic future on, it’s important enough to provide a Supportive Sponsor with heft and teeth.
3. Explain, Engage and Listen! People work in compliance under orders, they work with their hearts and minds when they are part of something big. Getting them involved is good. Arming them with context on why, and what and importance is critical. Listening to their feedback is priceless. Since many strategic initiatives involve doing new things or doing things differently, this holistic approach to engagement is essential.
4. Create Learning and Sharing Forums with Teeth. It’s good to pre and post-mortems…it’s better to create ample opportunities for idea sharing, lessons learned and adjustments to experiments on the move. Hey, I’m probably violating several tenets of The Scientific Method with the adjustment statement, but timeliness is critical and your Project Manager will help you manage changes in the plan.
By the way, by this time, you may want to give your PM a big fat raise!
5. The Truth is Always in the Field…Sometimes You Just Have to Look Carefully. The best strategic experiments involve customers and partners. Invite them in…make them part of the process and of course observe and listen carefully. And then act.
6. Do Something with the Outcomes-Plan to Change or Move Forward. After a period of time and armed with the insights and feedback of employees, customers and partners, there’s a vetting and decision-making process that those in charge have to prosecute. From kill to change to go to what’s next, you and your team are on the hook for returning to the process and assessing and deciding.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
There are at least two “dirty little secrets” in what I’ve described above. It’s a nefarious plan for involving the broader organization in strategy and execution, and it not so secretly “operationalizes” the work of strategy. While there’s no magic and I would be misleading if I didn’t highlight that the process is filled with bumps, hiccups and debates it’s darned powerful if and when managed properly.
Leadership Caffeine: Warning! Your Words About Change are Falling on Cynical Ears
Even the most credible of leaders have to step up their game when it comes to talking about and promoting change on their teams and in their organizations.
You can trust that a good number of the people doing the heavy lifting inside of your organization have developed a case of cynicism on talk of change emanating from the higher-ups.
They’ve consumed too many “flavor of the month” programs and developed heartburn when the programs died in mid-stream. They’ve watched people in your role come and go, and they no longer hear the siren call or pay much attention to the slogans and signs.
Can you blame them? If they wait a few minutes, this too shall pass, and in spite of their positive view of you, people have been conditioned to wait until the noise dies down and the focus turns back to getting the work done. They also know that you’ll likely move on to something bigger or different before too long.
For some leaders, the institutionalized and individual resistance to change is extremely frustrating and vexing. One leader offered to me, “I’m told that I’m credible, people have responded well to my leadership, I don’t pump sunshine or doom and gloom, yet people are dragging their feet on this new program. I know that it means doing new things and that can be frightening, but why aren’t people more excited and supportive?”
What’s a leader to do?
7 Helpful Steps to Get Started on the Right Foot Talking About Change:
1. Expect Resistance. Start from the assertion that you will run into a naturally occurring level of personal and cultural resistance, regardless of the how much people like and respect you.
2. Construct a Message for Real People. Lead with the facts. Explain the situation. Include your assessment. Avoid corporate and consultant-speak. Openly acknowledge the risks and unknowns.
3. Don’t Pitch the Solution…Share the Problem. Ask for help finding the solution. There’s a profound difference on how people process “here’s the answer,” versus “here’s the problem and we need to find the answer together.”
4. Beware the “Town Hall” Trap. Whether you are leading a company or a team, your inclination is to pull everyone together and to “present” your case for change. Senior leaders in particular fall victim to assuming that because something has been shared far and wide that it is now fact and reality. It’s good to share but there’s no “one-and-done” big group style of communication that cuts through the individual resistance to change. The large meeting is one step of many required for success.
5. Make Your Case One-on-One. The optimal level of dialogue is always one to one. Yes, it’s difficult. It’s also essential. Whether it’s you or those members of your change-coalition, the dialogue (not monologue) must be focused at the individual level.
6. Keep the Monologue Locked in the Closet. The faster people perceive that you are genuinely interested in their ideas and even their challenges to your own ideas, the faster the initiative will build momentum. Listen, acknowledge, adjust based on good input and share the adjustment. And just keep doing it.
7. Model the Behavior. Do as you say…and do it very visibly and genuinely. Nothing shoots a change initiative in the rear-end faster than your words and your actions not matching. The do must match the tell.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
Change is inevitable in our world and intuitively, we all know and accept this reality. However, don’t discount the challenges you will face in gaining support for your message on the need to change.You’ve had ample time to process on it, but when your team members hear it for the first time, it’s either noise…or interesting but not tangible.
The only way through the resistance is straight ahead. Your honesty and authenticity are truly important. Your willingness to engage in a dialogue and your humility in asking for input and help are priceless.
Thoughts on Your Personal and Professional Success in the New Year
Filed under: Career, Leadership, Leadership Skills, Leading Change, Leading the Generations, Management Education, Performance, Professional Growth
Hang out with really smart people and teams and some great lessons can’t help but rub off on you.
I was truly gifted in 2011 to gain access to and work with and support some remarkable professionals across a number of different market segments…from high tech to professional services to manufacturing, and I learned something with every engagement and encounter.
Here are Six Lessons Learned that Can Help Us All in the New Year:
1. It’s Critical to Think Deeply About Your Business: Strategy still counts. The strongest teams/firms I observed are the ones who took the time to step-back and evaluate their situation and rethink their futures. And then back all of that lofty thinking with action, learning and adaptation.
Call it what you want…I call it strategy work…and done right…asking and answering tough questions and then backing the ideas with key hypotheses and experiments is the corporate equivalent of a continuous fitness program.
2. Operational Myopia Guarantees Mediocrity (or worse): Conversely, the firms and teams mired in the muck struggled to get beyond the endless operational discussions and move towards the tough questions that help assess the current state and begin to identify options for the future. Yeah, everyone needs to make sales in the here and now. We all know that. Adding in the work of thinking about and adapting your business in pursuit of better serving customers, finding new customers, extending into larger growth areas or more attractive categories takes that extra level of discipline that separates the big winners from everyone else.
3. Leadership Counts. More than ever…and not just at the top. High performance firms have an unrelenting focus on developing people who can think critically, lead others to challenge convention and stimulate people to provide their best results. And given the past decade or so of leadership failures, people are quick to sniff out and mentally discard the disingenuous leaders. If you are leading others, you need to bring your “A” game, and the game isn’t about you…it’s about everyone else and what you can do for them!
4. Behold The Rise of the Integrator Leader: individual contributors who embrace the role of integrator…bringing together disparate groups and resources to solve problems are the future formal leaders in organizations. We are all well served to view our own roles through the filter of the new integrator leader. Build your network(s) internally and externally and learn to connect networks in pursuit of solving problems.
5. Diversity is a Strategic Asset to Build Competitive Advantage: While we predictably and annoyingly gravitate to those who act, think (and yes, look) like us, the true opportunity for greatness is in bringing together people of disparate backgrounds, ethnicities and ages and setting them loose to change something significant. The best leaders get this. The rest are still mired in the misguided thinking from another century.
6. If You’re Not Learning, You are Failing. Learning is more important than ever. The top performing professionals are learning everyday in the workplace (through experimentation), are pushing themselves personally to continue to grow in their respective fields, are filling classrooms and demanding more from an old and mostly broken educational system, and leveraging technology and unparalleled access to information to expand their thinking. There are no time-outs allowed when it comes to gaining and applying new knowledge.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
The short form:
Strategy isn’t a four letter word. We all need to find ways to break out of the day-to-day crunch to assess and learn and plan. Leadership skills are more critical than ever…and the best and most powerful leaders might not have people reporting to them. Diversity isn’t just an H.R. initiative, and if you aren’t learning every single day, you’re moving backwards at an accelerating pace.
May 2012 be a year of learning, growth and professional success.
Escaping the Gravitational Pull of the Past
If you work in a firm struggling to redefine itself and maintain its relevance in this changing world, you’re not alone. You’re also involved in a battle for your firm’s life.
There’s a great article at HBR Blogs by Judith Hurwitz on the topical and timely example of this change battle being waged in front of our eyes at HP. In her post, “Can HP Change Its DNA?” Hurwitz explores the challenges that hardware firms have in adopting software thinking and business models. The post is filled with relevant questions and ideas for anyone dealing with this Herculean challenge.
A Road Strewn with Wrecks:
Certainly, the corporate history books are filled with great names of firms who failed to adapt and change with the times. For every Apple/Jobs, IBM/Gerstner and GE/Welch story, there are dozens of firms with formerly great household names that are no longer great or even good. Many are gone or on their way out.
I suspect there were more than a few smart people in those firms, yet through some combination of factors…poor leadership, the gravitational pull of an old, strong culture, pride and arrogance, dominant logic, management systems and technologies optimized for another era, etc. these firms failed to change and so, they failed.
Experience Breeds Respect for the Magnitude & Complexity of Organizational Transformation:
I’ve lived through this transformation three times as an employee…and learned something every time.
The first one failed. I recall sitting in the conference room as a young product manager, when the management team explained why we would never pursue the low-margin, low-end of the market when we were so dominant at the top end. It felt horribly wrong then and it’s painful to recall now. Perhaps a young Clay Christensen was listening in, because we had our butts disrupted right out of the marketplace.
The second one worked on a concentrated level. This global firm had no idea how to promote systems and software..it was hardware-centric and component oriented and wanted to get into the software and systems business. We built a nice business that for a good decade dominated market segments around the globe. We also spent a hell of a lot of time justifying our existence and trying to make the square peg of a software business model fit into a company that only understood the box and component model. Ultimately long after the founding/sponsoring team members moved on to new lives elsewhere, the gravitational pull of the low-margin, box oriented mentality sans support and significant R&D investments, returned to its roots. The unit is a shadow of its former self.
The third one…a pure software firm, succeeded in large part because the only change it had to make (I use “only” very loosely here), was the market focus. The business model was clear…the challenge was facilitating a culture shift into new, emerging and adjacent markets where the capabilities were highly valued. To the credit of the professionals in this firm, it ultimately worked very well. Nonetheless, transition was a bite…with many fits and starts and a lot of resistance. It worked, but it wasn’t a day at the beach. The lessons learned along the way are enough to fill a book. (Hmmm.)
No Easy Answers and a Resource:
Instead of being prescriptive and proffering a list of easy-to-write, nearly impossible to replicate/implement suggestions, I’ll offer that helping a firm break free of the past is difficult at best and almost impossible in some circumstances. (OK, you can save the “thank you, Captain Obvious” messages.)
There must be a fierce corporate will to live…catalyzed by strong, united leadership and a workplace population dedicated to doing the messy, heavy lifting required for success in this difficult endeavor. Oh, and did I mention the courage and fortitude required to look around and say, “this all has to change,” and then to do it.
I’ve not yet found the magical answers for this (they don’t exist), however, for those involved in this effort of reinvention and revitalization, consider checking out Geoffrey Moore’s latest book, Escape Velocity-Free Your Company’s Future from the Pull of the Past. (Geoffrey is the Silicon-Valley consultant whose thinking and writings in Crossing the Chasm, Inside the Tornado and others has profoundly shaped strategy and execution in the tech sector for two decades.)
I caught up with Geoffrey last week to interview him for The Leadership Caffeine Podcast (episode to be aired soon!), and I left the conversation convinced that his latest effort offers some important and much needed tools to guide us on this difficult journey. The framework of frameworks that he offers and the approaches for rethinking the business from the outside in, will be incredibly useful along the way. More on this when I run the interview.
If you’ve lived through and succeeded in one of these endeavors, I suspect we would all like to hear your ideas on what worked and what didn’t. There are more than a few out there with a lot riding on getting this right.
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About Art Petty:
Art Petty is a Leadership & Career Coach and Strategy Consultant, helping motivated professionals of all levels achieve their potential. In addition to working with highly motivated professionals, Art frequently works with project teams in pursuit of high performance. Art’s second book (an edited, annotated collection of the most popular leadership essays), Leadership Caffeine-Ideas to Energize Your Professional Development, was released at the end of September in 2011.
Contact Art via e-mail to discuss a coaching, workshop or speaking engagement.
Learning to Collaborate at the Top
Filed under: Innovation, Leadership, Leadership Skills, Leading Change, Management Education
The July/August issue of HBR focuses on the issues around building collaboration into the workplace. It’s required reading for all of us.
If you’ve spent any amount of time inside the walls of an organization, you understand the promise and perils of collaboration. Great things can happen when we reach across silos and boundaries and seek to work together in pursuit of shared interests. However, as team guru Prof. J. Richard Hackman offers when talking about the potential of teams, “just don’t count on it.”
I’m going to set aside my usual focus on project teams and raise my sights just a bit to the rarefied air of the senior levels of organizations. In both my executive and consulting experience, I’ve observed or have been a part of situations where otherwise really smart people crash and burn on the shores of potential internal (strategic) collaboration. In many of these cases, there’s good money and important marketplace moves that were left on the table as a result of a failure to collaborate.
Two Common Senior Level Collaboration Pitfalls:
1. Navigating the rocky waters of moving investment emphasis to emerging and new opportunities.
How many of you have seen this movie before? The legacy business got you here and even made you great, but the new businesses are essential for survival and future success. However, no one can agree to reduce investment in one area and ramp up in another. After all, this would require executives to sublimate their egos and potentially risk displaying to their direct reports that one area is more or less important than the other. Horrors!
This issue derails just about every management group I’ve encountered. A few get through it, but most flounder until they endure a shock to the system or a metaphorical clubbing across the head.
2. Leveraging disparate products and varied pockets of internal expertise to deliver a systems offering to clients.
There’s typically a great deal of talk about the potential customer benefits or competitive differentiation that might result through internal product and service integration (i.e. across business units), but without true senior level advocacy, the ideas and talk fail to gain traction. And while more than a few of the internally generated “integration” ideas are just that…internally generated ideas with no real basis…some of them are potentially valuable. Unfortunately, most never reach the point where they are properly vetted.
And Then the CEO is Left to Steer Through the Rocky Shoals of Potential Collaboration:
Both of the situations described above often achieve lip-service interest or token compliance. People see the potential opportunities or the underlying logic. However, more often than not, both fall victim to overt or passive-aggressive behaviors driven by egos, turf-wars, loss-of-control fears, politics and any other human issues that drive our behaviors. Frequently, the CEO is stuck alone, attempting to steer the ship of state through these rocky waters without crashing.
A good number of these Captains on the Sea of Collaboration are focusing on trying not to fail…instead of trying to succeed.
While this isn’t a defense of the CEOs who struggle to navigate these internal and strategic collaboration opportunities, it is at least empathy. They are most definitely trying to keep the plates spinning for all stakeholders, from the board and market (investors) to direct reports and entire groups of people. It is understandably difficult. Of course…that’s why they earn the big bucks.
Helpful Thoughts from “Are You a Collaborative Leader?”
Herminia Ibarra and Morton T. Hansen writing in the July/August issue of HBR, offer the following on the complexity of driving collaboration:
“Part of the problem is that many leadership teams, composed of the CEO and his or her direct reports, actually don’t operate as teams. Each member runs his or her own region, function, or product or service category, without much responsibility—or incentive—for aligning the organization’s various projects and operations into a coherent whole.”
and:
“Persuading people to contribute countless hours of effort in partnership with people they don’t necessarily like to solve important problems requires consummate leadership skills. Managing egos so that each person’s commitment, energy, and creativity is unleashed in a way without disadvantaging others demands an impresario personality.”
In addition to their research supporting what we already know…that the challenge to foster collaboration is a difficult leadership task, the authors offer that the skills required to succeed in this endeavor can be learned and strengthened:
“It requires strong skills in four areas: playing the role of connector, attracting diverse talent, modeling collaboration at the top, and showing a strong hand to keep teams from getting mired in debate. The good news is, our research also suggests that these skills can be learned—and can help executives generate exceptional long-term performance.”
The Bottom-Line for Now:
While it’s possible to head down a slippery slope of collaboration paralysis, most organizations and most leaders I’ve encountered are in no danger of that slide. Perhaps some new measures of accountability for strategic collaboration are required. After all, what gets measured gets learned and gets done.
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