Has this ever happened to you?
As I was cleaning out my office the other day, I came across a report from a strategy offsite during my days as a Fortune 500 exec.
If your firm is anything like the one I was part of, this may sound familiar….
We paid big money to have a large, offsite strategy done during an event at a golf resort destination in the southern US. It had been planned to the minute, with high-end keynote speakers, facilitated breakout room time, large communal meals and evening consolidation sessions (and of course golf). Teams were formed and recommendations were made.
About a month later we received a large set of PDF’s. There were executive summaries, narratives, recommendation summaries and three “starting point” decks. The format was impeccable and the production quality was board level – befitting of the Big Five firm that created them.
The outputs painted three crisp future scenarios, all of which were compelling. They were rooted in our firm’s mission, vision and competencies. They had business cases that were blocked out, and verbatims taken from the offsite.
I recall having this sick feeling, like seeing a beautiful piece of furniture in a room it just doesn’t belong in, that our strategy work wasn’t going to hit the mark.
Six months later, my suspicions were confirmed when we had nothing to show for it.
Zip, nada, nothing. Relegated to the deep reaches of the cloud server.
Why This Happens to the Best of Organizations
The firm we hired was not at fault. They did what we asked.
Neither were we. We got what we thought was the right thing.
Through no fault of our own, we had drunk the kool aid so common in these moments – that a compelling next generation vision would create the will and commitment to make it real. Everytime a meeting was pulled together to “take action” on the offsite strategy, more compelling, noisy, day-to-day distractions quickly had all the best resources pinned down.
This pattern dooms most firms to stay on the exact path that we were on prior to the offsite. That’s not to say that these offsite sessions are a waste of time. There are other benefits, like building strong international teams and having face time with senior leaders.
Of course, as COVID has changed the format and setup of the typical off-site events, I’m noticing this pattern continuing to play out….
The Tractor Beam That Keeps Us Locked Up
We humans are pattern-making machines. We wake up at the same time, have the same food for breakfast, and drive the same route everyday. We take the same track in the hallway, sit in the same place in the conference room and mirror each other during meetings.
We are committed, trained and chosen to fit in a system that delivers value for a client. Our work worlds were designed for stability, resiliency and consistency. When the need to establish a fresh approach comes along, no matter how visually appealing it looks, we are silently drawn back to the familiar.
We play similar roles in meetings, to the point that many times you can guess what people will say before they begin. We have consistent strengths and weaknesses that show up in our day-to-day routines.
These patterns exert enormous collective power, so that even with the clearest, most compelling scenario, we struggle to make a dent.
The Gap and the Solution
This tendency to create future perfect scenarios in spite of the powerful pull of the existing organization and its processes point us to why so many strategic efforts don’t hit the mark. The truth is that there is an implicit assumption in strategy that all the resources of the firm could be unattached and ready for re-assignment. Nothing could be further from the truth. The resources of the firm are deeply engaged in a complex set of interrelated systems built layer by layer over a long period of time.
The solution is that we need to think differently about our firms, seeing them as not just stand-alone resources ready for reassignment, but people, processes and technology systems that have capacities, capabilities, limitations and motivations. These capabilities can then be built on and configured to create new products and services, leverage existing capabilities early and then allow for rapid scaling.
This simple, but profound shift in thinking allows a “second journey” to be described. This change of viewpoint allows a strategist to make surgical shifts in alignment that release value and allow the new strategy to come into focus.
There are two elements that enable this to happen:
- The first is a catalyst, that is something that lowers the “activation energy” for the firm to get the new strategy in place. There is a reason that strategic execution doesn’t happen spontaneously. Every significant move needs to be “activated” to get over the hill of internal resistance described above. Catalysts include internal items, like cloud services making voice tools accessible to any size firm, or external events that allow our products and services to serve our clients in a new way, like the acceleration of curbside pickup. The important point is if there is no catalyst, there will be no change.
- The second is clarity, not just of endpoint vision, but of a pathway to get there. Many teams start out with a flourish, only to be gradually halted by internal friction killing their momentum. This is not anyone’s specific fault, but part of the internal systems that is intended to hold focus on the current business (think about the sales and operational planning, quality and shared IT services) Clarity has two dimensions: the first is to assure the firm at large that this investment will lead to returns for all of us, not just the minority of people on the team. Secondly, it means that we have such clarity in our design of the strategic move that whenever it is described, people in the firm want to get on board. A great litmus test is when you have people volunteering from all over the firm to be on the project.
The Path
In the case above, we were pressed out of our comfort zone by a major disruption to our product line. This was a gift, as it forced us to come to terms with the truth that we were dependent on one product and stuck in our comfort zone, needing real work to escape our own orbit. In our example, this was about moving our main focus to the client’s issue, instead of optimizing for internal efficiency.
Since then, I’ve discovered that, while each firm has its own starting and end point, equipping for the journey is driven by three specific competencies that allow the firm to find, form and break away from its comfort zone.
The Huge Benefit
Firms that develop the capability to do the “both and” work of powerful visioning and equally powerful strategic implementation develop a huge cumulative advantage over their peers. By joining the execution insight of the operations members of the group with the powerful futuring of the visionaries leads to not just great presentations, but real results.
The secret to unlocking this synergy is in how the strategy is formed. Executable strategy is built starting with a diagnostic framework to inform, specifically, which areas need to be emphasized to assure that the end product has a powerful pathway to realization. Through hard won experience, we’ve discovered a working model that creates a balance between the visionary project, the plan, and the team.
A part of you just said, “aha, I can do that!” Well, I would share that this is easier said than done and not always a linear process. However, the work of finding leverage, points of integration and purposeful decomposition will lead to real results and lasting impact vs. being stuck on the hamster wheel of diminishing returns.
If you’ve read this far, you know implicitly that you are on one of three tracks. The first track is you’ve kept this material at arms length in an academic way, and you’re going to repeat what you’ve been doing. This will result in drift, and not get you closer to your goal. The second path is to take bits and pieces of this note and append them to what you already know, which will likely tweak your results, but not lead to the breakout that you were hoping for. Finally, you can hit the link below and start a journey that could geometrically improve your results.
Here’s the bottom line: you’ll never be closer to better results than you are right now. Keep in mind that with time, those three paths get increasingly more divergent – and a jump from one level to the next gets harder and harder.
If you’d like to know more about the strategic assessment and the implementation framework, please select a time on the calendar with this link for a personalized 1:1 call with me.
I look forward to helping you avoid the sinking feeling that comes from having a shiny strategy that doesn’t have a path.
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