The massive cruise ship was about to enter the channel in Venice. I happened to be watching the side of the ship and noticed that a small tender had pulled up alongside and transferred a lone individual. It was fascinating to see how, even in the calm water, this was no small feat – and a slip on the ladder would end badly.
What I had witnessed was the arrival of a Harbor Pilot. A Harbor Pilot is a specialist who knows both the local navigational quirks of their harbor, but also the subtlety of guiding a vessel that has enormous inertia (>180,000 tons).
Why bring in a specialist? These individuals have up-to-date knowledge of tides, sandbars, facilities and docking procedures. In most cases, the Pilot does not take command, but because of their deep knowledge, (usually ex-captain level) they become an expert advisor to the ship’s executive leadership. Imagine how important the call is when you initiate the turn to pass through the breakwater or approach the dock.
This analogy parallels the challenge of the internal strategist when asked to support leaders addressing large strategic changes within their firm. Firms are built on hundreds of decisions leading to products, systems and resources to reliably deliver results in a specific context. On the plus side, these leaders live every day on their “ship.” In many cases, they can trace the evolution of your firm through its challenges and achievements – leading to deep knowledge of how it reacts under power.
On the challenge side, even in a rich career, internal resources take part in a limited number of integrations or initiatives. We know from experience that having found a path to a handful of successful implementations can leave their leaders with unexplored blindspots that can sap momentum and leave the initiative to falter.
The implementation journey is unkind, leaving more than 70% of the initiatives to fall below their benchmark expectations. It’s for this reason that leaders choose to bring on an outside resource to come alongside them and the team.
Let’s take a look at three ways that having that outside perspective and experience can accelerate the work of the internal strategist.
Perspective
When you are an internal resource, you are an absolute expert on how the firm got to where it is, and the “how” and “why” of each part of the firm. A very large part of your perspective is anchored to and immersed in the firm.
This is essential knowledge for the implementation, but works against an internal specialist when designing a new course. The leading reason it can be challenging for the internal resources is they can see soft constraints as hard walls which limit their solution range. One successful journey can become a hard and fast rule that gets permanently installed as a process.
An outside resource can help the internal leader and the team see clearly which parts of their approach are adding value and what may have only been useful for that specific challenge. What might look like chaos from the internal perspective is likely a pattern that their outside resource has seen before. Putting these soft constraints in the bigger context, a path through becomes clear.
Platform
The ‘tool bag’ that the internal resource has gained while being a part of the firm, over a long arc of experience, tends to consolidate into a cohesive playbook that becomes “the way we do it.” While this creates the opportunity for fast starts, it makes it really difficult for an internal resource to bring a unique direction to the table that will be accepted as authoritative by their team.
A skilled external resource brings an externally-validated platform to the table. This platform and its uniqueness can be the catalyst for a group to release its attachment to legacy tools or viewpoints that may no longer serve the group well as it considers future opportunities. Imagine the unseen currents that the Harbor Pilot knows about that helps the ship take a safe path through a challenging passage.
Prescription
Lastly, and probably most importantly: it’s very hard for an internal resource to put together an action list that focuses the scarce resources on precisely the highest point of leverage. Putting strategy in place is a long game and preserving resources and leadership capital is essential.
What usually happens is that an internal team will draft a list of factors, all of which are logical contributors to the challenge, but have difficulty with prioritization and a forecast for impact. It’s not that they don’t have the intellectual capacity to know they need it, they simply don’t have the repetitive experience to gain the perspective of what to do first and in what order to move the needle forward.
You might be surprised to hear that internal teams tend to over prescribe, which can actually slow the resolution by starting a multiple front engagement which quickly becomes complex to manage and spread scarce talent thin.
When an outside resource is brought on board, they have a diagnostic view and the macro perspective of the dependencies that leads them to very specific recommendations of priority and order.
Pulling it All Together
It’s easy to forget when you are walking down a harbor promenade that it took a team to put that ship in that berth with skill and precision. Could the captain have achieved that result without the external resources? Perhaps. Let’s play that out.
Imagine for a moment that the captain turns toward port on their own and what happens to risk reward balance. It only takes a momentary misdirection to become a major issue. A good docking is predicated on the right decisions being put in place on speed and heading miles from the final destination.
Each of those decisions is an irreversible commitment to an outcome.
It’s not that the internal team is not competent, it’s simply that they can’t see the consequences with the precision and situational awareness of the Harbor Pilot.
Now let’s blend the extraordinary operational competence of the internal team with the fresh situation specific insight that a guide and coach injects. Each decision is made in a way that the risk reward equation is biased to success. Decisions are made in the early stages that create the opportunity for a safe landing.
If this has stirred some questions, lets talk. From our first connection, you’ll find I’m all about your success. I’ll seek to understand, share insight and help diagnose from the outset.
Sound good? Then put a call on our calendars using this link.
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