The Role of Positive Turbulence in Strategy Crafting

The Role of Positive Turbulence in Strategy Crafting

We hope that the first two sections of this article have introduced you to the concepts of turbulence, generally, and Positive Turbulence as an organizational dynamic. We also summarized our learnings about PT so that you can apply them to create and use Positive Turbulence on your own or help your organization learn more. This final section explores and unpacks the learnings about Positive Turbulence very specifically as they relate to the strategy crafting process by outlining six roles PT can play

Strategic Planning Process Design Incorporating Positive Turbulence. In A Designer’s Approach to Strategy Crafting, we learned that strategy creation can occur over four stages (design-diverge-converge-align). Positive Turbulence plays a role in each of the four stages in many ways. During design, our job is to consider how we intentionally use the learnings in each of the subsequent three stages. Like in all things, organizations have a limited tolerance for turbulence in the planning process and the task during design is to try to balance the amount of PT, keeping just short of chaos that may produce negative turbulence. While this can be adjusted, moderated or enhanced midstream, consideration during design allows an organization to do the necessary prework to ensure success. We noted earlier that there are three important characteristics of turbulence and one of these is diffusion, energy that acts to mix diverse things together rather than keep them separated in like groups. Turbulence and divergence is a perfect match. During the idea generation stage of strategy crafting, Positive Turbulence should be frequently applied in the form of information flows from the periphery, agitation of patterns of thinking and behavior, moving individuals in and out of groups that they work with during normal organizational functioning. The chaos that this produces should help the organization spot emergence; recall Broad’s definition "properties that emerge at a certain level of complexity but do not exist at lower levels". We capture emergent ideas and refine them during the third stage in strategy crafting, convergence. And finally, as we seek to create organizational alignment to enact the strategies crafted, we must disrupt existing organizational patterns intended to produce the results of the past, and rearrange them so they can create the results of the future. Positive Turbulence lives through implementation and can help teams function better, enhance required communication, and drive nonlinear thinking. Ideation and the Turbulator. A very specific suggestion for using Positive Turbulence in strategy crafting is employing what we call the “turbulator”. Technically, a turbulator is a device that turns a laminar flow into a turbulent flow, in mechanical things like airplane wings, heat exchangers, and arrows. Planners can use turbulators as individuals brought into the strategy crafting process to intentionally create instability in thinking, disrupt normal patterns of behavior, challenge norms and expected responses, and be watchful for moments when things simply get too calm. Here are a few examples from the list of ideation techniques given in the Ideation and Divergence Techniques article. An easy role for a turbulator to play is during group brainstorming where they can observe patterns in responses and offer either ideas that disrupt the pattern, seem quite ridiculous, or explore areas from which nothing has yet been offered. In storyboarding, a technique kind of storytelling where images or pictures are graphically organized to follow the narrative of a story or experience, turbulators can offer up forks in the road of the stories narrative at points where alternatives or parallel narratives might yield insight. During mind mapping, building a diagram to represent the collection of ideas as well as their relationships to each other, turbulators can look for patterns, connect things yet unconnected, or offer up challenges like “what would this look like in 3D”. In brainwriting, an idea generation technique that mixes together individual time with group time spent in writing down and building on ideas, turbulators can take a pass in disrupting storylines with insights or switch the settings of stories or ideas to explore how it might work for different kinds of stakeholders. And finally, in role playing turbulators can play the role of the jester, revealing what may be hidden or uncomfortable yet done in a humorous way. Also, at any time in any kind of ideation the turbulator and employ the worst-idea technique by injecting 180 degree alternatives to offset and reset thinking to inspire further idea generation. Enhanced Flow From the Periphery. Methods for strategy creation have relied on the flow of information from outside the organization for a very long time. Processes like environment scanning, data collection and analysis, and forecasting and trend reports have become staples of traditional strategic planning. Positive Turbulence transforms traditional techniques from a slow burning candle into jet fuel on fire. Where traditional scans use data reports in categories like PESTE (political, economic, social, technical, environmental), the concept of flow from the periphery used in Positive Turbulence greatly enhances the breadth, depth, volume, and quality of the experience. Not only are we creating a one-way flow of data, PT induces an interchange awareness, co-learning and co-creation of ideas and opportunities, and individual growth and development. An organization that has optimized the flow from the periphery is fundamentally and noticeable different from one that occasionally scans and absorbs part of what they learn. Change happens more quickly and more easily. While strategy crafting, during the discovery and divergence stages, the aperture of the lens needs to be widened to increase the chance of novelty, and during the convergence stage, the impact of the flow needs to be sharpened and condensed, focused on strategy refinement and utility. Given the accelerations we observe in modern life and the VUCA ( volatile, uncertain, chaotic, and ambiguous) nature of our global society, we increasingly need Positive Turbulence and enhanced flow from the periphery to craft potent and successful strategies. Nonlinearity and Implementation. Many strategic plans that we have seen over the years make the assumption that implementation of the strategies will follow an expected step-by-step linear pathway. In reality, we know that the true path we experience will be nonlinear. Mintzberg realized this and helped us understand the difference between what he called deliberate versus emergent strategy. In linear strategic planning, organizations develop intended strategies and move deliberately to implementation. We know however, that turbulence causes irregularity where systems lack predictability, determinism falls apart, and calculated predictions miss their mark. Because the world is nonlinear, volatile, and complex, the results of deliberate execution are a mixed bag. Some are realized and some are unrealized. The emergent properties of the complex, nonlinear world contribute to the outcomes, which often are quite different from what was intended at the onset. Even though Mintzberg explored deliberate and emergent strategy, most plans assume linearity and default to the deliberate approach. By applying Positive Turbulence in strategy crafting and implementation planning, we can mitigate the risks of failure through bad assumptions and expected linear implementation. We shift from predictions to forecasts, the future becomes a cloud of possibilities where we can at best place likelihoods on the outcomes. Like the weather forecast, we need to continually watch the forces shift in the systems and change the forecast regularly. Implementation in a nonlinear, VUCA world requires responsive strategy. Turbulence as a Driver of Change. Most strategies require some form of organizational change, why craft strategy if you want everything the future to be the same as everything in the past? Positive Turbulence can be a useful tool in the change process. Here, we will reference the simple, ubiquitous model for organization change put forward by Kurt Lewin in the 1940s. Lewin’s model has three stages that he called unfreezing, change, and refreezing. The model assumes that to create change, we must unfreeze the forces, structures, and processes in our organization that hold current behaviors and activity in place producing the outcomes they produce. The change itself in Lewin’s model is actually the easy part. Then the third stage is refreezing the new forces, structures, and processes so that the organization doesn’t revert to the prior state. The change is successful when the refreezing takes hold and produces different results. Positive Turbulence is a wonderful tool for unfreezing. You can use all ten of the tips we discussed to help an organization unfreeze. Let’s explore an example of using the arts to unfreeze organizational structures and processes. Cycles of Chaos, Change, and Renewal. Like in any organizational application, Positive Turbulence can be overdone and lead to stress and negative turbulence. The same applies to strategy crafting. Constant planning, revisioning, and turbulence can lead to a lack of clarity and priorities for employees. We recommend that in your strategy crafting, you remain intentional over the long term by cycling through periods planning using turbulence and change through chaos and rest through renewal. Again, this can be more of an art than a science, yet there are indicators that can help guide these natural cycles. When employees are unable to focus, contribute, offer new ideas, or cannot seem to continue to engage, they may be saturated. Organizationally, if turnover increases dramatically, brands suffer, or missions drift too far, it may be that too much change is happening. The goal is the find the optimal connection of Positive Turbulence to continuous strategic planning and help these cycles fit together. Many organizations create strategy cycles of three to five years. In highly technical environments, we know that the change cycle needs to be shorter as the acceleration in technology innovation requires more frequent strategy crafting. When dealing with facilities or urban and physical structures, the planning cycles need to be longer since the lifetimes of infrastructure need to be long enough to justify costs and investments. There are multitude of reasons for shorter or longer cycles, but by continually assessing individual, group, and organizational readiness weighed against the rate of change in the organization’s multiple environments, you can seek the right balance of turbulence, change, and renewal. In conclusion. We set out to review the concept of Positive Turbulence and discuss the assumptions and context important to understanding the concept as applied to organizations. We then moved on to explore uses of Positive Turbulence to help drive strategy and organizational change and got very specific about the role of Positive Turbulence in Strategy Crafting. We hope some of our ideas resonated with you and we encourage you to begin to play with Positive Turbulence. And lastly, we invite you to a dialog with us, let us know what you learned, or ask questions when we might be able to help.

A learning journey is a custom designed set of experiences, spanning several days, that immerse a group in other cultures and with remarkable individuals. It is a way to “get out” and move beyond familiar and comfortable environments to learn how to observe with new eyes – simply see the world in a totally different light. This is a territory from where new perspectives – on specific issues, the current reality, or the emerging future – are gained.

– Anna Muoio