Initial Reflections on Strategy Crafting

Initial Reflections

What is strategy? Through my research and discussions, I’ve found that nearly every individual I spoke with had a handy and practical definition of strategy. In fact many were able to quickly recite a definition, email a short slide deck explaining strategy, or forward a paper they had used, preferred, or written that talked about the definition. Then, I was rewarded with a slew of articles from the Harvard Business Review, several book recommendations, and some great stories about why understanding strategy is important and how so many leaders can get it wrong. So strategy is deemed important, it’s well discussed and written about, and there is a lot of material we can quickly access and share on the topic. A few primary components were common among the definitions and characteristics of strategy that emerged:

• orienting toward a future, destination, position, or purpose
• responding to or managing change
• communicating with and motivating people
• taking action and adapting
• managing scarce resources

There were two clear approaches to strategy, deliberate and emergent. Deliberate strategy refers to those predetermined or initial expectations about where to go, how to get there, and what the future will be like when the strategy is realized. Emergent strategy is not explicitly defined nor expected when the strategic course is initially set – it emerges from actions that respond to changes in the internal or external environments and adapts initial expectations.

Strategy Differentiated from the Excellence and Innovation Orientations. Regarding an important point on clarity and vocabulary, it was interesting to see how my interviews and the literature bifurcated on a simple concept – those that differentiated strategy from effectiveness (or excellence) and those that did not. Whereas effectiveness and excellence can be seen as “polishing the marble” – improving  or incrementally adapting what exists – strategy is about purposeful navigation and adaptation in a changing environment. Even with Harvard professor Michael Porter’s hope to make this clear in his seminal writings, this is not well understood by practitioners nor clearly communicated by thought leaders. Extending this line of thinking, there is also a noted confusion regarding the differences between strategy and innovation and innovation’s role in effectiveness. To extend the metaphor, if effectiveness is polishing the marble, innovation is creating new kinds of marbles or using them to do things marbles have never done before. I see the relationships in this way.

I’ve defined strategy in a general way as having the five components (future orientation, change, communicating, taking action and adapting, and managing resources). Generally, strategy is adaptation to emerging conditions to achieve the desired strategic results. The effectiveness, or excellence, approach focuses on improving and optimizing existing core components of people, processes, technologies, and in turn organizational outcomes. By contrast, innovation processes generate new ideas and create value through action. There are three requirements for something to be called innovation:

• creativity, novelty, a new idea, or using something in a new way
• putting it into use or practice
• the resulting change creates value

The challenge is that in most cases these three orientations are approached individually and independently; at best they are understood to be different, and in most cases confused or misapplied. Choosing a single orientation – whether it be strategy to adapt and evolve the organization to changing conditions, innovation to put ideas into action to create value, or effectiveness to improve and perfect – is a strong approach. Working from the combination of two of the three to solve a problem or create change, is an even stronger approach. Take a look at the diagram below.

What Appears to Be Changing in the World of Strategy? In short – everything! The overall environment in many industries has become increasingly disruptive. For a long time, the flow of the energies and resources in these industries had been laminar, or flowing along consistent, predictable trajectories and lines. However, during times of disruption, the flow of energies and resources experiences increasing turbulence, where chaotic changes in the expected trajectories occur. For organizations and markets, disruption leads to unplanned (and sometimes negative) deviations from expected outcomes and objectives.

In the last ten or fifteen years, the inability to make predictions during disruption has gained significant attention. The term VUCA rose out of the military and was extended by the Institute for the Future and others. VUCA is an acronym for volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity of environment conditions. Volatility – the speed of change coming from various forces and catalysts. Uncertainty – lack of predictability and likelihood of surprise. Complexity – a large number of forces acting and interacting in unpredictable ways. Ambiguity – lack of clarity in reality and multiple, confounding meanings, and the breakdown of expected cause-and-effect relationships. The VUCA world calls for forecasting rather than predicting during chaotic change and poses significant implications for strategy. A variety of different methodologies are required along the continuum from placid, laminar change on one end of the spectrum to high complexity and turbulence on the other. More on this later.

What core models for strategy crafting are people using? During the interviews and related readings, there appears to be more convergence than diversity. In fact, when you strip out the language and compare the core models, a common set of steps or stages emerge in the strategy creation process. Five stages to the process became pretty clear – reflect, create, depict, communicate, and resource.

1. Reflect: there are a large number of possible tools and processes in this stage from data collection, to environmental scanning, to market analyses, to trend analysis, to deep ponderings by senior teams on the meaning and outcomes of what they do, but this collection of activities can be called reflection, insight, futuring, or sense making. Understanding current internal and external activities and forces to make sense of reality and gain insight into the potentials in the future.

2. Create: from the reflection stage, most models employ tools or processes to identity opportunities for the organization that match of the needs of others with what lies within the realm of possibility for the organization. This creation stage articulates these opportunities by creating a vision for the future and elaborating on how the organization could go about putting things in place to achieve that vision.

3. Depict: most models include a step or stage where ideas about the future and the opportunities are turned into a communication device – often this is a graphic or framework followed by explanatory text. Both the literature and practice are replete with hierarchies and taxonomies that deploy letters, numbers, labels, and symbols to help organizational members read, understand, and connect actions and resources to elements of the strategy. Sometimes these depictions include estimated costs of the resources necessary to achieve the goals and metrics attached to the path forward working towards the outcomes. Many people call this stage planning.

4. Communicate: once the strategy has been depicted in some fashion, it’s time to share the depiction as widely as possible. Names and approaches for this stage in strategy crafting vary, but in nearly all models it is explicit or implied.

5. Resource: most strategy creation models deal with resourcing the portfolio of prospective activities. Some call the strategic budget the operationalization of the strategy; the strategy is not complete until the resources are obtained or accounted for. Other models do not include resourcing as part of strategy crafting, leaving the resourcing to execution. I find this shortsighted as the ability of an organization to pursue any strategic course depends on human and financial resources. Strategy morphs to match organizational capacity made possible by available resources, and vice versa.

From this point, practice in crafting strategy goes off in any variety of directions. Vocabulary shifts with interchangeable phrases and terms, some specific to certain industries. Graphics use a variety of images and icons to show the interrelationships among the steps in unique ways. There are a multitude of ways in which consultants and thought leaders try to differentiate their methods and models so they stand out in a crowded space. For the most part, however, the core models I’ve observed consist of familiar and repackaged elements, most of which are not very new. In fact, quite a bit of what is being called strategy sounds more like sound management practices.

What’s been exciting? During the interviews, only a few spoke excitedly about what they’ve seen lately. The literature supports the observation that while there is a lot of pontification about strategy and a fair share of analysis and criticism post mortem, few people are writing with excitement about the wonderful future for strategy crafting. Here are a few of the more exciting things I’ve read or heard.

• Design Thinking: the last 10 years have witnessed a growing number of books, articles, and other writings espousing the benefits of applying design thinking approaches to strategy crafting. I’ve been a fan of this approach myself and have crafted several applications of models and processes in different strategic settings. The particular six-step model I prefer includes design, futuring, divergence, convergence, prototyping, and implementation.

• Big Data: years of data collection, larger and larger databases, low-cost and high-efficiency computing, the handheld revolution, and new analysis techniques have opening up the world of big data and the insights obtained through analytics. While it’s not strategy creation itself, there are myriad applications of big data to strategy crafting, especially reflecting and creating stages and executing strategies in customized and personalized way, informed by the insights provided by big data.

• Open Innovation: seeking novelty from the periphery of traditional sources, open innovation employs knowledge from outside normal places to improve internal innovation and expand new markets. Open innovation can significantly impact strategy, turning ideas into valuable action over time while adapting to emerging conditions to achieve the desired strategic results.

• Deconstruction: a philosophical approach to testing the primary assumptions of an organization’s reality. Especially useful in the reflect and create stages of strategy creation, a deconstructionist approach can uncover new strategies that remained hidden by assumptions and best practices.

• Intersecting Previously Disconnected Disciplines: an emerging trend in strategy crafting comes from the mashup of thinking and doing. The challenge here is identifying the intersections that may be productive, harvesting the learnings, and developing strategic applications likely to succeed.

• Crowdsourcing: by the dictionary, crowdsourcing is the process of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, and especially from an online community, rather than from traditional employees or suppliers. In the world of strategy crafting, crowdsourcing seems to be open innovation on steroids. Turning to the wisdom of the masses at any of the five stages of strategy creation (reflect–create–depict–communicate–resource) would be quite interesting.

I’ll explore these perspectives in more depth later in future writings.

Reflections on Innovations in Strategy Crafting

I have been a practitioner and continual student of strategy creation for the past 25 years. Recently I’ve become engaged in a research topic that has me fascinated – I am seeking to better understand if and how organizations are using new methods to craft strategy. My observation is that over the past ten years there has been a shift in how leaders are attempting to create fresh strategy, and if not a shift in approach, at least a significant shift in the need to do so. My hope is to identify new approaches to strategy crafting and explore and explain the methodologies for leaders and practitioners. I will post this content on my blog, author short articles on my newsletter, and collect the writing to eventually publish in some format. I am also looking for candidate organizations to collaborate with me to prototype and help me evolve some of the new methodologies. I began my journey researching innovations in strategy crafting with a lot of reading, both the classics and new articles, and with interviews of colleagues. For my first round of interviews, I reached out to people I knew had various perspectives and practice with strategy who also worked in a wide variety of industries. I interviewed executive leaders (presidents, CEOs, and directors of large units), consultants across several sectors, and thought leaders to include a few authors, speakers, and professors. While a significant proportion of my application of strategy crafting is with higher education institutions, I wanted to be purposeful to sample broadly across industries and sectors. Next week I'll share my initial reflections on the readings and interviews.

Downloadable Large-Scale Facilitation Article

Here is a link to a full-text version of the article in pdf format.

A Final Word or Two on Purpose and Adult Learning in Large-Scale Facilation

A Final Word or Two on Purpose and Adult Learning

The outcomes I have experienced from large-scale events have been transformative! I have been fortunate over time to have the opportunity to expand my group facilitation from the common group sizes of 20 or 30 to groups of 200, 500, and 1,000 or more. There other methodologies that I have not talked about here that include open space technology, appreciative inquiry, hackathons, and crowdsourcing. All have their plusses and minuses, and all need versions of the tips and suggestions I’ve provided.

My world is of one of strategy, vision, design, and learning. There are diverse reasons and applications for large-scale events. For all of these, purpose matters. For most events, I choose a primary purpose, but there are always several layers of dynamics occurring. You could choose a secondary purpose and design intentionally for the primary purpose and include elements that bring in elements of the secondary purpose. Here are five descriptions.

Foreseeing and visioning: much of the work I do is about strategy and it is important to see into the future; when this is your primary purpose is creating shared vision, you can anticipate potential challenges and identify new opportunities for intervention; processes of co-creation and iteration are useful in large groups to develop shared possibilities.

Creating and innovating: in the strategy and innovation work I do, ideating and creating choices is important;  we often use novel approaches for turbulence, disruption, reframing, reimagining, or recombining various elements and perspectives; prototypes are wonderful tools for making vision increasingly real as implementation approaches.

Aligning and implementing: the target for these kinds of events is to energize individuals in an organization or larger community to align actions and along a common path forward; we seek activities that build shared understanding of the environmental forces, explore perspectives on the nature of the problem, and identify decelerators and accelerators to planned action; seeking degrees of consensus throughout the event is often an implicit goal if not fully explicit.

Persuading and influencing: large-scale events can also have a primary purpose to influence and shape the perspectives of key stakeholders and the public; here, employing thought leaders and experts can be helpful; the evolution of proposals, sharpening of ideas, and promotion of conversation all help support influence and persuasion.

Learning and change: other large-scale events can be primarily focused on individual and organizational learning and change; convening a large number of employees from a single organization for example can have significant benefits and help propel the organization further than by moving forward in small groups in small steps or by top-down edicts; additional comments on adult learning follow.

In my work, I always take a developmental approach. Engaging your participants as adult learners is a fundamental perspective I take for large event success. From this perspective, large events create shared experiences, which in turn create common ground. Adults learn and engage best through experience and will have developed preferences that vary significantly from one person to another. This learning can be maximized by cycling through phases of engagement, ideas, experimentation, storytelling, and reflection as these activities enhance engagement and result in greater personal and collective performance. By acknowledging that learners have different learning style preferences, the designers and facilitators can reach and engage all participants.

While it may be a tricky addition to a large events, adults thrive on self-directed learning by recognizing their own goals, the stay motivated and open to change. Even more impactful and perhaps challenging, learning content is best when co-developed with participants in advance. Diversity in methodologies keeps activities fresh. And be prepared to abandon or change the program flow as learning unfolds.

A well run large-scale event can produce profound outcomes, extraordinary engagement, and have lasting long-term benefits. They can gain energy like a tornado and they can take a group to places they never expected to go. This can have both positive and negative consequences, so suggesting that a large-scale event be delivered is a significant proposition. It also requires a great deal of planning and resources.

It takes courage to design and deliver your first large-scale event and experience to keep doing it well. Participating, witnessing, and discussing large-scale events can provide what’s needed to get over the inertia. I encourage you run the experiment, plan to learn from the experience, seek help along the way, but most of all – have fun.

Soon I'll publish a link to the full text of this article in .pdf format.

Recipe for Success in Large Scale Facilitation

I have explored and honed a set of tools that make the design and delivery of large scale events successful and rewarding and I’d like to share what I've learned. This is not a complete list, nor does it give justice to details involved, but if you pay attention to these aspects of the work at minimum, you should find the process goes smoothly. The surprises that results should be not those of disappointment, but those of significant forward motion.

be intentional about design: develop a design plan with a clear purpose (more on this later) and learning outcomes, specified work products if appropriate, and key design elements such as maintaining momentum and flow, participant experience, and the use and integration of technologies

use a planning team: start early by informing the team of the design and establishing roles through the process; key roles could include coordinators, designers for learning and other processes, facilitators, logisticians, and budgeting

develop a facilitation guide: this document may include important scheduling details, learning and work product outcomes, materials and special materials, key participant lists, and session by session facilitation details with times, speakers, and roles of the key participants; typically the facilitation guide is less detailed and far more flexible than a formal script

establish a compelling challenge and an attractive invitation: be conscious of enticement and engagement of participants as they are considering whether or not to attend the event, express the experience through invitations that represent well what they may experience

intentionally arrange space: large events require extended logistics related to transportation, way finding, comfort, facilities for food and breaks, seating, and group interactions; consider professional meeting planning support when available

be obsessive about materials: develop detailed lists, a budget, procurement times and details, and disposal and reuse guidelines

use multiple facilitators: a single key facilitator should be assigned to coordinate and train support facilitators and pay attention to group energy, flow, activity, and output; specific assignments for support facilitation can include subgroup management, navigation, stimulation, turbulence, recording, and any detail that cannot be overseen by the lead facilitator

distribute participation: it is easy for a large group to shift behavior towards that of an audience; it is easy for speakers in large groups to treat the crowd as an audience; facilitators should find opportunities early the session to discuss with the group how this will be different and create micro group engagements; small group activities should be arranged with considered phases of input-process-output stages where output can be cycled in some way to large groups and capture the appropriate stage of development; the experience of the individual participant can be mapped through the large event system as an experience journey

configure groups: find simple and novel ways to form and adjourn small groups, encourage leadership, record outcomes, and swirl group membership to increase the number of contacts made by each individual participant

design for experiences: shared experience creates a common vocabulary, reflection of emotion among participants, and a connection in long term memories that has lasting impact

chose the right information and conversations for the full group: a general rule of thumb is that the large scale group should be in plenary, whole group format, less than 25% of the entire time they are together

attend to sequencing and time allocation: groups of various sizes process through various stages of development; adult participants need to have certain freedoms for self-direction; people of various personalities and styles have different needs to express and experience; all of these variables create time and sequencing demands, with the overall outcomes in mind, these can be added to the design elements and addressed early the event planning

plan for emergent design to shape activities as the event progresses: it is difficult to predict the nature of the outcomes of the micro and small groups; small variations in the early conditions can cause large ripples in the outcomes later the large group event, because of this facilitators should have options for shifting and pivoting design elements, exercises, and capture techniques as the event unfolds; while experience brings confidence and positive events, it also teaches us to plan for emergence and to add energy to new ideas and forming concepts

harvest and record: large groups can produce a high volume of interesting ideas during generative processes and quickly build consensus during evaluative processes, both the specific content of the ideas and points of consensus should be captured as well as the rules and conditions by which these outcomes and artifacts were produced; there are myriad options for recording; analog is often better than digital, and simple is often better than complex; and video, if allowed and agreed upon ahead of time, can serve as a full record to go back to and reconstruct outcomes later

debrief: reflecting on the experience can (and should) be part of the experience; all stakeholders (clients, facilitators, participants) need reflective feedback opportunities, some more formal and structured than others; special attention should be given to debrief with the planning team and facilitators on the design and flow of the large event; special attention should also be given to debrief with the facilitators and clients, reflecting on the expected outcomes and actual impacts

synthesis and follow through: is it important to seek meaning and understand the impacts of the experience as well as commemorate special happenings, learnings, images, and impressions that occurred along the way; large scale events have lasting impressions and different aspects of the event’s impact can be observed and assessed over varying lengths of time – immediately after the event you can assess engagement, energy, and specific outputs – two to three months later you can assess ongoing communication, the application of knowledge, and new collaborations – six months to a year later you can assess shifts in discourse, implementation of strategies or innovations, and change in the large context

Moving From Small to Large Group Facilitation

The leap to convening groups of 100 people or more, or 1000 or more, in one place at one time can be very intimidating. But in reality, the leap is not as great as you might expect. It is important to understand some of the critical differences that require attention in the design and delivery phases. Let me explain a few of the shifts that occur when scaling events beyond a hundred or so individuals.

being there: in small groups, there is usually greater similarity in the attendees and a greater commonality in purpose in being there, in larger groups, there is usually greater diversity in participants and often completely different reasons for being there

participation: in small groups, there is usually time for everyone to speak to the entire audience; in larger groups, there is rarely this opportunity, but some can do it, and almost everyone can speak in front of a small group if that is designed into the flow

flow: smaller group facilitation can permissibly get off track in order to pursue interesting ideas or approaches; in larger groups, this can lead to wholesale process breakdowns, part of the large event can be designed to accommodate this, but the lead facilitator needs to stage the activities to create flow over time

consensus: the smaller the group, the fewer the individuals that need to align to reach consensus; in large groups, consensus looks more like a cloud of opinions that may point in a general direction than a lineup of support for a singular approach; there are a variety of consensus techniques for large groups, many that are visual

conversation: in small groups, most participants can attend to the full conversation as it occurs throughout the meeting; in large events, there are series of conversations that allows people to come together and move apart, this creates the need to summarize and capture outcomes and results along the way, think multiple cycles of divergence and convergence

technology: in small groups, more technology can generally be used with a low consequence when it fails; in larger groups, even small failures in technology can be exponentially disruptive, analog is often better than digital, and simple is often better than complex

Next week, I'll add some "recipes for success" a set of tools that I have learned honed that make the design and delivery of large scale events successful and rewarding.

Delivering Large Scale Events

This month my blog will feature content on how to design and deliver large scale events focused on topics of strategy, vision, ideation, and related planning or futuring activities. I will describe how to go about designing these experiences, what the benefits are, and give instructions, tips, and insight about trying this yourself. I will summarize the importance of the developmental aspects of large scale events and how they contribute to individuals, teams, and organizations long-term success. 

Large scale events are those with more that 200 people in one location at one time. The focus here on on face-to-face, participatory, synchronous events. There are a variety of different methodologies appropriate for one-way delivery, distributed and virtual activities, and asynchronous engagements, which will not be part of the discussion.

Look for more content in the coming days...