Strategy, Vision, Story, Culture

First I need to admit that I'm a total newbie in any strategy work. I can openly admit that most of what I have is just scratching the surface and guesswork. But I'm getting increasingly curious about how to craft a strategy.

Even the best strategy isn't worth a penny if people don't know about it. People need to hear about the strategy. They need to be able to discuss it and ask questions. Possibly even help in crafting the strategy. I believe that's not always possible and maybe everyone doesn't even care too much about such things, but it's easier to embrace something you have been involved with early on. (I believe same things apply for leading change also. And well, strategy is about changing the company from one stage to another.) Communication becomes critical when executing the strategy.

I have recently learned that I've confused crafting a strategy and crafting a vision in my mind. I mean, if we start making a new strategy, first we should have a goal. Ambitious and challenging, yet reachable with some stretching. Or even unreachable. I was again happy to watch a video about Spotify. The second part of Spotify culture introduced the Definition of Awesome. I think company Vision should be something similar. What you aim to be in the future, the ultimate goal.

And then Strategy would be 'just' those steps that take us towards that goal. There might be big and scary actions that will need to see the daylight, but more or less this is how I see it. Now I'm facing some doubts. Spotify is emphasizing the importance of culture. Almost all companies have values. The recent presentation by Eric Schmidt from Google seems to point to the direction of culture plus right people and even directly saying that having a strategy is stupid. In today's fast moving world the strategy might be out of date quite soon after it has been crafted. Old truths don't hold anymore.

Experience is less important than skills, enthusiasm and willingness to learn. Months and weeks have turned into seconds and you can be either a dinosaur or a small and agile mammal. Those who don't adapt will become fossils and relics of the past.

But maybe strategy can also be to create an kick-ass culture while pursuing that vision. If you aim to be the best damn player with the most awesome products that customers love, that vision is not going to get out-of-date soon.

Fourth interesting concept related to the same topic is the company Story. I read about this from Ville Tolvanen's blog (who unfortunately blogs in Finnish). I like this approach of having a Story. Stories are easy to remember and they don't need to be precise. Using metaphors is often a powerful way to get the message through. Maybe the trick is to tell a story about a company that had an awesome culture and was chasing a glorious goal...

Changing is Hard

I have come to the conclusion that resistance to change must be somehow built into us. Or at least it seems to be very natural. That's probably why there are countless of good and bad management books written about the topic. One of the best I know is Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson. The plot in short is rather simple: there are two mice and two little people in a maze. Every day they go to a specific place in the maze to eat cheese. Until one day the cheese runs out and they need to adapt to the changed circumstances. Now I found out that there are even multiple videos made of the book. Here's one that I found:

Another short book about change management is John Kotter's Our Iceberg is Melting. This book is a fable telling about a penguin society. The penguins encounter a crisis when one of them notices that their iceberg is probably soon going to shatter. The book describes the steps for one possible way to carry out a change initiative. Amusingly, the reader may be able to recognize certain stereotypical (penguin) characters also in his/her own work environment.

Of course here I could pull Systems Thinking from my sleeve and simply say that it's the system that resists the change. The organizational culture developed during the years and the practices that people have gotten used to. Yes, true. It is the system that resists the change. And just like entropy, getting order to the chaos takes a lot of energy. The opposite happens without any extra effort.

In Systems Thinking management is responsible for the system, since they are the only ones who can modify it and change the rules. But sometimes it is hard to change the system even from the management direction. People are very reluctant to adopt to new ways and need constant reminding, gentle pushing and coaching. Repetition of the message seems to be really important. Otherwise people inevitably will revert to the old habits.

Books aside how do you carry out this in practice? I don't know. What I do is simply experimenting. Trying new ways of doing things and seeing how people react. Feedback is the key and sometimes a little provocation is required to wake people up a bit. And it is good to have a pragmatic colleague who pulls you out of your daily routines and reminds you to think about things that really matter: the big picture. (But it's so soothing to be busy and work on all those tiny details...)

Finally I'd like to share a video that tells about an interesting Agile organization. For me it could serve as a vision of where I'd like to steer my own organization. I think we are going to right direction, but Spotify has just taken a couple of more steps. Thank you Henrik Kniberg, you are an amazing fellow! (Also, just earlier today bought his latest book: Lean from the Trenches.)