CircaSpecting: People, Tech, and Business

Decision Rights and Collaborative Engagement

Who's in charge?  It's not always clear.  And, that is a problem.

Jobs are hyper-specialized.  So, "in-charge of Task 123" usually is pretty clear.  But, it's not so clear on the special projects, the innovation initiatives, the cross-functional process improvement teams, the strategic planning teams.  With members from multiple levels and from multiple organizations, it becomes less clear who has the power to decide when faced with alternatives.  This lack of clarity inhibits the effectiveness of the team.  That is why decision rights are important. 

Simply put, decision rights state how each member will be involved in the decisions the team faces.  To put a fine point on it...are we voting on everything ?

Groups of people working together to solve a problem inevitably face decisions that affect what will be done, how, and by whom.  In typical projects, there are many decisions to be made.  Some are intrinsic to specialized tasks that are clearly owned by a member.  The manager/facilitator cannot and does not want to make all those decisions.  The whole group cannot be slowed down by prepping for and chiming in on all those decisions.  Empowerment must happen.  But, overall, anarchy cannot happen.  There is a tension between coordination and empowerment.  Project leaders who do not resolve this uncertainty are flirting with failure.

All projects are like waves, in which the members of the group come together to get on the same page, then separate to work on individually assigned tasks, then come back together, then separate, etc etc etc.  When we separate to do our assigned work, decision rights are usually very clear.  I am supposed to decide how best to do the things I was assigned.  But when everyone comes back together for coordination and course correction based upon latest information -- these are the moments when clarity on decision rights is most important…and most often missing.  Will the PM decide?  Will the group vote?  Will the squeaky wheel decide?

What we need is a clear statement of decision-rights. That is: who gets to decide what?  

Most project managers know to control the project by using phases.  On analytical or planning projects particularly, it is vital to specify decision-gates between phases, because pruning the tree of possibilities is essential to focus the energy of the team.  Everyone needs to understand how this pruning is going to happen, because that knowledge will shape their expectation of participation -- which will affect their engagement and creativity.  It's a balancing act that requires wise management choices, based upon the nature of the team and of the problem. The leader must specify in advance how each of these phase-gate decisions will be made. This is part of the clear communication habit that characterizes good leadership.

Here's an example of how project phasing and decision gates work together. 

Let's assume the project manager chooses the Wave Model template for the group project.  She would divide the process into seven phases.  And, SOMEONE must make a decision prior to closing each phase and proceeding to the next:

1. Problem definition
   Have we adequately defined the problem?
     
2. Solution brainstorming
   Have we generated enough ideas for how to approach solving it?
     
3. Solution evaluation
   Have we adequately debated the pros/cons of each idea?
     
4. Solution selection
   What idea will we pursue?
     
5. Implementation planning
   Have we prepared a plan that can be implemented?
     
6. Implementation
   Are we done?
     
7. Assessment
   Have we adequately documented our experience and learnings?

In advance, the group leader must communicate to the team members how she expects these control-gate decisions to be made.  For instance,  

"We will use the following decision rights on this project:
    Leader decision  on phases 1, 2, 4, 6
    Majority vote      on phases 3, 5
    Unanimous         on phase   7  "

Now, the leader has published a road map for where the group will travel.  This road map allows the leader to communicate clearly "we are here" messages along the way.  And, it specifies who will be making each of the key decisions for the project.

Life is a multi-stage game.  How leaders treat project members on the current project will affect how those members engage on future projects.  Leaders …even cultures…. benefit from the creativity and engagement of team members over time only to the extent those members feel the process is fair and transparent.  When those conditions fail, trust disappears.  This is when engagement falls, replaced by groupthink and sycophancy. This is the end of creativity and innovation within the organization.  It is also the beginning of the exodus of the creative members.

No one expects you to abdicate authority or responsibility -- that's why you sit in the corner office.  You are not creating a vote-for-everything culture.  You are simply being clear about the boundaries of delegation and participation.  Remember, there is a correlation between engagement and creativity.  You get to choose where you want to be on the engagement/creativity continuum on each project.  Then, members can make appropriate investments of their energy and creativity -- without feeling bait-and-switched later.  Setting and delivering on employee expectations in this regard is essential to long-term corporate creativity.

Fear of Flipping the Switch

One of the lessons of life that I’ve been learning lately is that execution does NOT flow naturally from preparation.  Actually, the more you prepare, probably the HARDER it is to move on to DOING.

Here’s what I’m experiencing lately in an interesting little object-lesson called "moving aboard our new sailboat."  The experience is purely personal, but I think it reveals some things about the mind that are 100% applicable to the professional world.

Preparing is sort of a safe little fantasy world.  You tell yourself stories about what is going to happen when you start doing -- the great things that will happen, the ordinary things that will happen, and even the challenging things that will/might happen.  Then you get organized for those things.  You play out those stories in your mind, and you come up with new stories, and you document and buy and stage things to be ready.  But, there is a vast existential chasm between the mental life of these stories and the real life of...well, living.

One of the hooks in preparing that makes it so sticky is similar to the old adage about life: the more you know, the more you realize how little you know.  In planning/preparation, it’s easy to get into the mindset of trying to prepare for everything.  It’s a fool’s errand, but it catches many people in its grasp -- because (1) it seems responsible and (2) it does not actually carry the risk of DOING.

Anyone who has worked in large companies has seen this phenomenon: over-planning, over-preparing -- because you can always justify your preparation as prudent in the face of some bogey-man risk...but REALLy because you are petrified of walking across the threshold from your fantasy world into the real world, because deep down you know that the real world is going to be different from the predictable world of “planning.”

At some point, after you’ve read the manual on switching power sources for the refrigerator
between shore power and generator power, you actually have to ... FLIP SOME SWITCHES AND HOPE YOU DON”T BLOW UP SOMETHING.  You have to crank the generator, which means you have to do a few other things.  You have to route power to places and turn on pumps for heat exchangers and other things.  And, either your plan works and you can have ice cream while at anchor off Saba, or it doesn’t and you are buying lots of expensive new gear.  But, here’s the mindset that matters: 

If I am reasonably smart and reasonably prepared and have a reasonable idea for how to do something, I WANT TO KNOW THAT IT WORKS IN THE REALWORLD...NOW.  You have to reach out and flip some switched -- not stupidly and randomly, but still you have to flip them -- and SEE WHAT HAPPENS. 

Either you will find that you are in fact prepared, or you will find that you were living in Plato’s cave.  From where I sit today, either of these outcomes is superior to admiring shadows on the wall.

 

Casting Call

If you are a leader of a growing business, you spend a lot of time recruiting and assimilating new team members.  I hope to share a few ideas in this post to help you get a better return on your efforts.  Most of these ideas fit under this heading: roles, NOT responsibilities.

I hate job descriptions.  Hate.  I am passionate about seeing people flourish to their potential, and IMHO nothing smothers potential like an HR-friendly, legal-approved job description.  The prototypical job description would make Marx chuckle and say "I told you so" -- meaning this description leaves almost nothing to chance, focuses exclusively on the list of specific things for which this person can be judged individually as having done/not, and speaks of the position's manager as one who will tell you what to do, when, and how.  This is not an epic existence.  Far from it.  This is a recipe for total creative shutdown, for dehumanization, for withering, for apathy, for disengagement, for stagnation.  If that's not clear, contrast it with how we learn naturally…as pre-school children, before the institutional machine starts working us over.

Children instinctively live mythically.  "Precision" is sacrificed for a greater degree of suggestion.  Myth is the mode of simultaneous awareness of a complex group of causes and effects. Myth means putting on the audience, putting on one's environment….putting on a whole vesture, a whole time, a Zeit.  People today reject goals.  They want roles -- R-O-L-E-S.  That is, total involvement.  They do not want fragmented, specialized goals or jobs.  Marshall McLuhan

At some risk of inviting critique from the HR and Legal department, here are my 3 simple reasons for ditching "job descriptions" and replacing them with "roles."  

#1: Roles are about BEING, rather than DOING.

The hyper-focus on responsibilities is a canker left over from the Smith-to-Taylor industrial days, breaking down tasks into sub-tasks -- and roles into sets of tasks -- ad infinitum.  Great for pin manufacturing.  Not great for the post-modern, post-industrial information economy in which ideas and creativity cut the path to profit.  I know this is cliche, but that's probably because it's true: we are called human BEINGS, not human DOINGS.  When you think about your team, don't do it with an org chart in front of you.  Don't think about tasks and responsibilities.  Rather, approach it as a director of a theatrical production: how would I describe each role on the cast?  If you have not seen a cast summary in a while, go find one on the internet.  It will DEFINITELY NOT talk about tasks, because it's a ROLE.  And, the beautiful thing about roles is….they give the cast member room to improvise, to interpret, to experiment….to grow.  To BE and BECOME. 

#2: Roles are elastic and relative.

Most job descriptions that focus on responsibility are rigid and isolated.  Given the pace, complexity, and fluidity of the challenges you face each day, can you afford to have your hard-won recruits shackled within rigidly defined individual responsibilities that make the word ME look a lot bigger than the word TEAM?  I think not.  Most of us face challenges that (1) were unanticipated when the job descriptions were written and (2) can only be solved collaboratively -- in relation to other people.  Define and communicate roles in a way that reflects this reality. 

#3: Role performance must be judged holistically.

To satisfy the HR or Legal guidelines, we create job descriptions from bullet points of easily observable accountabilities for each individual on the team.  But, while the king may prance around proud of this clothing, he's naked -- and everyone knows it this time….the recruits especially.  As discussed in the previous paragraph, the nature of work has morphed significantly in the post-industrial era.  We need to stop pretending that the old accountability model works.  The old list of job responsibilities isn't REALLY what we're using to evaluate people.  Nobody's buying that.  So, we should stop pretending that's how we judge people.  A role is judged holistically and subjectively -- sort of like a…human.

Change the way you think about your team, then change the way you communicate about it.  Think of your team as a cast, yourself as a director.  Eschew silly pretense about tasky job descriptions.  And, you'll find yourself building and retaining a much more creative team. 

We are in the Massage Business

Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of the communication.  Media, by altering the environment, evoke in us unique ratios of sense perceptions (seeing, hearing, etc).  The extension of any one sense alters the way we think and act, the way we perceive the world.  When these ratios change, men change.  The alphabet and print technology fostered and encouraged a fragmenting process, a process of specialism and of detachment.  Electric technology fosters and encourages unification and involvement.  Marshall McLuhan

Somewhere during the last 20 years, we hit a tipping point in man's relationship with technology as media -- active participation became the norm, replacing passive consumption.  It had something to do with mass adoption of video camcorders in the late 80's, email and the internet itself in the late 90's, and later from the very odd source called the online role-playing video game.  Through these sources, we learned to interact with technology, information, and each other in an active, adaptive, unconstrained way.  And, as McLuhan foresaw, this new interaction changed us -- and, I will argue the change opens up a big opportunity for your business.

How different is the internet REALLY as a medium for information?  

Well, um, vastly different.  Consider how one consumes information in the library (if you can remember what that was like).  You search for information clusters (a book) through a rigid category scheme (taxonomy) created and maintained by someone else (librarians), and when you find a cluster (book) you must consume it linearly until its literal, physical end.  If you are lucky, the book includes some footnotes regarding related works, from which you can bridge to other clusters -- when the library has the other book!  Oh, and you typically do it alone, while being told to ssshhhh by the librarian.  It is a process that assumes you are an empty bottle on a conveyor belt, awaiting a spurt of goo to be shot into your head before you move off and make room for the next bottle.  There's very little freedom and interaction in this model.

In contrast, information on the internet is classified organically and redundantly.  It is hyper-related and instantaneously comparable across clusters.  Much of it is user-created and user-administered, particularly the classifications -- which can even be personalized.  And, the form of the medium allows for simultaneous consumption and discussion by multiple parties.  Compared to using the library, this process makes me feel in control, free, creative, and connected -- all of which encourage me to take more risks, to look in odd places, to consider the unique/different/odd/far-out.

Please don't misunderstand me: I do not believe this is a "youth" thing.  Video games, FB, widgets, ipads, youtube, iMovie are changing people -- all the people, young and old -- who use them.  We are all becoming accustomed to a holistic, non-linear, participative, evocative experience with content.  We expect to be involved, active.  We feel a tool or technology is outdated or stifling when it forces us into a rigid, linear, or passive consumption mode.  Like, for instance, Powerpoint.  ug.  Or, how about the monthly revenue results review -- we sit around a table and walk through a scripted presentation by one person following a linear argument. No wonder that people are playing with their iphones under the table.  We have been programmed by our personal information technology media TO WANT TO PARTICIPATE, TO WANT TO ACT.  Unfortunately, our corporate technology media do not reinforce this drive to act.  Yet.

This is where we get to the part about "opportunity."

By fostering active user participation in the medium, Enterprise Collaboration Platforms will translate to greater active participation … IN ACTING.  In other words, people will be reprogrammed FROM waiting for orders TO making things happen.  If I had a dollar for every CEO who has lamented a lack of initiative among employees, I'd be a rich man.  Well, let's do something about that.  Implement a collaboration platform, and cultivate a bias toward chiming in, toward stepping out, toward taking chances, toward experimenting, toward acting.  

Enterprise Collaboration is NOT about chatter; it's about shaping your culture, getting employees active.  It goes beyond improving content, beyond "better information" -- the medium itself will have a profound impact on moving your team from its heels to its toes.

The medium is the massage.  Marshall McLuhan

Crabby Leadership

For a few days in March, I lived on a beach in an uninhabited bay on the north shore of Hiva Oa in the Marquesas of French Polynesia.  Talk about a simple life: sleep, eat, watch nature, repeat.

One of those days, my watching nature involved sitting very still on the beach for several hours as the sand crabs came out to forage on the beach.  I was very still, so they went about their business within a few meters of me.  And, they taught me some interesting lessons, one of which I’d like to share.

At first, the crabs appeared to be wandering down the beach in random zigzags, sort of like a stumbling drunk wandering down a city street.  But, upon closer examination, it became clear that the zigzags corresponded precisely with the edge of the previous wave.  The crabs diligently followed the ragged edge of the wave-ends, because that’s where the nutritious bits are.  Any higher on the beach away from the turmoil of the water, there is nothing useful because the water has not carried anything up that high.  Any lower, and the turmoil of the water keeps the nutrition floating and swirling such that the crabs can’t eat it.  The nutrition for growth is at the edge, in between the dead-but-dry higher ground and the too-wet-to-use surf.

I think the analogy is very clear for our organizations.  The edge is messy, but that's where all the good stuff is.  At the edge, there is a lot of trash you cannot use.  So you have to be discriminating. And, the edge is constantly moving.  So, you have to move around a lot to stay in the sweet spot.  The edge I am referring to is what’s happening far from “corporate” -- far from the board room, far from the governance committee, and far from centers-of-excellence and other such policy bureaus.  It’s the world of CSRs and drivers and staff accountants and buyers and sales reps and marketing analysts and the like.  The conversations and ideas and experiments and knowledge of this sea of employees is chock full of valuable nutrients for growing the business.  But, we have to play at the edge...with all the challenges that entails.

• First, we must embrace the messiness.  Resist the impulse toward policies and centralization and standardization, because all that really happens when you try is this: you move yourself away from the action.   You cannot tame the sea.  You may think you are taming the sea, but you are really simply walking up the beach away from the waves where the action is. Your life will feel more organized, but it will also be less rich.  Let people work and talk and act the way that feels natural for them, and they will naturally expose many great ideas you can harvest.
  
  
• Second, we must keep our heads on straight.  Not all ideas are good ones.  But, we don’t want to quash the sharing process.  Generally speaking, this means that you don’t pass judgment on bad ideas, you just ignore them.  And, it means you don’t use big direct financial rewards for good ideas, because employees will then force you to pass judgment on their ideas because they are focused on the reward.  There is a large body of research that corroborates this assertion: employees contribute best when they are treated as if this is part of their normal role....not some extra-special thing we’d really like them to try doing now.
  
  
• Third, we have to be close to the action.  This is where I believe enterprise collaboration (think, Facebook for the enterprise) has such fantastic potential: we can all participate in (or just learn from) many conversations around the business, all the time, with very little effort.  Sure, alot of this stuff (hopefully not as high a percentage as on consumer social media) will be junk; but alot of it will be gold.  Just remember, this is what economists call a free option: bad ideas you can ignore at little cost, while good ideas are there to use for great benefit.

Many policy-wonks in the executive suite and the IT governance team are reluctant to embrace enterprise collaboration because it’s edgy and messy.  I say: that’s sort of the point.

 

ID-ent-defying: Identity is More than a Profile

One of the benefits of having two older teenage sons is that they provide a wealth of insight into emerging patterns of technology use -- particularly as relate to social and collaborative trends.  So, I asked my 17 year old son the other day "How do you use profile pages to understand things about people -- you know, to get a grip on their identity?"  His answer: "I don't.  Profiles are useless.  I look at what they are saying, who's talking with them, and what those other people are saying about them."

 

Identity is about what you DO and WITH WHOM.

 

This conversation was brought back to my mind recently by the new Dan Ariely book The Upside of Irrationality, in which he makes a good case (among others) that using a profile to understand a person's identity is like "trying to understand how a cookie will taste by reading its nutrition label."

 

I've written on this topic from a couple of other perspectives a few times (link here and here), but the topic took on new relevancy and urgency when Cisco announced Quad this week.  Quad is an integrated communication and collaboration hub.  It looks great, and it seems clear to me that Cisco are on the scent of enterprise collaboration in a way that few others are.  There are a lot of cool principles at play in Quad, but here's the one I want to drive home.  Cisco has planted a flag in some prime real estate: identity.  

 

Identity is the central datum of the human co-operating system.

 

Identity helps me interpret things from you. Identity helps me filter the things I send to you.  And, Identity is shaped by all those interactions, too.  Quad allows Cisco to incubate identity from all our communications and collaborations, which enhances our ability to communicate and collaborate in return -- a virtuous cycle.  This is a wonderful, big deal.  Finally, we have a big player who gets it: the collaborative enterprise needs tools, but the end-game here is a human co-operating system, so it's fundamentally about "person."

Renaissance Leadership

In his June 6 NYT editorial, Frank Rich calls out the President for being too deferential to committees, teams, experts, bureaucracies, incumbent interests. Rich takes the President to task for being unwilling to step out boldly and set a firm direction that is his alone, that reflects a clear and unique personal brand. At the same time, Rich also mocks the "go with your gut" attitude at the other end of the spectrum, as caricatured by the previous fellow in the Oval.

Rich's article got me thinking: clearly, there's got to be a middle ground.  And, this middle ground is fertile not just for political leadership -- but for all forms of leadership.

The economic momentum of the 50's is spent; the PC revolution juju is getting old; multiple economic Superpowers are ascendent and competing effectively for resources and consumer attention. Leadership today is a tough puzzle from a strategy perspective.  But, wait, there's more.  Now we have the cultural shifts of facebook and Gen-Y creating leadership ambiguity from an implementation perspective, too.  Namely, what's the "right" balance between participation and direction?   As a result of these strategic and cultural transitions, crafting a more effective leadership alternative for the "new normal" is complex -- as evidenced by the leadership struggles of a very bright man in the oval office.

People want to be heard. This requires openness.  People want to make progress together. This requires focus, and that requires stepping up to choose sides and impose constraints and make trade-off decisions.  No bureaucracy is going to step up.  No committee.  There's never enough facts, and you will never find a plan that humors everyone.  Going around the table making sure everyone is on the record supporting a decision is a nice gesture and perhaps a good transparency exercise, but it is worse than a waste of time as a precondition to decision-making.

  

I am not suggested that you be an idiot who ignores others. But BE. Have a personal brand, and protect it. My father calls that integrity. It is extraordinary, and it can move mountains.  Of people.  So, I humbly offer the following thoughts regarding a reformulation or renaissance of leadership for today:

1. Be a student of everything.  Breadth of knowledge is the only way you can call BS and keep people honest. BUT, don't get too carried away with being a specialist or listening to specialists.  Specialists' identity is based upon what they know, not what they can learn.  And, specialists always overestimate their grasp of causality and their ability to forecast. (see point #3 below)
2. Trust yourself.  It's a monumental lie that you need "experts" to tell you what to do.  Most expertise is cultivated in an antiseptic academic lab.  The real world is messy, almost always invalidating tidy assumptions upon which expertise is based.  It's easier to turn a truck that's moving, so the most important step of all is to get moving -- and only you can make that happen.
3. Doubt certainty.  Life happens, and rarely as we expect.  Anyone who says otherwise should be viewed with more than a little suspicion.  And, any plan that bets on prescience is DOA, in my opinion.  So, embrace messiness, and make decisions anyway.  The messiness is not REALLY going to go away; you and your team will simply start pretending it is.
4. Embrace the adversarial method.  Solicit input, but test it with fierce opposition.  And, accept the same in return.  The purpose is to gather facts and find some truths, not to be right about this or that.  Your best friend should be the person in your sphere who most frequently tells you "no, you're wrong."
5. Own it.  Even if someone else came up with the idea. Even if someone botches the implementation.  Own the decision. Decide, marshal, monitor, adapt, repeat -- and be transparent about it all.  People value transparency over accountability.  If you don't pretend to have the 100% guaranteed silver-bullet plan, then you don't have to fear making adjustments and being transparent about it.  Only the person who pretends prescience needs to fear transparency.  Make your personal leadership brand about openness, decisiveness, focus, monitoring, and adaptation. 

Your existence is defined by the changes you forge in, for, and through others. 

BI, Enterprise 2.0, and Cultivators

Shawn Rogers (profile and site) knows BI and web2.  That alone is rare.  But, he's also a nice guy, a nuanced thinker, and a plain speaker.  Last week, Shawn offered a great insight during a brainstorming session at our offices.  Many people in BI are talking about adding this or that "web2"-type feature to their business intelligence products, but most of these additions amount to little more than shallow accessorizing.  For instance, does adding a star rating to a centrally managed BI report really make the BI platform open, participative, and emergent?  Probably not.

It's vital to not get distracted with sexy-but-useless accessories.  Rather, we need a tenacious focus on USAGE/UTILITY/PURPOSE.  For instance...

Why does Business Intelligence need to adopt ideas/features/approaches from Web2/Ent2?  

It seems axiomatic that BI does need to do it, but that's not terribly useful without a discussion of why.  So, here's some fodder on the why/PURPOSE, to get the conversation started.

Business Intelligence is about gathering, organizing, and distributing information to increase understanding relevant to decisions.  The value of BI reaches a theoretical maximum when...

1. decisions being faced are properly articulated and contextualized
2. relevant information is accessible within the time frame of the decision
3. individuals within the community are engaged to the maximum extent their skills and time allow
4. all three of the above are adapting and developing over time

It is against the backdrop of these idealized objectives that it becomes clearer why BI cannot achieve its potential without ingesting web2/ent2 at a deep, philosophical level.  "BI for the Masses" is a shallow, condescending objective.  What BI is missing are the tools, techniques, philosophies etc to (1) move each member of the community to the right in the diagram below, in terms of his/her ability and (2) make most effective use of that member's contributing capabilities at that point for all the other members of the community.

Web2 is focused on the individual, and it provides a wonderful model of how individuals' personal/professional development can be incubated when they are provided a seamless environment that embraces, feeds, supports, and tempts them to try something new at every stage in the involvement continuum.  This is precisely the deep missing link in BI today, and it is WHY there is much for BI to adopt from web2/ent2.

In other words, the BI world needs to take a break from thinking about SDLC, and instead think about PDLC -- Personnel Development Life Cycle.

The exhibit above summarizes the evolution of an analyst from pure consumer to expert cultivator.  It shows some key environmental conditions that must exist to encourage a team member to move toward the right at each step.  

I believe the centrality of Collaborate in this evolution/development is key to explaining why social is the killer app for BI.  First, collaboration is an evolutionary step between consuming and creating.  Second, collaborators provide the context that makes consuming easier.  Unfortunately, today BI fixates on the edges and omits the middle.  This needs to change.

Yo-Yo's Make the Best Leaders

No, I don't mean Skilling, Ebbers, and their ilk.  What I mean is that the best leaders can operate on many levels.  They are not stuck in the weeds, nor are they stuck in the clouds.  They can strategize and delegate, but they also roll up their sleeves and do "real" work.  I call it yo-yo'ing, because the leader is constantly moving between strategic and operational perspectives.

Now, if you think that this cannot be done in larger companies, think again.  For instance, Gordon Bethune's legendary success story saving Continental Airlines was attributable largely to his ability to move fluidly between the strategic issues occupying Wall Street and the operational issues occupying folks on the shop floor, in the cockpit, and at the passenger counter.  He could repair an airliner and fly it, not just talk about policy. 

As such, he had three things without which no leader can succeed for long:

1. Unfiltered information from the strategic and operational spheres
2. Willingness and ability to contribute meaningfully on radically different levels
3. And, consequently, enormous respect from people at all levels

Before you try this, let me give you a warning: your first few attempts will involve incredulous employees and likely failure.  But, stick with it, and you'll earn the respect only a Yo-Yo is due.

Beyond the Big Bang: Strategy as Habit

This post is about how Social Enterprise will create competitive advantage through the way organizations approach strategy.  It's going to take a little set-up, so give me a minute.

There are several good strategy frameworks, and at various times in my career I've used them all.  Some of them feel tailored to new-venturing by entrepreneurs, some to big-betting by established firms, some to turnarounds, some to restructuring, etc.  (Almost all of these frameworks feel tailored to big management consulting fees.)  These are the Big Bang incarnations of strategy; they are dramatic, so they grab headlines.  Certainly, a few of these big plays have worked out spectacularly.  But, I would argue that the dramatic, headline-grabbing strategy "events" are some relatively rare and low-probable-yield versions of strategy.  How many mergers succeed, vs. blow up?  How many reorganizations are truly "strategically" transformational 10 years later?  It happens ..., and we all know deep down that those are the exceptions that prove the rule.  Strategy as a once-for-all-time exercise is, well, short-sighted.

Instead of strategy as Big Bang, what about strategy as Habit?  ALL organizations require strategic thinking to succeed, but few organizations actually face the dramatic moment -- ever, or certainly very often.  If that is true, then the sweet spot for strategy is something more routine, more "everyman", more evolutionary, more of a living process.  Strategy as Habit has 2 components, in keeping with the 2 primary definitions of the word "habit":  (1) a regular practice and (2) a long, loose garment worn by a member of a religious order.  (In case you've forgotten that second definition:  picture here).  Strategic thinking is a recurrent, involuntary action.  Our strategy is both a content statement and a style statement, both of which define and identify our team.  Strategy is participative.  Strategy has structure without being overly constrictive.

Ok, so let's get a few things straight.  Strategy as Habit is NOT:

• Hanging corporate mission statement posters all over the office
• Making the staff memorize the elevator pitch
• Giving everyone a copy of the strategy report from the consultants
• Holding an annual executive planning retreat in Sun Valley

Which brings me to my favorite strategy framework for Strategy as Habit:  the Seven Ss.  For a quick primer, see this summary from the Economist.  Or you can just figure it out from the traditional diagram below:

I think this framework captures the essence of internal factors that bear upon strategy.  The popular (in the exec suite anyway) view of these factors is that they are tools for the implementation of the strategy.  Tools and constraints.  Of course, there is some truth to that view.  Whatever strategy exists today in an organization, its ability to execute on that strategy largely depends upon the consonance of its strategy with the other six Ss at the organization.  But, I think the power of the 7S framework emerges when we think of organizational evolution over time -- with strategies morphing to exploit changes in the organization's internal and external setting.  When you begin viewing strategy as a living thing -- adopting the Strategy as Habit view -- then you see TWO important questions:

1. How do we best implement today's strategy?     AND
2. How do we best detect and respond to rationale for strategy evolution in the future?

When we adjust the original diagram a bit, you start to see that the secret to strategy success -- both IMPLEMENTATION and EVOLUTION -- is fundamentally the staff.

The founding strategy may not start with the people, but its implementation and all subsequent strategy evolutions are hugely influenced by the people. They are the ones, after all, who design the business systems, develop their skills, train each other, shape shared values daily, and project the culture's style to thousands of customers every day.  They watch competitors on the street, and they listen to prospects who've declined proposals.  In all but the smallest organizations, the CEO's ability to drive the details of strategy execution in all these areas around the company is practically nil.  There are too many details to master, too many situations to understand, to many disciplines to learn, etc. 

In fact, we all know that the true strategy of any firm is not exactly what the CEO tells the WSJ.  It's not what Corporate Communications writes in the Annual Report.  The true strategy of the firm, the one that actually matters to its future, is the one that's sifted and seasoned and amended and nuanced and enriched in a thousand ways by a thousand people whose names the CEO has never heard.  And, all of those actions today will create tomorrow's strategic landscape for the firm.

(BTW: As a CEO, I love it when someone on our staff adapts our strategy to make us more competitive -- provided I hear about it.  I want to understand; I am a student of my business.  And, I also want to speak truthfully about our strategy with external parties.  Nothing worse than rambling on and on to journalists about a strategy that no one's implementing!)

So, we need to stop talking about Social Enterprise as something that youngsters really want to play with while at work.  Or as something that lets the CEO blog/twitter/etc to get the troops on-board with his strategy.  Instead, we need to realize that the enterprise is already social, and the only people missing that are in the executive suite.  Ironically, those are the very folks who stand to benefit most from harnessing the potential of these technologies: better awareness of what's really going on and earlier detection of opportunities to evolve. 

And, what that translates to is priceless: leaders who look in-touch internally and smarter externally.