“Strategy is about making choices, trade-offs; it’s about deliberately choosing to be different.” Michael Porter #LessonsInStrategy

Structural stupidity in strategy
From Col ML Cavanaugh
Jonathan Haidt, the social psychologist, professor, and social critic, recently described "structural stupidity."

As he put it, “you have very smart people, highly educated, highly intelligent, but you put them in a situation in which dissent is punished severely. And what happens? They go silent. And when—when the moderates, or when anyone is afraid to question the dominant view, the organization, the institution, gets stupid.”

Strategy-making is both institutional and social. It takes big organizations to do big things. And it takes many people working in synch to make those big organizations go.

So there’s an intersection between Haidt’s observation and strategy-making. There are at least four related structurally-stupid pitfalls in organizational culture that lead to poor straetgy-making. I've lived and worked in all four at varying times and so I’ve seen each in person. Chances are you have too.

The man with the plan. The single point of failure model. Today this is on display through Vladimir Putin's distinctly distant leadership style. Strategic decision is made by one person and one person alone. No consultation. No discussion. There is no hierarchy, there is no ladder, there's just one person at the top. That's it. The upside is speed and unity in moving out on orders, but the more-massive-downside is the likelihood for error and miscalculation is exponentially greater. Simply put, you cannot alone do big and great things. You cannot alone orchestrate a large changes in human affairs.

#LessonsInStrategy

“A vision without a strategy remains an illusion.” Lee Bolman #LessonsInStrategy

"A vision is not just a picture of what could be; it is an appeal to our better selves, a call to become something more." — Rosabeth Moss Kanter, American sociologist and Professor at Harvard Business School #LessonsInStrategy

From ML Cavanaugh:
"Why do we think strategically?

A basic question, sure, but a critical one nonetheless. We shouldn’t do things without a good reason.

Survival and success are usual suspects, in this case, that are good enough for me.

An endeavor is worthy of strategic thinking when we are locked in competition of some sort. The presence of a living, willed adversary committed to our downfall increases the odds that we won’t make it. We may lose.
This fact is as frightening as it is motivating. The enemy at the gates sharpens the mind and the will. It is this motivation that drives one to think through the next step, the opponent’s response, the step after, another opponent’s strike, and so on. But you require motivation to actively think this through, just as only a car with fuel will get anywhere.

Part of what motivates is the stakes involved. If you were playing a game of checkers with a child to win a cookie, you likely wouldn’t put much forethought into your next move. But if around that same checker-board is a criminal who threatens to take your child if you lose, then the stakes are much higher.

This is the second motivating factor. First you want to beat someone (or, in some cases, get through something) that wants to beat you back. Second is the knowledge that if you lose, the consequences will be steep."

#LessonsinStrategy

"An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage." — Jack Welch #LessonsInStrategy

An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage." — Jack Welch #LessonsInStrategy

From ML Cavanaugh:
"Strategic possibility
Strategists can be dreamers. We sometimes day-dream about what might come to pass, what possibilities we might achieve. I think that’s great. If we don’t dream something new, then it’s likely nobody ever gets going anywhere good.
I’ve been thinking about how it is we can estimate the far-bounds of possibility. And my sense is there’s nothing wrong with wild-blue-yonder thinking as long as it’s tempered somewhat and grounded in cold-hard-reality.

So here’s what I’d suggest. The next time you want to think through how far you can push your organization or yourself towards the far end of strategic possibility, draw an hourglass shape with an open part in the middle.

At the very top, write out that wild-idea. What you think you might be able to accomplish, what dream you want to run down. How far do you think you can push yourself in competition, versus an adversary, against a marketplace competitor. Ask and answer: What might I accomplish?

Then, at the bottom, what’s the track record look like. Have you done something like this before? What’s the base rate comparison? Have you faced this adversary before? If so, how did it go?

Finally, in the middle of the hourglass: what are your current assets and liabilities that are pertinent to this competition.

If the gap between the top (stretch) aim and the bottom base rate is enormous—maybe you’ve got some asset ammo laying around that you think can help get you from the bottom to the top. Or maybe you see a time period where a lead-weight-liability won’t be a factor and you think you can gain some ground.

#LessonsInStrategy

"Strategy is the economy of forces." — Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz, Prussian general, military theorist, and writer #LessonsInStrategy #Clausewitz

From ML Cavanaugh:

Malcolm Gladwell's job is to captivate audiences. Catch your attention. Take positions that seem strange or silly—but by the second-take, you recognize they make the most sense.

Gladwell was recently in conversation on the subject of athletic performance. He described an argument he recently found himself in, which pitted two runners against one another. One had won a Bronze and Silver at the Olympics, but who had also put up exceptional times over a twenty year period. Another had won Gold at the Olympics in a big breakthrough performance.

The distinction Gladwell drew is that we often overweight high-flying moments over longer term, steadier achievements.

"As a culture, we are somehow dismissive of long periods of elite performance, and infatuated with brief windows of extraordinary elite performance…When it comes to evaluating the greatness of elite performers, we overemphasize peak performance and underemphasize longevity."

This isn’t just a bar-room brawl or minor disagreement. If strategy is a search for success, then it ought to matter what kind of success we pursue. I’m not convinced either automatically matters more. But I do see echoes of this discussion in military genius.

Basil H. Liddell Hart once wrote about the difference, which he described, as “determining the nature of genius, as distinct from fame.” Hart found “the imagination of mankind” is often “more impressed by the flash of a meteor than by the more permanent radiance of a star that stays remotely in the sky. The career that ends with a sudden descent to earth…has a more human appeal.” Moreover, “to ensure such fame, it is more important for a general to win victories than to gain the victory. As with an artist, his ultimate standing depends not on whether success crowned his career, but on the masterpieces he produced in practising his art.” This battle-winning flash and flair is why Hart found Robert E. Lee of the American Civil War so often considered a military genius.

Lee follows this path of shooting-star-fame, in that his battlefield victories in the Civil War were spectacular yet short-lived. In May 1887, in an issue of North American Review, William T. Sherman critiqued Lee in a response essay to a British general that Sherman felt had overstated Lee’s performance in command of the Confederacy.

Sherman wrote on Lee, “His sphere of action was, however, local. He never rose to the grand problem which involved a continent and future generations. His Virginia was to him the world. Though familiar with the geography of the interior of this great continent, he stood like a stone wall to defend Virginia against the ‘Huns and Goths’ of the North, and he did it like a valiant knight as he was. He stood at the front porch battling with the flames whilst the kitchen and house were burning, sure in the end to consume the whole.”

So do we want to be the lamp or the torch? The candle or the rocket? One burns hot and bright and goes out fast, while the other is warmer for longer and across many different use-cases.

Why does this matter to the strategist?

#LessonsInStrategy #QuestionsofStrategy

@secresDoge @babyfangs @maldr0id litigious - there is always multiple people giving the Lawyer imposition - cant win a war on multiple fronts #LessonsInStrategy

“For Caesar met failure each time he relied on the direct, and retrieved it each time he resorted to the indirect.”
― Basil Henry Liddell Hart, Strategy #LessonsInStrategy

“For whoever habitually suppresses the truth in the interests of tact will produce a deformity from the womb of his thought.”
― Basil Henry Liddell Hart, Strategy #LessonsInStrategy

“A goal without a plan is just a wish.” — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, French writer and pilot #LessonsInStrategy

"Building a visionary company requires one percent vision and 99 percent alignment." — Jim Collins & Jerry Porras in their book Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies #LessonsInStrategy

“All strive for victory. But not all understand what it truly is. To a soldier or pilot on the line, victory is surviving the current battle. To a politician, victory is an advantage one can bring to a bargaining table. To a warrior, victory is driving an enemy from the field of battle, or bringing him to surrender.
Sometimes victory is greater than the warrior could ever hope for.
Sometimes it is more than he is able to hear." #Thrawn #LessonsInStrategy #StarWars

"By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail." — Benjamin Franklin #LessonsInStrategy

"Culture eats strategy for breakfast." — Peter Drucker, American economist and pioneer of modern management theory #LessonsInStrategy