Authenticity in Transformation: Facing Your Reality
Kenneth Igiri
Enterprise Architect | Enabling Long-Term Business-Tech Alignment with Architecture & Strategy Tools
Yesterday I heard an amazing story from Dr. Jeff Bassay that reminded me of the one mantra I typically share with my community at The Strategy Club - "Face Your Own Reality". This topic was one our most powerful conversations when we used to use Clubhouse as a rallying point for The Strategy Club conversations.
The story is about a certain former university vice challencellor. His story began with his days as a shoe shiner in the same school. He would typically catch pairs of shoes dropped by students from upper floors of the hostel, polish them and then have to walk up the stairs to return the shoes. He raised enough funds through his hard work to make it into the school as a student and eventually made it to the position of vice chancellor.
According to Dr. Jeff Bassay , founder of INSTITUTE OF LEADERSHIP AND STRATEGY , the professor told this story himself.
"And think about it: As a senior executive, what do you really get paid to do? You get paid to make a small number of high-quality decisions. Your job is not to make thousands of decisions every day." - Jeff Bezos
Insights from the Pro Chancellor
It is important to state that this illustration was made to buttress the point that organizations must be brutally honest about their current state if they are going to develop a meaningful strategic plan for the future. However, let me first share the lessons at an individual level.
Assuming the shoe shiner pretended to be a student everytime he was aroudn his friends, we wouldn't know how to help him. We wouldn't patronize him as a shoe shiner and he wouldn't be as likely to succeed in raising funds for his next season as in the example we shared in the first section of this article.
Many people out there are missing their opportunity for growth because there is no authentic assessment of the gaps between where they are and where they want to be. Such self-deception is often expressed on social media platforms like LinkedIn with awesome photos, intimidating profiles and exageratted stories.
"The best way to measure the effectiveness of a system is the result it produces." - Dr. Jeff Bassay
Insights for Organizations
Formulating a strategic plan, developing an enterprise architecture and crafting a technology roadmap all have this concept of authenticity in common. If we all sit in meetings, sip coffee and sleep in expensive hotels for days without authenticity, we are not likely to derive the value intended by the great minds who originally developed the amazing frameworks and systems fo thinking we typically adopt in such strategy sessions, workshops and retreats.
In the session yesterday, we mentioned at least three ways we typically sabotage the process of charting a course for the future:
HiPPO
HiPPO is an acronym for Highest Paid Person's Opinion. In summary it simply means we have to do what the boss says simply because he or she is the boss. He doesn't have to make a case for his opinion, he just has to say it. This kind of decision-making is often acceptable in a culture that is more interested in command-and-control than transformational leadership .
HiPPO also prevails in environments where the concept of open-door policy is itself a mirage. Office partitions are transparent but not people. Smiles are ubiquitous but tainted with hidden venom. The naive staffer who challenges the boss's thinking gets to pay for it down the line.
Vishal Kapoor wrote a very popular article on this expression. You can find it here .
"The tool with which I deliver as CEO is my head and my head is always with me." (paraphrased) - Attributed to Serlom Adedavoh when sharing his thougths on working from home.
Sychophancy
Sychophancy is often the result of a HiPPO decision-making style but not always. Sychophancy could also be the general behaviour among professionals who have learnt that massaging the boss's ego is a recipe for survival. Managers with profound lists of academic and professional qualifications only sit with the boss to confirm everything he or she says. Some might even add "veneration" to it.
"Oh! Sir, that is absolutely profound thinking."
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"Spot on, Sir!"
"I couldn't have said it better..."
"You are always sooo brilliant"
Someone might 'exceed expectations' by adding, "Where was your brain manufactured again? I really need to visit that planet. Superb!"
Apathy
On the other hand, some participants in siuch sessions simply keep mute. It is perceived in such scenarios that saying nothing is the safest approach to survival. Just keep nodding and staring intelligently at each other colleague who dares to speak.
Such apathetic participants would typically air their views in the background or congratulate (or scold) those who choose to air theirs publicly dependling on how much of the waters they stirred. After all, the size of one's monthly salary is not always proportional to their contribution so long as nothing rocks the boat.
Patterns from Industry Frameworks
The point of the previous section is that the natural tilt is to fail to tell the truth. The truth is often hard to swallow and we tend to wait for someone else to do the risky job of belling the cat or telling the emperor he is walking naked. Speaking truth to power is as motivational as telling the dog to fight a tiger.
Several industry frameworks have the concept of doing an AS-IS assessment before charting the course for the future. The assessment of the current state facilitates understanding and like someone said, "you cannot change what you don't understand". Architects may use current state models such as business capability maps to depict the results of such an assessment. Consultants may use questionnaires and interviews to dig deeper. Financial advisers may ask for report. In all of these cases, authenticity is vital for gaining value from the engagement.
"The essence of formulating competitive strategy is relating a company to its environment. Although the relevant environment is very broad, encompassing social as well as economic forces, the key aspect of the firm's environment is the industry or industries in which it competes" - Michael Porter
Wrapping it Up
If you have been around long enough, you would have encountered scenarios in your organization where reputable consulting firms engage your organization and produce profound presentations as the result of their engagement with you. Such results can be referred to as output. Such output is profound in its complexity, design and sometimes its length.
The activities that lead up to preparing such output including interviews, questionnaires, document reviews and so forth can be considered effort. Such efforts are deeply involving if the consultants know what they are doing. The quality of the output is often dependent on the authenticy of the infomation gather during the effort. In many cases, consultants are paid for the effort and output.
Outcomes are more sublime. We may not be able to predict them accurately. So the consulting company bags $100-200K and features your organization as one of their top clients but when you examine the outcomes, they are not aligned with the expectation. In fact, such 100+ page presentations often don't make it past the board or exco in real terms.
We get closer to valuable outcomes when we start with facing our reality at the beginning of the excercise. When we are true to ourselves, each other and our bosses. When our decisions truly become driven by data and framed by rational logic. The strategy tools are valid, how we use them may need fine-tuning.