Should strategy be correct?

Harry Beck's 1933 map of London's Underground is wildly inaccurate - it bears little relation to the geography of London. It is, genuinely, a lie. Yet it swiftly became - and still is - the most useful tool for navigating London. Today, I'm writing about good strategy sometimes being similarly unreal.

There are two strong cultural assumptions about strategy:

1. Strategy as truth - this is an accurate factual description of our organisation, and what it's going to do
2. Strategy as rational - this is a defensible construct, withstanding all forms of critique by virtue of data, process, consultation

I think these are limiting assumptions, stemming from 18thC enlightenment ideas of empiricism and control. Greater strategy follows from embracing untruth.

In strategy, theory doesn't precisely match practice

There's a world of strategy theories, each with its own definition and reasoning to be The One. I have some I'm more fond of than others. But it doesn't actually matter, because none of them happen like that.

After years of training as a scientist, I encountered the sociology of science, particularly the work of Collins and Pinch, The Golem: What You Should Know about Science. By studying what scientists actually do (talk, write grant applications, quarrel with each other) not how they self-describe (advance knowledge through rational engagement with reality), they uncovered a different story - and in the process annoyed a fair few scientists.

The reality of strategic work is not following an abstract playbook of Mintzberg, Collins or Porter. It's listening, talking, reading, thinking, influencing. It occurs in the messy reality of organisational dynamics, politics and incomplete information. And it only impacts the world when it is taken up by people; when it is applied and used. Strategy is unhelpful as a noun and essential as a verb.

Strategy's original guiding star

Julia Sloan's book Learning to Think Strategically - three verbs, no nouns ?? - begins with a great historical survey of strategy, and describes how Strategos has come down to us translated as military leader. But, she argues, the true meaning was broader: a leader responsible for "the science and art" of the "political, economic, psychological and military". The archetype was likened to the helmsman on a seafaring vessel sailing the ocean while relying on their map.

This resonates with me because, well, I love maps. Today we think of maps as representations of reality. They aren't, of course, as the West Wing portrayed beautifully. The Greeks knew that maps were always inadequate representations. The leader must constantly annotate and add to the map. If one of the fleet hit a reef; we draw that onto the chart. If a trade emissary took months to traverse the landscape; we draw the hindering mountain range onto the map.

Nothing is to scale, nothing is drawn as 'real' - it is a tool to guide the journey. It's for humans to use. The map isn't the territory. The journey isn't a line.

Generations of systematising thinking, from the military to science to management theory, have overwritten this original idea, and persuaded us that mapping out reality with perfect fidelity, and choosing one straight line across it, is the essence of strategy: this is my playing field, this is my game, and this is how i shall win.

To the extent that it has worked, I think it has worked mainly by force; strength (capital, armies) allows for reality to be shaped this way. Whether the map shows a mountain or not doesn't matter: dynamiting a tunnel will make it irrelevant.

When strategy has been believed to be a perfect map, but hasn't worked, it's been spectacularly wrong. The strategy in kodachrome showed the nice bright colours and the greens of summer, made the board think all the world was a sunny day. But Kodak crashed and not even Paul Simon's best song could save it.

The rise of VUCA and cynefin mean a return to Strategos

Acronyms abound, as the oversimplifications break down in contact with today's reality. Arguing distinctions between VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity), TUNA (turbulent, uncertain, novel, ambiguous) and BANI (brittle, anxious, non-linear, incomprehensible) feel solipsistic - what's useful is seeing how they all map to the cynefin model:

Our 20thC models of Strategy sit on the right, as broadly derived from Napoleonic and Fordian Command-and-Control. Strategy has been about gathering information about the world, and then working to group it into clusters of meaning to which we can respond. If it's legible, it's Best Practice. If its harder to parse, then it's Good Practice. Easily summarised, backed up with evidence, easy to apply: who could argue with either of these?

Reality argues.

In VUCA times, we must also operate on the left. What do Chaotic and Complex have in common? Their world is not immediately legible. So our strategy work must be like the Greek at the helm. We need to look to the horizon and sail through the waters in order to sense what is there. Only then can we chart the route, and adapt.

What does this mean in practice?

The Greek leader at the helm was

• in the journey: get out of the office and sense reality as it is.
• right next to the sailors: listening directly beats reading dispatches
• connecting far and near: get your eyes on the horizon and annotate the strategy as you go
• steering while charting: Strategising and doing are intertwined
• moving at the pace of the vessel: to go far, go together
• being useful, not abstract: strategy that's legible and useful beats theory
• applying course corrections instantly: respond at the pace of the environment, not the slowest member of a committee

The irrational strategy

Our attachment to strategy-as-reality is also shaped by assumptions of defensibility. A strategy must be proven to be right, because otherwise any problems faced are the fault of the Directors who didn't ensure Great Strategy. But Great Strategy is a technocratic illusion and is also like Moby Dick's White Whale - never to be caught.

When I led development of the Children's Gallery at Melbourne Museum, we had a specialist 'Playground Auditor' who advised how to support 'risky play' with tolerable danger. He spoke of the growing understanding that danger is necessary for child development; an environment in which children can learn psychomotor skills requires it to be a little unsafe. As a society, we accept that every now and again, a child will hurt themselves - otherwise, we'll have adults that can't walk down stairs.

So my provocation is: what if we allowed strategies to be irrational and indefensible - if we were more relaxed about having no defence against critique when strategies fail? After all, we have the equivalent of first-aiders on hand: leaders who can see the strategic failure, make a course correction, accelerate getting back on a good track. We also have creative staff who might see the potential in a loose-fitting strategy, and do their best work beyond the straitjacket.

What would it be like to ask of a strategy:

• does it help us? rather than can you prove it is correct?
• does it contain tools for its own re-writing? rather than is it so perfect we won't look at it for another three years?
• can we begin an initiative, and discover if we are right? rather than prove it'll work before we begin.
• can we take a few steps on just a hunch? rather than requiring a business case measured against rigid strategy?
• what do our people need so they can thrive? rather than what do the Board need to feel risk has been sufficiently reduced?

There is a middle ground between the 'move fast and break things' of 2010s tech bro culture and the 'move slow and build things' of 2020s wholistic sustainable leadership. 'Move and discover things'.

To go back to our Greek Strategos: it was only through the journey that discovery was made. The map was known to be incomplete and requiring additions. The strategist must sail the ship with the sketch map they have today, not wait for the perfect GPS.

If strategy is realy a dynamic conversation between Board and Executive, remade as the ship glides through the water, then the strategy must be a sketch. Something loose enough to be remade; diffident enough to invite critique. A chart a leader can re-draw.

Fin

One of my favourite artworks of all time! At the British Library exhibition in 2010, I spent about 45 minutes gazing at Stephen Walter's The Island (2008). His conception of London as an island, with deeply detailed and rich local knowledge covering every millimetre of the giant work. This map shows Londoners who they are. Every place I'd lived had some tiny detail that only a local would know: the words 'rough on match day' on a street corner and I knew the pub's name.

Would that every strategy could offer such recognition for its people.

That's it for another bi-week.

Please do throw a 'like' or a comment into my so i can sense-respond with these newsletters to be more interesting / relevant / useful / entertaining...

Until then, may the wind be at your back and your strategies mapped well enough to find port.

Paul