Visionjuice - STRATEGY

Strategy is about herding cats, not sheep.

You can never know the future yet businesses believe that to succeed they must be able to foretell it to control themselves and the world they occupy. This leads to the demand for detailing what we do and what we are planning to do in order to produce the illusion of control. Many people feel that they are spending more time on measuring and planning what they do than on doing it. Strategy is not about knowing the future. It is about stories and direction. It is about stories because stories are powerful. People communicate their triumphs and failures, their hopes and fears and even their intentions through stories. No strategic plan, no balance sheet and no set of objectives ever communicated direction as well as a story. It is about direction because life is about trade-offs. Direction gives us the clarity to know what to do and, more importantly, what not to do. There are an infinite number of paths an individual or organisation can take at any point in time. Clear direction rules out the vast majority of these paths. We cannot foresee the outcome of our actions and we cannot control our organisations’ development. We cannot have certainty or agreement about the future. It would, therefore, be foolish to apply controls that could only ever be effective in a world of certainty and agreement. Yet this is exactly what many strategies do. In the reality of this complex world, scenarios are a useful tool because they allow us to tell stories about an unknowable future. We can tell a variety of stories and we can discuss the path we would choose to take through a story. We can then look at the success of this path through conflicting stories. Strategy is not about reducing uncertainty but about developing ways of living with it. The only successful strategy we can apply is to be creative and flexible. Creative, flexible organisations are those that give a clear sense of direction but exercise very little low-level control. A successful strategy for such an organisation would be a very clear, yet very broad objective and some indication of what will be done or not done in order to achieve that objective. It would not be detailed measures and direction at a low level. Strategy is about creating a desired future, not reacting to an expected one. Businesses are a mess. They do not follow the carefully crafted path that has been planned for them even if the figures are massaged to make it look as though they have. An effective strategy process would understand this mess and give it direction but not attempt to take control. So that is why strategy is about herding cats, not sheep To contact us click here.