Changing direction slows you down

Intro

The only thing you know for certain about your strategy is that’s it’s going to be wrong. Because at some point from tomorrow, something will change, forcing you to change course. But what makes a lot of organisations I work with less responsive than they think they are, is that changing course requires a lot more prep than just turning the wheel when you want to go.

What's the issue?

1. Changing direction takes several steps, of all which represent an impressively daunting basket of skills.

2. Here’s a high-level breakdown:

• You have to know that you have to change. And unless it’s one of those moments where you’re sideswiped by an iceberg, the need or opportunity for change is not always obvious – especially if you’re head-down-bum-up on daily operations. So you have to be actively looking. Everywhere, all the time.

• You have to see what you’re looking at objectively. Your competitors and customers won’t care about the twisted rationale your cognitive bias concocts to help you see the world as you’d prefer it to be.

• You have to admit to yourself and others that this carefully chosen course on which you supported marshalling the organisation’s resources is now not the best course of action. And that makes it feel like you have to admit you were wrong (which is of course wrong).

• You may have to face the fact that the best course is one that not only requires new skills, but also renders cherished skills obsolete. And that takes courage. ‘What got you here won’t get you there’ – Marshall Goldsmith.

It’s hard enough to convince yourself of all this. But strategy is a team sport, and if there’s one thing harder than aligning everyone, it’s realigning them. ‘Wait, so you got us to bet the farm on doing this, and now you’re saying we need to do stop doing this, and do that instead?’

3. As any Americas Cup crew member will tell you, changing direction slows you down. And that’s happening just at the very moment the world is accelerating away from you. So you need a cool head to be able to choose losing momentum for a moment over losing sight of your vision. You need to able to act quickly to take the pain of slowing down early to make the most of the situation as soon as possible.

All this, just to be able to turn the wheel.

Consider this

Strategy prepares the assets on your balance sheet for change. But what prepares your people? It takes time, it requires rare skills and the stakes are high – actually, the highest. And yet you simply throw your senior leaders into a room for a day and expect them to figure out what game you’re in and how you’re going to win.

Look at the list above: curiosity, objectivity, critical thinking, vulnerability, the ability to learn, to unlearn, courage, the ability to influence, constructive conflict and a sense of urgency. Your strategy is only going to be as good as your teams' willingness and ability to implement it. So unless your senior team are already high performing in all these areas, think about strategy as a skill (I was going to call that SaaS, but that’s been taken...).

The concept of agile strategy is that you plan ahead but not too far ahead. (N.B. If you’re building nuclear reactors ‘not too far ahead’ might be a bit different from software development). And then you iterate as you go, making lots of little changes that are less disruptive and keep you closer to the action.

But the more often you’re prepared to change course, the more often you need intel. In fact you need it all the time. Your organisation needs to be in reconnaissance mode all the time, which is a challenge because you’re in ‘getting stuff done’ mode all the time already. Something’s going to have to give.

Try this

1. Commit to a leadership development strategy that prepares your leaders to be strategists.

2. Include in your business strategy a plan for resources and processes that will enable you to develop and iterate a high-quality strategy.