A Dozen Realities — updated
When Oliver Cummings and I created the Making Strategy Real workshop for MindPrep Resource Center (www.mindprep.com) we used a dozen “known truths” to guide our design.
Now the question is whether these pre-pandemic truths need to be modified for a post-pandemic world. Here are some initial thoughts:
| 2019 | 2021 |
| The business environment is always evolving. | Wow! The pandemic changed regular industry evolution into creative destruction in a few weeks. The world is different! |
| Respond fast enough — or become irrelevant. | Some companies will not survive; the ones that do will have to change fast. |
| You may not set strategy, but you must influence it. | Middle managers will be more involved than ever in the creation of functional and company strategy. |
| You can’t implement fluff. | Leaders will have to stress clarity in their messages about strategy. The workforce won’t have the time to “figure it out.” |
| Change always ripples. | True more so than ever. Many things will be changing at once and interrelationship management will determine success. |
| CEOs don’t run projects – you do. | Managers will continue to “make it happen” and decision making will have to move closer to the point of action. |
| Resources are limited and trade-offs always exist. | Many organizations will be severely resource-constrained and will have to practice strategic-triage. |
| Strategy is just ideas until managers make it happen. | This is a timeless truth. Thinking is nice, but execution is essential. Managers execute. |
| Projects make strategy happen. | Great project leadership skills will be needed more than ever. This is a missing skill-set in too many organizations. |
| Intention and execution need to balance. | Great plans without the ability to execute effectively will doom many struggling companies. |
| Stuff happens! | We were not ready for COVID-19. What makes us think that there won’t be more surprises? We need to build anticipatory skills. |
| Use the A-Team ….. or else …. | Always true and even more so as we come out of the crisis. Expertise, not opinion, will help us intercept the future. |
Consider the “known truths” for your organization. Maybe they need to be examined and reconsidered.
Best wishes for 2021.
Photo credit: Guido Klumpe on VisualHunt.com / CC BY-NC-SA
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