strategic thinking

WHAT WE KNOW FOR SURE – Part 2

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I posted COVID, STRATEGY, AND WHAT WE KNOW FOR SURE about a week ago. Here are some further comments and observations about the first “known.”

MindPrep Resource Center

Gee, about a year ago, things were simple. Put together a good strategy and ride it into the future. Sweet!

BAM! COVID-19! >>>>> STRATEGY WILL CHANGE (OFTEN?) !

Strategy development follows a predictable cycle. Sense what’s happening in the larger world. Make Sense of the changes and their impacts. Decide on course of action (your strategy). And Act to execute the strategy “fast enough.” And get ready to do it again. These four actions are the basis of the Sense-Response Cycle that we explore at MindPrep Resource Center (www.mindprep.com)

Now, take a look at 2020.

  • Sense: Good grief, the entire business ecosystem is in flux. Boeing and airlines are facing dueling delivery schedules. Restaurants have to deal with social distancing and lockdowns. Universities are moving classes online and students want a tuition reimbursement. Public transportation is in a tailspin while motorcycle companies are facing increased demand. Retailers are abandoning malls. And that’s just what I read in today’s news!
  • Make Sense: Many of the assumptions that “must be true” for a business to succeed are shaky. Stakeholders are in conflict. All of today’s actions will have consequences and many of them are unknown because of the flux in the business environment. And many of the models we’ve used to explain business success are being strained and may no longer apply.
  • Decide: There are a dozen factors that define business strategy and many of them are changing. Tell me, which of the following are solid for your business? (These factors are more fully explained in our workbook How to Turn Strategic Concepts into Actionable Strategy.)
    • Business environment
    • Competitors
    • Customers
    • Offerings
    • Workforce and organization
    • Equipment
    • Facilities and location
    • Infrastructure technology
    • Policies and procedures
    • Infrastructure technology
    • Partners
    • Resources
  • Act: “Back in the day” we used to talk about sustainable competitive advantage. Nothing is sustainable in the era of Covid-19. Get ready to run this cycle again and again.

We just finished the pilot session of a new, hybrid training program, The Pragmatic Strategist. We need to make a few changes and will announce the fall/winter offerings for this program in the coming weeks.

I’ll comment on the rest of these “knowns” in the coming couple of weeks. What would you add to our list? Seriously, what would you add?

By the way, I love to write. But I wonder if anyone is reading and getting anything of value. I’d love to hear from you if you have any comments at all.

Stay safe. The pandemic is real.

COVID, STRATEGY, AND WHAT WE KNOW FOR SURE

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MindPrep Resource Center

Gee, about a year ago, things were simple. Put together a good strategy and ride it into the future. Sweet!

BAM! COVID-19!

Since then every consulting firm, every journal, every magazine has been trying to explain “the new normal.” Unfortunately, there is no data from the future, so we are all guessing. Some better than others, but we are all guessing.

As we looked into our not-so-crystal ball there were a few things we could see for sure. So, excuse me for telling you the obvious, but it’s the only place for many businesses to start. Here are five things we know “for sure.”

  • Strategy will change and will change often. Customer needs and wants, supply chain capabilities, and existing and new competitors are all in flux.
  • Financial pressures will increase. Sorry Wall Street, Main Street is hurting and hurting BAD!
  • Speed and agility will be more important than ever. Since strategy will be hard to pin down, making strategy real will be a game of speed and quick pivots.
  • Complex problems will proliferate. All stakeholders are involved in finding the new normal and there are plenty of competing needs and wants. System complexity is increasing and “simple” problems seen only a few years ago have become nastier than ever.
  • We must prepare for a new normal (whatever it is). “Chance favors a prepared mind” and we have too few people who have had the time to prepare their minds. Why? Because we have been chasing efficiency for decades and have driven “thinking time” out of our businesses. Pity us.

We will be commenting on all five of these knowns in the coming couple of weeks. What would you add to our list? Seriously, what would you add?

Want the truth? Think like …

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Source: VisualHunt

False news! Fake news! Opinion! Celebrity as expert! Forget science! Here’s the latest conspiracy news! Journalists lie! Politicians lie! “I read it on the internet!” “That’s just spin!” China (or Russia) (or Iran) is hacking our news and …….

Yowzah! Finding the truth used to be easy.

“Back in the day” we had Walter Cronkite, the “most trusted man in America.”  Later, we thought the internet would make it easy to find the truth because so many people could “fact check.” Wow were we wrong! Seeking truth is harder than ever before because so many people / organizations / governments want to mislead us.

So, for the sake of public welfare I’d like to offer some suggestions to make your work easier. Or, if not easier, maybe a bit more organized.

Maybe you should think like …

Let’s get out of the world of brainiacs and into the world of real people doing practical things to find “the truth.” I suggest that we can learn truth-seeking from some of the following people.

You might want to think like …..

  • A research librarian and find primary sources. Retweets and opinion pieces are always filtered news. Believe them at your peril. If you want the truth you will have to work and dig deeper. Otherwise, you will find yourself living in an echo chamber. Think of how you developed your personal stance on global warming. Do you know the facts or are your repeating someone’s filtered view?
  • A criminal detective and look for the motive behind what has been presented. A given set of facts will certainly be spun differently by Fox News and CNN. Who has the truth? Probably neither because they have worked to make facts fit their agenda. You need multiple points of view before you can be sure of the real story. Are tariffs good or bad? The answer is “it depends.” The truth is not simple.
  • An historian and consider the context within which the “news” is happening. If you don’t consider the larger context you will be subject to your own biases (and all of us have biases). Sorry, but social media almost never provide the big picture. You have to find it yourself. We’ve had troops in Afghanistan for a long time and we won’t know the real impact for decades to come. The history is ongoing.
  • A medical diagnostician and prepare a differential diagnosis to consider how facts fit within different potential causes. Few things are as simple as they seem. To quote a phrase from decades ago “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” You will find truth in the causes triggering the events. White nationalism is abhorrent, so why is it on the rise (or is it)? 
  • An art detective and look for the “style and brushstrokes” of the facts being presented and decide if you are dealing with the truth or not.  (This is actually pretty hard because you have to have a level of expertise to even know what to look for.) For example, what do you really know about socialism in the United States in the 21st century? It’s an emotional-laden word. Can you explain it to a ten-year old?

OK, your turn

I’d appreciate your input on how you go about finding the truth in today’s confusing and misleading world. Responses are needed. Thanks.

Planning in a Wicked World

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No, this is not a commentary on morality. It’s the beginning of a weekly series on structure and decision making in a world without precedent. If you want to receive the series via email please go to www.mindprep.com and signup for our newsletter.

First, some simple explanations.

It destroyed our “kind” environment
  • “Kind” environments have repeating patterns and feedback is accurate and rapid. Therefore, decision making can often improve with added experience. You can learn “the rules of the game” and become an expert by developing expert intuition. Examples of people in this environment range from chess masters to golf professionals to fighting suburban house fires to business strategists in 2019.
  • “Wicked” environments exist where the rules of the game are often unclear, feedback is spotty at best, and patterns are lacking or not obvious. Expertise-based thinking may be helpful or, more likely, will lead you astray because it is based on a past that no longer exists (and will likely not return). Planning and decision making in this environment is anything but routine and intuition must be challenged. This is the environment we are living in right now with the pandemic. The “new normal” is and will be very wicked.

Wicked! Now what?

So, what do we know for sure about operating in a wicked environment? Here are a few thoughts.

  • Looking at this from a military perspective, it’s analogous to being caught in an ambush. Standing still is not an option. You must move, but your boss is not in any position to tell you if that move is left, right, forward, or back. The managers, those closest to the action, will be expected to act.
  • How can we reopen business? Well, since your experience is based on past patterns, you will have to think outside your experience. You will have to consider more points of view or, better yet, find a cross-function group of like souls to help you. Think for a moment about the government’s problem of opening the economy. We need doctors, epidemiologists, business leaders, legislators, social scientists, and others to come together and think outside of their expertise to create a reasonable plan.
  • We have to think critically about the future and be prepared to decide and act. This means that we must sense the signals of tomorrow, make sense of these signals, decide on a course of action, and then act on these decisions faster than ever before. We refer to these four responsibilities as the Sense-Response Cycle™.
  • All of us will make mistakes because none of us have been through this before. All of us are learning and we will have to run the Sense-Response Cycle faster than we want. The key is to develop the will and methods to learn from our mistakes and move forward quickly.

What’s next?

As mentioned above, this is the beginning of a weekly series focused on planning and decision making, given the reality of living in a wicked world.

We’re just trying to help you think through this mess. Please help us by engaging us with your comments and questions.

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