Strategic Planning Analogy #380: Where Should Strategic Planning Report?

THE STORY
Baking soda has an interesting quality. It will absorb the odors around it. After awhile, the baking soda will smell like the odor of its environment. Then it is no longer useful for baking.

THE ANALOGY
Strategic planning departments can be like baking soda. Just as baking soda can take on the odor of its environment, planning departments can take on the culture of their location within the organization.

For example, if you place a strategic planning department within the finance department, it will tend to take on a lot of the characteristics of finance. Planning will tend to be more data driven and concern itself more with implications to the income statement and balance sheet. Strategies will more likely be framed in terms of asset allocation and in the buying and selling of pieces of the portfolio.

If you place the strategy department somewhere else, that culture and orientation will move in bit of a different direction. Therefore, if you want the proper “odor” for your strategic planning department, it is important to consider where you place it within the organization.

THE PRINCIPLE
The principle here is that there is no law forcing a company to place a strategic planning department into a particular silo in your organization. In theory, it can go almost anywhere. So, even though most businesses have Strategic Planning reporting either directly to the CEO or into the Finance Department, you have other options.

Strategists are supposed to think outside the box, so I am going to do that with the idea of where to locate Strategic Planning. Why can’t it report somewhere else?

Marketing
Why couldn’t Strategic Planning report into marketing? After all, the chief strategist and the chief marketing officer have much in common. Both are concerned with the long-term strength of the brand/company. Strategic positioning is a lot like Brand positioning.

A good strategy needs to provide a superior solution for a consumer segment. That sounds a lot like marketing, too. Marketers usually know the customers better than anyone else, so a strategy lead by marketing would probably be consumer centric and appropriate for the marketplace.

One of the major complaints against many current strategic planning programs is that the plan is poorly communicated throughout the organization. I bet that if marketers ran strategic planning, the communication issue would be less of a problem. They’re good at communications.

I know of a retailer who recently conducted a major strategic reanalysis of the company. It was run by the marketing department and I think the process went very well.

Of course, there would also be some issues if strategic planning reported into marketing. Marketers are not known as being the most astute when it comes to containing costs. Financial issues tend not to be at the top of their priority list. So the plans might lack some of the financial or risk-based rigor which comes from a finance department.

In addition, marketers do not always understand all the nuances of the business model. As a result, they may underestimate the ramifications of their strategy on the capabilities of the organization. In other words, they might create a great strategy which is a bit out of touch with what the company can accomplish.

Human Resources
Why couldn’t Strategic Planning report into human resources? Lots of CEOs say that their people are their most important asset. Therefore, why not place strategy in the hands of those managing the most important asset?

Many of the complaints against how strategy is currently done talk about issues like mishandling of corporate culture, improper alignment, poor organizational structure, and poor integration of people after a merger. Aren’t these the types of things human resource departments are supposed to be good at? They could help solve all these issues.

Because human resources is not closely tied to the status quo of operations, they may be better able to push innovative, out of the box solutions (this could also apply to marketing).

I’d bet that if strategic planning reported to human resources, the plans would be better at getting alignment between people, functions and strategic issues. There would probably be more thought given to how to organize to get the strategy accomplished more efficiently and effectively.

I know of a company where the chief advocate of strategy came from human resources. It can be done.

The down side to human resources is that although they are good with processes, they are not always the best at knowing how to get business results. In other words, they may create a great “means” for doing strategy, but not have a great “end” in terms of what strategy to do.

R&D
How about having strategic planning report into research and development? Both areas are involved in research. Both areas are looking out long term. Both areas are looking for the next big thing. I think there is even a cultural fit, since strategists and R&D people both tend to be a bit nerdy.

If you want to build a plan around the art of the possible, the R&D folks are best suited for knowing what is possible. If you want innovation in your planning, this could be a great place to be.

And it also works in the opposite direction. If the strategists are closely tied to R&D, they will make sure that the R&D efforts are focused on what is needed to make the strategy a reality.

The down side is that although this approach could create some of the best ideas, it may not be the best place to create the game plan to get the rest of the company on board. It could be great on strategy conception, but not strategy implementation.

Operations
How about having strategy report into operations? Your operations people understand the details of how things get done. One of the biggest complaints about strategy is in the poor handoff from idea to implementation. If you put the responsibility for strategy in the hands of the implementers, you stand a better chance of getting it implemented. Operators would be able to easily reject ideas which are disconnected from the strength and skill-sets of the organization, because the operators are a large part of that skill-set.

Strategic objectives will probably be very realistic and doable, because it is run by the people who know how to do what needs to get done. And they will be more inclined to do it, because they would have a larger vested interest in the plan if it reported to them.

Of course, the down side is that operators are highly tied to the status quo. They will tend to resist radical changes which put their operations at risk. Your plans will tend to create only incremental improvements to the status quo. That may not be enough.

SUMMARY
The point I’m trying to make here is that nobody has a monopoly on everything needed to create and implement great strategy. Every area in the organization has unique skills and insights which are beneficial. In addition, every area in the organization has blind spots preventing them from seeing the whole picture. Therefore, narrowly slotting strategic planning into any one department is probably a mistake (even if put in finance). You are not getting the richness of all the flavors the company has to offer.

For strategic planning to work best, it needs to be owned by everybody. That way, you get the unique insights of each area, while also having everyone’s blind spot covered by another area for whom that is not a blind spot.

SUGGESTIONS
So how do we accomplish this? One way is by rotating people through strategic planning. Strategic planning departments would benefit from having people from finance, marketing, human resources, R&D and operations rotate into the area for awhile. If your company is large enough, I would suggest that strategy departments have a blend of both strategy professionals and rotating experts from all these areas.

I used to run a strategy department which did this, and I thought it worked well in many ways. The strategy formation was better, because there were broader insights from all these areas of expertise. The strategy implementation was better because there were stronger ties and greater credibility with the ones outside the strategy department who have to get the work done. And once someone in rotation went back to their old part of the organization, they took a greater strategic orientation to that department.

Even if you do not rotate people through the department, you can still get some of the benefits by opening up more opportunities for the teams of strategy and elsewhere to work together throughout the year. Get strategists on the committees where decisions are being made on a regular basis.

If strategy people are hidden away for most of the year and are only exposed to the rest of the organization at some annual off-site planning meeting, then you are missing all this richness.

FINAL THOUGHTS
I’m not sure what victory smells like, but I do know that victory is more likely if you absorb the rich aromas of the entire organization.

Strategic Planning Analogy #354: Strength in Diversity

THE STORY
Last week I was on vacation. One of the places I visited was the Niobrara Buffalo and Elk Wildlife Refuge near Valentine, Nebraska. The wildlife refuge was located at the intersection of four distinctly different ecosystems. From the west came the Rocky Mountain pine forest, from the south were the sparse sandhills of the Great Plains, from the north came the harsh environment of the Dakota Blackhills, and from the east were the lush deciduous forests. All four ecosystems comingled within the nature preserve. It was beautiful.

The wildlife refuge claimed that being on the edge of multiple ecosystems creates an ideal environment for animals. First of all, the variety of ecosystems brings a variety of eating options. There is more diversity both in terms of plants and other animals to eat. This makes it easier to find nourishment all year long, regardless of the changing climate conditions.

Second, this ecological diversity creates a variety of habitats for the animals. Depending on the time of day, time of year, and type of activity, different habitats are more desirable than others. By being in an area with multiple habitats, the animals can be in the optimal place at the right time.

Unfortunately, at the time of year I was at the refuge, the Elk and Buffalo were hiding in a portion of the property which was off-limits to humans. But I did get to enjoy the beauty of the ecosystems and see a waterfall up close. And although I did not get to see a buffalo, I did get to eat a buffalo burger (from commercially grown buffalos, not the nature refuge).

THE ANALOGY
Strategic planning tries to find places where businesses can be strong and prosper. According to this nature refuge, animals get stronger and more prosperous when they live in an area of diversity. In many ways, I think this fact also applies to businesses.

Just as there is strength in diversity for wildlife, there is strength in diversity for businesses. Is your planning taking advantage of the richness to be found in diversity?

THE PRINCIPLE
In many of my prior blogs, I have spoken of the power of focus. In fact, it is almost impossible to succeed in business if you are not focused. Strategies are critical in that they point to where a firm should focus its efforts.

However, being focused should not be confused with being narrow-minded. Almost a century ago, Henry Ford had great initial success by mass producing the simple Model-T automobile, which only came in the color black. By narrow-mindedly sticking to this single product for far too long, the Ford Motor Company almost went bankrupt, because the market had shifted to nicer cars in more colors. Ford had to diversify its offering in order to survive. Kodak narrowly focused far too long on analog photography and missed virtually all the growth in digital imaging. Its fortunes faded along with the fading of its narrow focus.

As we can see from nature, there is power in diversity. The challenge for strategic planning is to apply the benefits of diversity without losing the benefit of focus.

The wildlife refuge saw two benefits from diversity: habitats and nourishment. We will now apply those two areas to strategic planning to show how to blend diversity with focus.

1. Diversity of Habitat = Diversity of Backgrounds (Process)
Just as animals live in many different places, people live in many different places. There is a great diversity in people depending upon the backgrounds of where they come from. Each background provides a unique perspective on the world, a perspective which is colored by the experiences that background provides.

One of the goals of the strategic planning process is to provide an understanding of the marketplace in which a company competes. This understanding is richer when developed with a diverse group of people.

To paraphrase Colin Powell, former US Secretary of State and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, if your team is made up of people who think just like you, then most of you are redundant. How much redundancy is there in the people involved in your strategic planning process? Do they all tend to be about the same age, same gender, same race, from the same country, having similar incomes, with the same educational background? Does your group include any people who live more on the edges of society?

If you want a rich understanding of the world, it helps to have a rich variety of backgrounds in the people who are building that understanding. Multiple perspectives and points of view will help you to avoid blind spots in your analysis. As the market shifts, you will be better able to both detect the shift and adapt to it, because you will already understand that perspective. If your team can only see the world “as it used to be”, you will fall into the obsolescence traps we saw earlier with Henry Ford and Kodak.

Consider carefully the mix of people you place into the planning process, to ensure diversity of perspective. It should not just be a few senior executives. In addition to broadening the diversity of employees in the process, one could also consider including suppliers and customers in the process.

During the process, don’t hide in the corporate office. Get out into the various habitats where your product is used. See what’s going on at the point of sale. See what’s going on in places where you are both successful and not successful. Enrich your perspective.

The diversity of animal habitats allow the animals to be in the right place at the right time. The diversity of thought and perspective allow your business to be in the right place at the right time.

Diversity of thought does not mean randomness of action. Focus is not thrown away. A company still needs to focus. But that focus will be more effective if you have a broader understanding of the environmental context surrounding that focus. It allows you to truly optimize your focused efforts, because you truly see the world as it really is—in all of its diversity.

2. Diversity of Nourishment = Diversity of Revenue Sources (Outcome)
Animals are nourished by food. Businesses are nourished by sales income, or revenue. Animals die without food. Businesses die without income.

Diversity of food sources benefit animals. A diversity of revenue sources benefit businesses. As the old saying goes, if all of your eggs are in one basket, you lose everything if you drop that basket. It is better to diversify that revenue source into multiple baskets.

There are two ways to diversify one’s revenues. First, you can diversify your customer base. For example, if you only sold to new construction businesses, you were in severe trouble when the recent great recession virtually wiped out new construction. Had you also sold to other customers who were less severely hit by the recession (like refurbishers of old construction), you would have had a stronger base of revenue.

Second, you can diversify your product offering. By focusing too much on analog imaging products, Kodak missed the benefits which they could have gotten by diversifying faster and more aggressively into digital imaging products.

This diversity does not mean you should try to sell anything to anybody. You still need focus.

Here are two examples of how to diversify your revenue sources while still maintaining a focus.

Bausch and Lomb is focused on helping people have superior eyesight. Yet, within that focus they have diversified their product offering to include corrective lenses, eye surgery devices, eye nutrition products, eye care products, and so on. No matter which way the market moves in terms of superior eyesight, Bausch and Lomb is ready. They won’t become obsolete when a particular approach to eye care becomes obsolete, because Bausch and Lomb has a diverse enough offering to be able to shift with the times. By focusing on the solution (superior eyesight) rather than a single product to get there, they have strengthened their ability to survive and be nourished with sales for a long time.

3M focuses on particular technologies. In particular, they tend to focus on technologies in a handful of areas, like adhesives, abrasives, and substrates. However, once they master a technology, they try to sell it to as many customer bases as possible. For example, 3M is the master of the technology behind adhesive tape. This technology is applied to as many markets as possible, such as the consumer market (Scotch Tape), the home improvement market (masking tape), the medical market (tape for bandages), the security market (reflective tape), and so on. There is still a focus (on technology), but a richness in revenue by applying that technology to as many diverse customer bases as makes sense.

SUMMARY
Although focus is still essential for strategic success, that focus is made more powerful when properly blended with diversity. The first type of diversity is the diversity of thought used in the strategic planning process. The more perspectives you bring to examining your area of focus, the less likely you will miss opportunities within that focus. The second type of diversity is diversity of revenue sources. By sticking to your area of focus, you can still improve revenues by applying that focus to a broader base of products or customers.

FINAL THOUGHTS
In the Buffalo and Elk Wildlife Refuge, the Buffalo did not try to become elk and the elk did not try to become buffalo. They stuck to the essential focus of who they were as animals. Yet at the same time, they prospered by exploiting the diversity of the multiple ecosystems around them. You should do the same.

Analogy #179: Taking it to the Max

THE STORY
Back in the 1920’s there was a person named Max who immigrated to the United States from Poland. In 1929, just prior to the Great Depression, Max opened a grocery store in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

That was a tough time to open a new business, but because he was a very efficient operator who knew how to please the customer, he survived the Depression. He did well enough to eventually build up a chain of 48 supermarkets in Wisconsin, before selling the business in 1970.

Along the way, the story goes that one day Max went out to buy some clothing. He went to the available department stores in Milwaukee and did not like the experience. Max came to the conclusion that the only way he would ever get to patronize a Department Store to his liking would be if he built his own. So he did, opening his first department store in 1962.

Max didn’t know much about department stores or fashion, but he did know how to build successful supermarkets. He applied those supermarket principles to his department store. He put in centralized checkouts. He put in efficient and easy to shop fixtures in an easy to navigate “racetrack” format. He emphasized extreme efficiency in operations and made sure he had depth of inventory in the most wanted brands. Finally, Max took the supermarket emphasis of low prices to his department store. He could afford the low prices because of the efficiencies he applied from his supermarket heritage.

At the time, this was all Department Store heresy. Nobody in the industry did things that way. But since Max was not from the department store industry, he did not see it as heresy. He simply saw it as the type of store he would like to shop in.

He only built a few of these department stores, because he was more interested in running supermarkets. However, by the mid-1980s, the management of the Department Stores group felt they were sitting on a powerful concept. Therefore, they started ramping up expansion. They took the department stores public in 1992 and have had quite a good run.

By the way, Max’s last name was Kohl, and the department store chain he started in 1962 was called Kohl’s Department Stores. There are now nearly 1,000 of these stores in operation, and sales for fiscal 2007 were $16.5 billion.

THE ANALOGY
There’s an old saying that most new innovation comes from outside the industry. That was certainly the case for Max Kohl. It took an outsider—a supermarket man—to show the department store “experts” a new way to do department stores.

This happens in all types of industries. The inbreeding of executives and the lack of fresh insight causes the insiders to become blind to new ways of doing business. The “old ways” become the “only ways” of looking at the world.

In the long run, this can be shortsighted. Innovation is the lifeblood of growth. Innovation usually requires new approaches to the business. Outsiders, who aren’t wedded to the old ways, tend to embrace more options and different approaches. As a result, new businesses like Kohl’s, replace old established businesses like the May Department Stores.

If you don’t want your business to be replaced by an outsider, then you need to start thinking more like an outsider.

THE PRINCIPLE
The principle here has to do with having a fresh set of eyes. Being around young children can be very entertaining, because the see the world with a fresh set of eyes. Everything is new and wonderful to them, and they come up with some of the craziest ideas.

Businesses also need fresh sets of eyes—people who are not wedded to the ways of the past. These are people who have not been around long enough to have bought into to the idea that the “standard operating procedures” are the only way to get things done. Like children, they ask “Why can’t we do this differently?”

In the department store industry, most of the insiders are “fashion” people. They approach problems from a strong sense of fashion and a keen eye for style. Max Kohl was a supermarket guy who approached problems from a strong sense of efficiency and an eye for value. By looking at the industry from this different perspective, he developed a different solution.

Even today, his legacy lives on. Kohl’s department stores tend to have an operating cost structure which is about half that of many of its competitors (as a % of sales). This allows them to provide superior and still be very profitable.

Not too long ago, I was talking to the President of a Department Store brand. He had worked in the industry for many decades. I suggested that he might be better off if he changed his store design around a bit. He looked at me condescendingly and said something like this,

“Gerald, I know you’re trying to help, but you don’t know this industry as well as I do. I’ve been doing this a long time, and let me tell you, that is not how it is done. People expect a department store to look a certain way and they will not accept change.”

Well, it’s true that I haven’t been in the department store industry as long as him. But it is also true that my experience with supermarkets, supercenters, big box retailers and discount stores gives me a fresh set of eyes that can borrow from these other related businesses and apply them in a fresh way to his business.

After he made his comment that people expect things a certain way and will not change, I started thinking about the outsiders who have been extremely successful in reinventing the way people shop for department store goods. In addition to the Kohl’s example, there is DSW, who successfully reinvented the way people shop for department store quality shoes. You can read about DSW's fresh approach in their IPO document.

If the old ways are so good, then why isn’t Sears doing any better than it is? It hasn’t changed much in decades, sticking to the old ways of running a department store. The old ways are causing it to lose market share. Yes, the new owner, Eddie Lampert, has a fresh set of eyes, but everyone is still waiting for a fresh set of ideas.

This is not to say that you want a company which only has fresh sets of eyes. You need a mix—people who have experience in the industry and understand its subtle nuances, as well as industry newbies who bring different experiences to the problems. Kohl’s really did not start to grow rapidly until it got a good blend of people into the mix. The key is diversity—diversity in age, background, experiences, and so on.

A friend of mine once interviewed at a major international retailer. When he got back from the interview, he said that everyone he interviewed with seemed like a clone of everyone else he interviewed. They were of the same gender, the same general age, had an MBA from one of the same small number of universities, and had all previously worked at the same consulting company.

Unfortunately for my friend, he was of a different gender, a different age, had an MBA from a different school and had never worked for that consulting company. As a result, he did not get the job.

This is so sad, because that company would have been better off with a more diverse employee base, with eyes that see problems from many fresh perspectives. To quote former general and US Joint Chief of Staff Colin Powell, “If you surround yourself with people who think like you, then at least one of you is redundant.”

The irony is that the company in question was not doing well at the time. It was shrinking in size and destroying profitability. Why continue to fill your company with clones if the current thinking isn’t working?

Seek out variety of thought and perspective. Bring the outsiders inside your company so that the next innovation comes from the inside, rather than the outside.

SUMMARY
Eventually, the conventional wisdom of your industry will be replaced by an innovation based on a different set of wisdom. If you cling too long to conventional wisdom, your firm will die off and be replaced by outsiders with a fresh set of eyes. It is better to have a diverse blend in your business, so that you can exploit those fresh ideas yourself.

FINAL THOUGHTS
If you want to take your company to the Max, you need to find people like Max (Kohl), who bring a fresh new perspective.

Henry the Hammer

THE STORY
Once there was a hammer named Henry. Henry the Hammer loved to fix things around the house. There was nothing he didn’t feel capable of fixing.

Today, Henry the Hammer was looking around the house for something to fix when he heard a squeek. “Aha,” said Henry. “One of the floorboards is loose. I can fix that.” So Henry took a nail to the floorboard and BAM! BAM! BAM! He nailed the floorboard back down so it would not squeek.

Then Henry the Hammer saw a picture which needed to be hung. Resourceful Henry found a stud in the wall, took a nail, and BAM! BAM! BAM! He made a hook out of the nail so that the picture could be hung.

Then Henry noticed that the television set was not working. Henry examined the situation and said, “I can fix that.” So BAM! BAM! BAM! CRASH! After examining the debris from hammering the TV, Henry said, “Hmmm…it’s still not working. It looks like this problem is going to need additional hammering.” But before he could get to it, he noticed that all of the windows were dirty.

“I’d better get to those windows right away,” thought Henry. “The TV can wait.” As a result, Henry went to all of the windows around the house with a BAM! BAM! CRASH! BAM! BAM! CRASH! BAM! BAM! CRASH!

Moral of the Story: To a Hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

THE ANALOGY
Strategy is about solving problems. Great strategy is about getting in front of a situation and making it better before the problem has a chance to get too large.

Just like strategists, Henry the Hammer liked to solve problems, too. Unfortunately, Henry—being a hammer—knew of only one way to solve problems: He would hammer them like a nail. BAM! BAM! BAM! Sometimes that was a very appropriate action, as in the case of the floorboard and the picture. Sometimes, it was a very inappropriate action, as in the case of the television and the windows.

But since Henry knew only one way to solve problems, he used that method to try to solve every problem. Even when it didn’t work, as in the case of the Television, he did not blame his methods. Instead, he felt that maybe he just didn’t hammer enough.

We can sometimes be like Henry the Hammer. We know a way to fix some problems, so we think this method is appropriate to fix every problem. And it may work often enough to make us believe that when it doesn’t work, the problem lies somewhere else. Unfortunately, along the way we break a lot of windows, causing more harm than good.

THE PRINCIPLE
The principle here is to embrace diversity. It is general human nature to want to surround ourselves with people who are similar to us. However, to quote former US Secretary of State Colin Powell, “If you surround yourself with people who think like you, then some of you are redundant.” We need to surround ourselves with people of different backgrounds and perspectives, so that we have more options on how to solve a problem. Having diversity is like having an entire toolkit rather than just a hammer. With an entire toolkit, you can find the right tool for each problem.

For example, people with a financial background tend to see problems from a financial perspective and, if working alone, will try to find a financial solution. Marketers tend to see problems from a marketing perspective and, if unchecked, will tend to look for a marketing solution. People from an operations perspective look for a solution via changing the operations. And so on…

Sometimes the problem actually is a financial one best served with a financial solution. Sometimes the problem really is about marketing. However, never are all problems just financial or all just marketing or all just operations. One approach cannot effectively solve every problem. In fact, quite often the problems are larger and more complex than any one discipline and require a multi-discipline solution. This requires getting people of diverse backgrounds working together.

From my experience, if you always take the same narrow focus to all problems, the result is like breaking windows. Even good individual solutions, if narrowly repeated too often in the same direction, can have unintended negative consequences from the cumulative impact. For example, one-dimensional financial approaches tend to avoid risk, hoard cash, minimize reinvestment and over the long haul can starve a company to death. One-dimensional marketing approaches try to buy their way out of a problem—which may be the right approach sometimes—but if done all the time tends to overspend a company to death.

One dimensional operational approaches look at trying to find a better way to do what works today. Eventually, however what works today may not work tomorrow, so the operators eventually end up working at trying to make an obsolete approach more efficient, causing death through becoming irrelevant. One dimensional technology approaches place the company in a perpetual cycle of waiting too long for something that costs too much and is too cumbersome, while someone else more nimble gets to the future sooner.

A glass of water is refreshing. A tsunami of water is destructive. Too much of one thing—although good in small doses—can destroy a company. Multiple approaches can help keep a better balance.

Even though we are smart and successful, we all have blind spots. The very disciplines that have helped us become successful cause those blind spots. Left to ourselves, those blind spots can start taking us down some of these paths of death before we realize what is going on.

Effective strategies are built upon a broad analysis of the situation. A broad analysis requires looking at the problem through different lenses—the lens of finance, the lens of the consumer, the lens of production, the lens of suppliers, the lens of human capacity, the international lens, the regulatory lens, and so on. Some people have better eyes to see through some of these lenses than others. Get the best eyes on your team.

Solving the mess in front of you is important. But wouldn’t it be better to get out in front of a situation and prepare a path to avoid future problems? Or even better, instead of getting bogged down in problem avoidance, work on how to take your company to the next great business opportunity before others get there? Then, instead of always trying to get out of a mess, you are moving towards greater success. This is where strategy is most effective, and diversity is important here as well.

When seeking the best future, one not only needs functional diversity, but also perspective diversity. Strategist Gary Hamel referred to this as “listening to new voices.” You need people on your team who are more in tune with leading edge thinking. These people tend to be younger, and also tend not to always look or act the part of a corporate executive. They may make you a bit uncomfortable, but they have a perspective you may need to hear.

Don’t surround yourself with just hammers. Get a whole toolkit.

SUMMARY
Past successes can give a false sense of security. It can get us to believe that because we have had he right answers in the past, we will always have the right answers in the future. Unfortunately, not all problems are the same. Different problems may require different answers. To ensure that we make the right decisions, it is a good idea to get multiple perspectives on the problem from a diverse group of individuals. If one is looking towards finding future strategies, it is often even more critical to bring into the discussion a diversity of new voices that may be more in tune with the leading edge.

Otherwise, you may end up like Henry the Hammer, whose intentions are good and who has a good solution for some problems, but can cause a mess if left alone to do what he is comfortable doing. Remember, not all problems are a nail, even if they sometimes look like it to a hammer.

FINAL THOUGHTS
Even the idea of embracing diversity, if taken to an extreme, can cause problems. It can lead to endless discussions which go nowhere, because the diverse group cannot reach a consensus. Just because you bring in a diversity of ideas, does not mean that the diverse group has to make the decision. At the end of the day, a leader needs to lead by making a timely decision.