Strategic Planning Analogy #450: Pushing the String

THE STORY
Here’s an experiment. Take a long string and stretch it out on the floor. Go to one end of the string and try to push the string across the floor. That effort will essentially be a failure.

Now re-stretch the string on the floor. Go to one end of the string and try to pull it across the floor. This should be a great success.

Conclusion: It is much easier to pull a string across the floor than to push it.

THE ANALOGY
What was the difference between pulling a string (success) and pushing a string (failure)? When you pull a string, you are in front of the string. When you push a string, you are behind it.

You organization is like a string. Strategic planning tries to move an organization to a better place, sort of like trying to get a string across the floor. Just as getting in front of a string (to pull) is the best way to move the string, getting a strategy in the hands of the person in front of the organization is the best way to get the organization to a better place.

By definition, followers need leaders up in front. Strategic leadership, then, is a pre-requisite to strategic followership. Trying to move the organization from another position is far more difficult.

THE PRINCIPLE
The principle here is that strategic planners are not typically positioned at the front-most end of the organization. Therefore, if strategic planners want to effectively move the organization forward, they need to work through those people who are at the front and capable of pulling the string—top management. This becomes their primary audience.

Like it or not, strategists are not in front of the string. In most cases, they are usually further down the ladder. It is common for them to report to a CFO, who then reports to a CEO. Without the mantle of top leadership, strategists cannot directly pull the string.

If the primary force for change in an organization is the strategist, then the effort to move the organization is more like trying to push the string. The string will not respond as desired, because the effort is coming from too far back in the organization.

Mistake #1: Having the Strategist Lead
There are many reasons why having strategist lead the strategy movement is sub-optimal. First, consider the audience—the organization. They will ask themselves a few questions:

1) If this is the person we should be following, then why aren’t they in a position of leadership?

2) Since they are not the leader, what gives them the right to ask me to follow?

3) If this were really important, wouldn’t the real leader be leading us?

They will think: I’ve got enough responsibilities on my plate handed down from my direct superiors to worry about. Why worry about the ranting of someone who has no direct control over me?

Therefore, the organization will not wholeheartedly follow the strategist. It will be like trying to push a string.

Now think of it from the position of the real leader of the organization. Leadership from anywhere else can be seen as a threat to their power. Most leaders don’t like potential threats to their power. Consequently, they will not abdicate enough power to the strategist to really be able to effectively pull the string on their own. Others in the organization will see that the power has not been handed down to the strategist. Therefore, the strategist will not have enough power to pull the string. They can only push.

Mistake #2: Having the Strategist Merely Keep Score
So if the strategist cannot lead, should we just take them out of the leadership equation? No. As we’ve talked about many other times in these blogs, the strategist provides an important leadership function. They can provide a unique perspective which can be gained almost nowhere else, because:

1) Strategists are the least vested in the status quo. Therefore, they can most objectively look at the status quo versus alternatives.

2) Strategists are the least captive to the “Tyranny of the Immediate,” those daily crises that tend to capture the immediate attention of the operators of the business. This allows the strategist to focus on long-term implications more than anyone else.

3) Strategists spend the most time focused on understanding the big picture (and where it is heading). They can look for the holes in the marketplace yet to be filled. As a result, they can offer an important perspective not available elsewhere.

Therefore, it is mistake to lower the position of the strategist to little more than a mere scorekeeper (as we saw in the prior blog). To do so will be to lose the power of these insights.

Solution: Become the Strategy Whisperer
So how do we take advantage of the needed leadership of the strategist while understanding they do not have enough leadership power to pull the string? I refer to it as becoming the “Strategy Whisperer.”

The idea is based off of the book The Horse Whisperer by Nicholas Evans (which was made into a movie starring Robert Redford). The book and movie made popular a form of horse training known as “natural horsemanship.”

The basic idea of natural horsemanship is that wild or unruly horses will become more effectively useful to their riders if they are approached with respect rather than with force. The idea is to work sympathetically with a horse in order to obtain cooperation (rather than submission). Instead of trying to destroy the horse’s will by overpowering it, you gain its respect so that the horse’s natural power is voluntarily given over to the desires of the rider.

And this is an effective analogy for strategists. Their goal is not to overpower the leaders of the organization. The task is not to break the will of the leader. No, the strategist needs to come to the leaders showing great respect for their power. Rather than posing as a threat to the leader, the strategist merely seeks mutual respect in return. And once gaining that non-threatening respect, the strategist can then whisper into the leader’s ear what he or she needs to hear from the unique perspective of the strategist.

As a result, the leader is still the unquestioned leader. Their power to pull the string is not threatened by the presence of the strategist. Yet, because the leader is listening to the whispering of the strategist, the leader is pulling the string in a direction which is more strategically correct.

The Strategy Whisperer approach may not come naturally to the strategist, especially if the strategist wants to be the one with the hands on the string. But if you want to effectively help move the company, this can be the best approach.

SUMMARY
The best way to move a company in the proper strategic direction is to get the leader of the organization to want to lead the organization in that direction. This requires positioning the strategist as far more than just a scorekeeper, but far less than a threat to the power of the leader. The optimal spot is that of a Strategy Whisperer—a respected advisor who has the ear of the leader.

FINAL THOUGHTS
It’s better to have your hand on the shoulder of the real leader (so you can whisper in his/her ear) and let them effectively pull the string in your desired direction than to insist that the string be put in your hand and only be able to ineffectively push it.

Strategic Planning Analogy #449: Scorekeepers Vs. Score Makers

THE STORY
Today, when you go to a sports arena they have those huge Jumbotrons showing you not only the score, but lots of high definition video in full color. It wasn’t always that way.

There was a time when scoreboards were only what their name implied—boards of wood with the score on them. When the score changed, a person had to physically take down the old painted number sign and put up a new number (by hand).

Those scorekeepers were kept pretty busy changing those signs during the game. But even though they worked hard to change the score on the board, the score keepers did not cause the score to change. They only reported on the action taking place on the field.

Sure, the scorekeeper put the larger score on the board, but if you wanted a larger score, you needed to have a coach with a great game plan and athletes who could execute it. Just because the scorekeeper was closest to the scoreboard does not mean he was closest to the action.

Don’t confuse the scorekeeper with the score makers. Don’t mistake them for being the coaches or the athletes. All he does is put the signs on the board.

THE ANALOGY
Now it may seem silly that someone would confuse the scorekeeper with the score makers. Maybe it wouldn’t happen in sports, but it seems to happen quite frequently in business. And that isn’t silly; it’s tragic.

In a lot of companies, we have employees who are referred to as strategists. Their responsibilities may use terms such as managing strategic planning or strategic plans. But when you look closely at their job descriptions, they are really little more than scorekeepers.

But instead of a scoreboard, they have a spreadsheet. They use the spreadsheet to keep score. First, they keep track of the desired score—the goals of what the company wants to achieve. Then they keep track of the actual score—what the company actually achieves. Finally, they compare the two scores to show a variance score.

Then, if these so-called strategists have a big enough budget, they create fancy dashboards to place on all of the executives’ digital screens to show off the results. These dashboards have lots of fancy colors and dials and charts and traffic lights—sort of like those fancy Jumbotrons.

But as fancy as they all are, the root function is not much different than that old-time scoreboard operator. The primary function is just to keep track of the score.

THE PRINCIPLE
The principle is that scorekeeping is not the same as strategic planning. And if the job description for your “strategists” is basically that of being a scorekeeper, then the task of true strategy is probably lacking—to the detriment of the company.

This is not to belittle the role of the scorekeeper. That is an important job. But it is not strategic planning. You need them both. Just as sporting events would be pretty worthless if only the scorekeepers showed up, all that business scorekeeping is pretty worthless if all the goals and measures being watched are not rooted in comprehensive strategic planning.

Asking the Tough Questions
Comprehensive strategic planning is not merely about coming up with a number. No, it tends to be more like an essay test. Great strategic planning has to answer a lot of tough questions, like:

Where are we going to play in the marketplace?

How are we going to win in that place?

What are the tradeoffs we are going to make to win?

What is the business model best suited for us to win?

What is missing in our resources to accomplish this? How will we obtain what is missing?

What threats are on the horizon which could change the way we need to play to win?

We talked more about the importance of answering these types of tough questions here and here. The key point is that until you answer these questions, there is no way of knowing how to score your progress. You need to know the rules for YOUR particular game before you can properly score it.

Otherwise, it would be like carefully measuring the speed at which you are driving when you have no idea of where to go. If you have not determined a destination and a path, then the speed at which you are driving is irrelevant. Getting nowhere faster isn’t much to be proud of.

To get a handle on where the profession of strategic planning is headed, I spend time looking at the job descriptions posted for “strategic” positions. It is fairly common to see lots of scorekeeping in the job description, but very little about tackling these tough questions. The qualifications tend to ask for people with expertise in accounting and spreadsheet modeling. They don’t tend to ask for people with expertise in positioning, business models, or how to win in a competitive marketplace.

I’m not so sure that accountants are necessarily the best qualified to answer these types of questions. And even if they were, they will be too busy with scorekeeping to spend much time focusing on the questions.

Don’t Merely Rely on the Operators
I’ve talked to some of the people who operate under these types of job descriptions. I ask them how all those tough questions get answered. What I hear is that the scorekeepers rely on the business operators for the bulk of the input. Unfortunately, there are many flaws in this approach.

First, the operators have a personal bias towards getting a large bonus. This can cloud their thinking regarding what a good score would be. A good score for an operator might be a beatable number, rather than the strategically correct number.

Second, operators tend to be highly invested in the status quo. That is their strength; it is what they know. Therefore, they tend to pick goals which are incremental extensions of the status quo. Strategically, the best solution might instead need to be a drastic change…perhaps even selling off that operation. Why would an operator volunteer to see his career path and platform for power go away?

Third, a lot of the best strategic moves are into new spaces. This is often referred to as the Blue Ocean strategy. By definition, new virgin spaces do not have an established operating base. Therefore, there is not an operating division naturally thinking about or fighting for this new opportunity.

Finally, operators tend to be overwhelmed by the Tyranny of the Immediate. In other words, a large percentage of their time is focused on the current crisis of the day. They are spending so much time putting out the current fire that they do not have enough time for the luxury of pondering the long-term. If you are not spending enough time pondering the big picture and the long term, then you will answer the questions in a narrow, short-term way. This leads to sub-optimization.

That is why companies need professional strategists who are not captive to these limitations. They do have the luxury of being able to focus on these big issues. That is, they have that luxury if they are not required to spend nearly 100% of their time as scorekeepers.

This is not to say that the viewpoint of operators is worthless. No, their insights are valuable to the process because they are on the front lines. But, it cannot stand alone. It needs to be balanced by the objectivity and big-picture thinking of a real strategist.

SUMMARY
Keeping score is not the same thing as providing key insights into answering the tough questions of strategy. If you reposition strategic planning as little more than scorekeeping, then a key aspect of strategic planning will be missing. As a result, you may end up with great measurements of nearly random activity which does not lead to a great long-term destination.

FINAL THOUGHTS
Today’s modern spreadsheet and dashboard tools can turn into great toys which are fun to play with. They can start absorbing an ever larger percentage of your time. But let’s not forget that they are only more sophisticated scoreboards. And although they can be very useful, the action on the playing field is still more important than the sizzle of the scoreboard. Keep it all in its proper perspective. The essay test of the tough strategic questions may not have as much sizzle as a scoreboard, but it still needs focused attention.

Strategic Planning Analogy #436: Distracted Driving

THE STORY
Today’s technology can do a lot of great things. It can entertain us, inform us and keep us connected with the ones we love. It can also cause problems if we combine all that technology with driving.

Between the technology gear we bring into the car, and the technology gear already in the dashboard of the car, we have all sorts of opportunities to become distracted from our driving. Here are a few statistics on the subject I found on a web page:

• Talking on a cell phone causes nearly 25% of car accidents.

• About 6,000 deaths and a half a million injuries are caused by distracted drivers in the US every year.

• Over 1/3 of drivers (37%) have sent or received text messages while driving, and 18% said they do it regularly.

• Forty-one percent of adult drivers have set or changed a GPS system while driving, and 21% do it “more frequently.”

• While teenagers are texting, they spend about 10 percent of the time outside the driving lane they’re supposed to be in.

• Talking on a cell phone while driving can make a young driver’s reaction time as slow as that of a 70-year-old.

• Answering a text takes away your attention for about five seconds. That is enough time to travel the length of a football field.

Yes, you can do a lot of really cool things in a car these days. The sound systems are great; the communication systems are great. The dashboards are full of interesting things to look at and play with. But for safety’s sake, perhaps we should take the wheels off the car and enjoy all this stuff while sitting still in our garage.

Better yet, let’s remember that the best screen in the car is not on your smart device or your dashboard, but the WINDSHIELD!

THE ANALOGY
Cars aren’t the only places full of cool technology. So is today’s workplace. A lot of this technology can be very useful. However, like in the car, much of this technology can also be distracting.

Here are some work-related statistics:

• Nielsen’s quarterly Three Screen Report on U.S. media usage showed that approximately 44 percent of all online video is being viewed in the workplace.

• More than 21 million Americans – or 29 percent of working adults – now access adult websites from work computers.

• Some employees said they accessed their Facebook accounts as much as two hours a day on the job, with 87 percent of those surveyed admitting that they had no clear business reason for using the social network.

• An oft quoted study says that Facebook reduces office productivity by 1.5% overall.

As disturbing as this might be, I’m even more concerned with the official gadgetry produced by the company itself. Just as cars provide cool distractions on the dashboard, many companies have their own “dashboard” devices. These company dashboards are software applications which show lots of cool performance indicators. Like a car dashboard, they provide data to let you know how you are doing. And like a car dashboard, this information can be useful.

However, there is a lot more to driving than just staring at the dashboard. You need to look out the windshield and see the world you’re driving in. The same is true for strategists. It can be very dangerous if the focus at the company is too much towards the internal dashboard and not enough looking at the external world through a strategic “windshield.”

THE PRINCIPLE
The principle here is that it is already difficult enough to get companies focused on the long term, given all the near-term distractions. Let’s not allow a preoccupation with cool gadgets and company dashboards contribute to that distraction.

Yes, company dashboards can be a useful tool, especially to keep day to day operations on track. But if a strategist’s time is distracted by focusing too much on dashboards, then their work will suffer, increasing the likelihood of a company “accident.”

One of the key strategic problems with most dashboards is that they tend to focus on performance. They are typically a tool which looks at how well a company is performing on Key Performance Indicators (KPI).

Now, at first one might think that it is good for a strategist to focus on performance and KPIs. However, I see four major problems if performance is the primary focus of a strategist.

1) Performance Focuses on the Score, Not the Game Plan
As I’ve mentioned in prior blogs (here, here, and here), outcomes are like the score of a sporting event. They can tell you if you are winning, but they are worthless at telling you how to win. Yelling at the scoreboard won’t change the score. Yelling at your people to score more points is worthless advice. If a coach stares at the scoreboard (the outcomes) during the game instead of focusing on what’s happening on the playing field, they become a fairly worthless coach.

Even if you know you are losing, that does not mean you know how to fix the problem. The score provides virtually no insight into why you are losing or how to change the score’s direction. It is just a number.

If you want to win, you need to focus on the clipboard where you write up the winning game plans. Games are won by having a superior game plan that is properly executed. That is where the strategic focus needs to be.

By the time you know the score of a game, it is too late to affect its outcome. But if, instead, you focus on the game plan, you’ll pretty much know what the score will be before the game is over, and have time to still influence the outcome with a revised game plan.

2) Performance Tends to Ignore the Real Battleground for Success
Customers act based on the way they think. Therefore, if you want them to act in a particular way, you need to first get them to think in a particular way. Hence, the key battleground for success takes place in the minds of your consumers.

Most company dashboards, if they measure customers at all, measure what they do (like “sales”), not how they think. As a result, the dashboards are ignoring the key battleground for success.

In a prior blog, we talked about the difference between “being” and “doing.” Strategic positions are about what you want to BE—how you are defined in the mind of the customer. Dashboards are about DO—what has already happened to your company.

If you want to improve strategically, you need to focus on the BE; you need to probe the consumer’s mind to find out if you are becoming properly positioned in the key battleground. This would be far better information to focus on than the outcomes of a dashboard.

3) Strategic Planning is Most Valuable at Times of Discontinuity
Dashboards are based on tracking past performance over time. The implied assumption is that the past is the best indicator of the future. Yet we all know that the world is full of change. The future often has little resemblance to the past. There is too much discontinuity.

That is why one of the chief values of strategy is to look forward—to anticipate future discontinuity and formulate a plan in advance to prepare for and take advantage of that discontinuity.

By the time a dashboard displays discontinuity, it is often too late to properly react. The change has already occurred. All the dashboard can do at that point is track precisely how quickly the discontinuity is destroying the company.

If you want to anticipate and prepare for discontinuity, you need to be looking up out the windshield rather than looking down at the dashboard gadget.

4) Performance Tends to Denigrate Strategic Planning into a Financial Scorekeeper Role
If the determination and measurement of KPIs becomes the primary responsibility of strategic planning, then the role of strategic planning becomes little more than that of a scorekeeper.

Just because a person keeps score does not mean they influence the score. In their new stadium, the Dallas Cowboys football team has one of the most sophisticated scoreboards in the world. But it hasn’t helped them win more games or get to a championship.

There has been a trend to redefine strategic planning as “Financial Planning & Analysis” and make it a small sub-department in Finance. The role is little more than that of a scorekeeper, with the dashboard being their scoreboard.

You don’t make great strategic leaps into the future by keeping track of the past. Great insights come from looking ahead and looking beyond today’s results. But if the new objective for strategists is to look for KPI performance variances (instead of looking ahead), then they are no longer doing true strategic work. By redefining the role, this great value is being taken away.

SUMMARY
It is hard to get companies to focus long term, because the “tyranny of the immediate” pressures executives to focus on the crisis of the day. That is why strategic planners are so valuable…they provide a longer term balance. However, if the strategists are primarily focused on measuring KPIs, then they get caught up in the tyranny of the immediate as well. The balance is lost; and much of their value is lost. And the company suffers.

The irony is that if you want better future outcomes, the best methodology is to not focus on prior outcomes. Instead, focus on the factors which influence the future. And those are rarely found on dashboards.

FINAL THOUGHTS
A strategist looking down at a dashboard is like a teen looking at a text while driving. Do I hear a crash?