Ep 19 Enduring the Messy Stages of Strategic Planning w Chris Fox - Excerpt

The Jump Leap Long Term Strategy Podcast, Episode 19. Your company is in the middle of a strategic planning project. Things are going according to plan, but there are several schools of competing thought about the future of the organization. In discussions, you hear voices being raised as these competing ideas are, are shared, you're beginning to feel a little bit nervous because these really are competing ideas. They cannot be reconciled easily. Should you intervene and, you know, aggressively decide that if one option should predominate over another, or should you allow it to run its course even though things are looking like a real mess? Tune into this episode to hear from me and my special guest Chris Fox as we tackle this wicked problem together. I'm Francis Wade, and welcome to the Jump Leap Long-Term Strategy Podcast. And welcome back. As you can see, I'm joined on the stage by our guest Chris Fox. And just before I introduce Chris, Let me say a big hello to you. If this is the first time you're tuning into this podcast, and you may be wondering what the heck is going on as you start to listen. So let me give you a little bit of an explanation so that you're not completely surprised and taken aback by what we're doing. So we're tackling a problem in the area of strategic planning. And what we're hoping to do is to diagnose the issue in a way that allows us to share our underlying thinking and assumptions and where we agree and where we disagree, so that you can hear and understand it and hopefully use it for yourself as, as you go forward. Well, that's far better than just telling you the conclusions on our ideas kind of at the end, kind of what we've arrived at. So we're trying to show you the process, lift the hood of the— or the bonnet of the car— and show you kind of the inner workings of where our thinking comes from and how we arrive at some of these conclusions that we apply in the work that we do as strategists. So as we diagnose, we're hoping to run into some serendipity. And serendipity means like a bit of a surprise. When that happens, I'm going to ring an insight bell that shows that we've come up with something that is new to maybe both of us, or at least to one of us. See, the idea is that neither of us really has the answer. By engaging in this kind of conversation, this kind of diagnosis, you could imagine, you know, Einstein and a colleague of his sitting in an office. They're having this deep discussion, going back and forth to the blackboard, talking about, you know, what the different answers might be. And as you're listening, you're fascinated by what you're hearing. And we're hoping that you have this kind of experience, because Einstein said, if I had an hour to solve a problem, I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions. And that's what we're hoping to accomplish. So before I introduce Chris, let me tell you a quick story about someone else, Susan. So Susan has been the CEO for 3 years. But there has never been more pressure than there is at this very moment. Why? Her executive team is divided about the long-term future of the company. Some feel that there is no long-term future, that the company should be sold. Thereby benefiting the investors immediately, and maybe even the executive team. Others think that the company has a bright future and that its best years— days are yet to come. And there's technologies coming, and there's possible mergers, possible acquisitions. There's all kinds of things that they could do to maybe be the category leaders. These are honest disagreements among you know, reasonable people who care about the company and actually care about each other. However, in the last executive meeting, a fight broke out as they were discussing this particular strategy, and at least 3 different factions emerged. And she has another meeting coming up, say that it's this week. Furthermore, the board, the chairman, they've gotten wind of the disagreement. So some of the executives have been talking and some of the board members have been listening. As a result, some of these board members are blaming her for not resolving the issue in a timely fashion. It looks very untidy to them. And she wonders, hmm, should I step in and shortcut this messy situation by making a command decision, you know, a leadership intervention, show some real muscle? But another part of her, a different part of her, thinks that there should be a way to play out the disagreement. But which voice should she follow? So Chris Fox is an independent strategy consultant with over 30 years of experience. He's also the founder of StratNavApp.com, which is an innovative and collaborative online tool which harnesses the power of AI and technology to help organizations and other consultants like me develop and execute better strategies. He also hosts StratChat, and that's a pound before the StratChat, pound StratChat, the weekly international networking and learning event for anyone with an interest in business strategy. And as a member of StratChat, and a user of StratNav app, I can endorse both of the above. And Chris, welcome to the show.

Thanks very much, Francis. I'm really glad to be here. And I'm just really looking forward to getting stuck into this conversation. So thank you for having me.

Great. Fantastic. What do you think of Susan's story and her situation? Does it ring familiar to you at all?

I think, you know, this is such a common scenario. You know, all organizations, you know, they go through phases where sometimes it seems like everything's going your way and the business is progressing nicely and everything's great. And then you go through phases where there's a level of change that you're just not comfortable with and you realize something has got to change. And, you know, those situations, they are fundamentally messy, and that messiness is really, really uncomfortable. I think We're all taught in business that we need to be effective and efficient. We need to move swiftly to the optimum answers at the least amount of cost. And there's an element of strategy that just isn't like that. It's messy and it's ambiguous, and there's not necessarily an easy-to-know right or wrong answer because you know, we do strategy in the future. You know, the strategy that we want to execute is going to be in the future. We don't know what that future is. It's impossible to know for sure what that future is. And you have usually quite big personalities with quite different views, and those views are going to come out in these crucial moments, and how you handle them is absolutely critical. If you drive just for efficiency of decision-making only, there's a risk that you just go down the same old tracks you've always gone down. And so you have to allow some of that, you know, the real value is to be found in that messiness if you can handle it well, but it's not easy. And if you've ever been in an executive or a boardroom discussion where there's really strong difference of opinion come out, it's really hard to manage it.

Yeah, so you've met Susans before, I guess, who, you know, you're in that meeting with them in which some disagreement has broken out, and the two of you are exchanging glances, right? Because you, you also facilitate strategic planning processes as a consultant. Of course. And she, you know, she sends you a text that says, fix this. Sometimes we're, you know, we're the ones who help with the fixing. And other times, you know, she texts us and we're, you know, we're 2 hours away. And she says, I'm in the middle of the meeting, and it's going terribly. What should I do? And, you know, she has a real dilemma in her hands, because especially if she's— so she's a new CEO, she doesn't have a lot of strategic planning background. And she's used to things. Let's imagine that worse, she's like an accountant or an engineer. And, you know, she's a little bit OCD, a little bit anal, you know, kind of played up just a bit. And maybe she has a PMP and she likes to see things happening in an orderly fashion. And here it is, you know, she's having a— they're having this major discussion and she's worried, you know. She— and folks, if you're listening into the show, you may recall a moment like this or you may imagine a moment like this But honestly, it's actually better than the opposite, which is where people are really quiet. When they're really quiet, then you end up with, you don't know what the different schools of thought are. You end up favoring one over the other, perhaps accidentally or blindly. And then after the fact, someone says, well, you know, we really should have talked about this other big thing, which was an elephant in the room that you didn't know about. And that's 10 times worse. So Susan's situation is actually better in that there is an open— it is an open disagreement. It doesn't give her any comfort, but at least, you know, she's— Hope you're enjoying this free excerpt from the Jump Leap Long Term Strategy Podcast. Interested in finding out more about getting a subscription to full episodes? Visit www.longtermstrategy.info. In the midst of a real and honest argument, so it's not that people are being underhanded or wicked or anything, and you know, as she observes it and she imagines the board members getting wind of it, she's thinking that there's a— it's a waste. So yeah, can you imagine the board— her board members, Chris? What, what kinds of waste do you think that they're, they're afraid of, like, this might be incurring?

Well, I mean, I, I guess that, you know, the first thing to worry about is how long is it going to take to resolve this? Because as you pointed out right at the beginning, there's, there's a quick way to resolve this, right? And you can just, uh, as the CEO, you can make a ruling, say I've weighed up the arguments that you've made and I've made a decision and this is going to be it. And of course you can do that and many people would do that and probably most of us are aware of the consequences of doing that in that, yes, you would get to a quick resolution and you'd get to action very quickly, but of course you risk alienating whoever's view you don't support. But actually I think there's something in what you said earlier, which is more important. So let's assume that the arguments are well-intentioned. So let's assume you're dealing with intelligent people who know the business and are not being mischievous, right? And that's not always the case. I mean, you know, to be fair, you may find yourself in a situation where someone is not arguing from a position of personal integrity and the best interests of the company. You know, sometimes they are, they are, they do have ulterior motives, and you do have to be careful of that. But let's assume that in this case, they are all intelligent people who know the business well and are actually arguing from a position of trying to do what's best for the business. If that's the case, of course, although it might not appear to be this way when Susan's in the heat of the moment, of course she has a gift because she has multiple options. And there's an old saying in strategy that if you only have one option in front of you, you're not really doing strategy, right? You're just doing the only thing that you can do. So, the fact that there is competing views, as you said, is really a gift. And it's a question of, I'm going to take the gift analogy too far, but you know, how do you unwrap that to get the most value out of it without it taking too much time because the board is impatient? Or maybe what can you do to give the board sufficient comfort that they will give you a little bit of time because you've been able to convey there's value in this process and it's not a waste of time to argue and debate the different points of view and, and, and arrive at a conclusion.

So I would, I would tell her, text the board chairman and say, trust me, Yeah, that's right.

I mean, I do, you know, this maybe sounds a bit corny, but I do think there's something in trusting the process. And I do think that, and you know, this is where experience comes in, and this is obviously where it's difficult. You know, we're saying Susan is less experienced, she hasn't done this that many times before, but if you've if you've done this more times before and you've experienced the process and you know that, you know, there's the saying, it's always darkest before the dawn. So you know there's this period of messiness and confusion and anxiety. But if you persist with the process and try and draw out what's behind all of these different competing views, The gold is there. I've said to clients before, I used to say to clients, I've stopped now because clients would hire me and they'd say, look, we need you to solve this problem. And I would say, well, I can guide you through the process. I can't guarantee you a solution because I can only guide you through a process of what's there. And I've stopped saying it now because there is always a way through. And a solution if you just trust the process. But if you cut it off too quickly, you will, A, you will alienate the people who don't get what they want, and B, you will just lose all the value of those diverse opinions.

Right, that's kind of what, you know, which the temptation is, is on the one hand, because there really is a cost in either direction, right, that if it goes on too long and it's not moderated well, you know, she has a— she has— she's been in meetings that have gone on 6 hours too long, um, that were supposed to last an hour and they weren't moderated well and they wasted a lot of people's time and a lot of people walked away shaking their heads and, and complaining that it was poorly organized. And so she's been in bad meetings.

Yeah.

And as you know, she's in the one that she's in now she's, or the ones that are coming up, she's wondering, are these going to be some really bad meetings, you know, turbo bad? So I know, so she's right to be concerned about that. And on the other hand, you know, she's thinking, well, you know, if I do it well, maybe this, this, this, there is a way that this turns out in the end, even though she may not have any experience of it doing so. And I could share an example as we go along of one situation where I was Susan, and a company, a meeting took a left turn. And I was, I was shocked. But anyway, I'll share more about that as we go ahead. But anyway, the point is that strategy isn't a nice, tidy, linear process. It's not like pumping out widgets. It doesn't follow, you know, nice, predictable pathways. But if you're a Susan, or you're a board member, or you're a member of the team, you could be feeling anxious and even frustrated that this is not going the way it should, and this is wrong, and there's something bad, and this is the worst meeting I've ever been in. And, and you could want to, you know, the board, the chairman might say, but let me come and I'll clean it up. And chairman could just come in one day and just, you know, he or she could kick some butt and get things in line and stop the fooling around. And as you Brits say, get on with it.

Yeah, and that could make it infinitely worse.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But there should be a way, and maybe this podcast is the way, because I've never heard this topic tackled before in a podcast, even in writing. I don't know if I've ever even heard that, but But there should be a way for us to inform the Susans of the world and to give them cues. Because I imagine that between the two of us, we've had lots of cues. And if we put our heads together, maybe we can give her something like a, if not a roadmap, then at least kind of a sense of when things are okay and when they're not. One thing I don't want to do, of course, is to leave her in a lurch. And leave her in a place where she could easily fall into these messy situations in the future. And she ends up double-guessing herself, second-guessing herself. She ends up intervening badly. Have you ever seen someone intervene in a messy situation and then causing a problem, Chris?

Well, yeah, I mean, I'm sure we've all seen that where, you know, the leader starts to become impatient, the barriers come up and the leader ends up slamming their fist on the table and saying, "I've heard enough. We're going to follow this route." And people then feel unheard, undervalued. They're obviously also frustrated. And you leave the room with a strategy where they clearly believe that there's a better answer and that you have now told them they have to do something that they believe is not in the organization's best interest. And, you know, just from a personal motivation perspective, that's really difficult. That's really difficult for people. Now, I think there are extreme situations where that And here's the excerpt from our next episode.

Your company has a problem implementing its strategic plans. On a given day, it devotes all its attention to emergency issues and sets aside the contents of the last plan. But these are no lazy or dumb people who are involved, your colleagues. They're well-intended. They know they need to be proactive. But when it comes to implementing a strategic plan which drives daily actions, one that's filled with not just short-term but mid- and long-term projects, no one knows why more urgent items always get in the way. But you think there must be a way to make long-term and mid-term challenges more important now. So that they get implemented. And if you like the work we're doing, feel free to follow us at our website strategyconf.fwconsulting.com, or like or leave a comment on one of the popular podcast apps such as Stitcher or iTunes. This is Francis Wade, and I'm signing out from The Jump Leap. Long-Term Strategic Planning podcast. See you later.