https://medium.com/wardleymaps/on-being-lost-2ef5f05eb1ec
This is the story of my journey, from a bumbling and confused CEO lost in the headlights of change to having a vague idea of what I was doing. I say vague because I’m not going to make grand claims to the techniques that I discuss in this book. It is enough to say that I have found them useful over the last decade whether in finding opportunity, removing waste, helping to organise a team of people or determining the strategy for a company. Will they help you? That depends upon the context that you’re operating in but since the techniques don’t take long to learn then I’ll leave it up to the reader to discover whether they are helpful to them or not. Remember, all models are wrong but some are useful.
In the first part of this book, I’m going to talk about my journey in order to introduce the techniques. In later chapters, we will switch gear and dive into a more formal examination of the practice. One thing I am mindful of is we rarely learn from past experience especially when it belongs to others or when it conflicts with our perception of how things are. However, if you are like I once was, lost at sea than this might just help you find your path. For me this journey begins two decades ago in the lift of the Arts hotel in Barcelona. It started when a senior executive handed me a short document and asked “Does this strategy makes sense?”
To be honest, I hadn’t a clue whether it did or not. I had no idea what a real strategy was, let alone any concept of how to evaluate the document. I leafed through the pages, it all seemed to make sense, the diagrams looked good and I didn’t know what I was looking for anyway. So I responded “seems fine to me”. However, the reason why I had chosen those words was more to do with the strategy looking familiar than anything else. I had seen the same words used in other documents, some of the same diagrams in other presentations and I had been to a conference where an industry thought leader had told me about the stuff that mattered. That stuff — “innovation”, “efficiency”, “alignment” and “culture” — had all been highlighted in the strategy document.
It was the comfort of familiar words and images that had given me the confidence to proclaim it was fine. My internal logic was a sort of herd mentality, a “backward causality” that since it had been right there then it must be right here. I was also young and had convinced myself that the senior executive was bound to know the answer and they were only asking me to test my abilities. I didn’t want to show my inexperience. This moment however continued to irritate me over the years because I knew I had been false and I was just covering up my tracks, hiding from my own inability.
A decade later, I had risen through the ranks to become the CEO of another company. I was that most senior of executives. The company would live or die by the strategic choices I made, or so I thought. I wrote the strategy or at least variations were presented to me and I would decide. But, something had gone terribly wrong in my journey. Somehow along the path to becoming a CEO, I had missed those all important lessons that told me how to evaluate a strategy. I still had no means to understand what a good strategy was and it was no longer enough for me to think it “seems fine”. I needed more than that as I was the experienced executive that the less experienced took guidance from.
I asked one of my juniors what they thought of our strategy. They responded “seems fine to me”. My heart sank. Unlike that confident executive in the lift of the Arts hotel who was testing some junior, I still hadn’t a clue. I was an imposter CEO! I needed to learn fast before anyone found out. But how?
In 2004, I sat down in my boardroom with our strategy documents and started to dissect them. There were lots of familiar and comfortable terms. We had to be innovative, efficient, customer centric, web 2.0 and all that this entailed. Alas, I suspected these common “memes” were repeated in the strategy documents of other companies because I was pretty sure I had copied them. I had heard the thought leaders at various conferences and read analyst reports that proclaimed these same lines over and over as the new truth. Well, at least we were following the herd I thought. However, someone must have started these memes and how did they know if these memes were right? How did I become like that confident executive that I remember?
Frustrated with my own natural inability, I started to trawl through books on strategy. I was looking for some way of understanding, a framework or a reference point to compare against. More brutally, I was lost at sea and looking for something to grab hold off, an executive lifeboat. I found little that gave me comfort and after talking with my peers, I became convinced that our strategy was almost identical to competitors in our industry. I was beginning to feel as though the entire field of strategy was either a cosmic joke played by management consultants or that there was some secret tome everyone was hiding from me. I was getting a bit desperate, despondent even. Someone would rumble that I was faking it.
I started using 2x2s, SWOTS, Porter’s forces and all manner of instruments. Everything felt lacking, nothing satisfied. I knew the company to the outside world was doing well but internally we had communication issues and frustration over direction and organisation. To improve matters, I had arranged for one of those management courses which bring the entire team together. I had been seduced by a simple idea that with better communication then a strategy would become clear, as if by magic. We just needed to talk more.
I rapidly discovered that despite all of our talking, daily status meetings and our weekly Town hall that beyond the very senior management, no-one really understood our strategy. I also doubted whether the senior management did. I certainly was unsure of it. I turned inward, the problem was me! There would come a reckoning when everyone would realise that behind the success, the profits, the bold pronouncements and confident exterior lurked a mass of doubt. They would rumble that I was making it up. I shouldn’t be the CEO. At that point in time, in mid 2004, I was drowning in uncertainty and an easy mark for any would be consultant peddling snake oil. I would have gladly bought it. An entire crate of the stuff.
By chance, I had picked up a copy of the “Art of War” by Sun Tzu. Truth be told I picked up several different translations as the bookseller had advised that none of them were quite the same. That was serendipity and I owe that bookseller a debt of thanks because it was whilst reading through my second translation that I noticed something that I had been missing in my understanding of strategy. Sun Tzu had described five factors that matter in competition between two opponents. Loosely speaking, these are: — purpose, landscape, climate, doctrine and leadership. I’ve drawn them as a circle in figure 1.
Figure 1 — The five factors
When I looked at my strategy document, I could see a purpose and then a huge jump into leadership and the strategic choices we had made. But where was landscape, climate and doctrine? I started to think back to every business book that I had read. Everything seemed to do this jump from purpose to leadership.
For reference, Sun Tzu’s five factors are:
Purpose is your moral imperative, it is the scope of what you are doing and why you are doing it. It is the reason why others follow you.
Landscape is a description of the environment that you’re competing in. It includes the position of troops, the features of the landscape and any obstacles in your way.
Climate describes the forces that act upon the environment. It is the patterns of the seasons and the rules of the game. These impact the landscape and you don’t get to choose them but you can discover them. It includes your competitors actions.