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A lesson in strategy, taught by a Cat
There's an old saying that if you're pointed in the right direction, all you have to do is keep walking.
Or as Calvin Coolidge put it, it's all about persistence:
Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
Just keep on going: a great philosophy for any entrepreneur, exec, manager, designer, even entire organizations.
There's just one hitch, though... did you catch it?
Absolutely all of it - 100% of this approach - depends on having the right direction. Without that one little element, the entire effort is for naught.
I'm reminded of Alice, who asked the Cheshire Cat, "which way [should I] go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
"I don't much care where," said Alice.
"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.
It's not a small matter, to find the right direction. I should know (and should admit) - my entire consulting career has been focused on setting people out on a more customer-centered, user-centered, or patient-centered direction. It's not easy.
Why is finding direction (or "strategy," as I generally call it) so rare, so difficult? One reason is that creating the strategy is different from execution.
Put another way: you have to stop and take time to find the direction. You can't run while you're reading the map.
And this is the potential problem with popular methods...
• iterative design
• rapid prototyping
• agile development
• [add your own favorite buzzword here]
...which are great and all, except when there's no well-thought-out direction to go in.
So be forewarned - it's hard to be a strategist. People prefer action. "Ready-fire-aim" sounds so much more exciting and appealing. "Do something!" they say - and it can be hard to sit down and say hey, let's take at least a couple of days to think about who our customers are and talk to them about what they need.
(You do talk to your customers, right? Because that's a necessary step in finding your direction.)
Without direction, we're presenting our flipcharts and our powerpoints to the Cheshire Cat. And he just griiiiiiins.
- - -
See also:
• My process for creating a customer experience strategy
• You DO talk to customers, don't you?
This is how I find my clients, "you are here to get me going, I haven't a clue where, just get me going".
Nice to see it spelled out. Keep up the good work!
And then there's the related problem of holding true to the direction you want to go in, even when you know it's the right one. So many ways to fall off the path!
You hit the nail on the head. You have to have a direction, but speaking with the customers refines and narrows the direction. After all you are fulfilling THEIR needs.
One of my favorite columns of yours... thus far. Perfectly timed for my current challenge.
You have elevated the Cheshire Cat to the status of a feline Clausewitz.
In this post, I've applied your strategic theory to Hannibal, the Carthaginian general who tried to defeat Rome:
http://andreaskluth.org/2009/09/25/strategic-thinking-coolidge-v-cheshire-cat/
Eloquently put. Such a simple story which few could argue with.
I've been in Agile circles which have an extreme affinity for velocity. I remind them that velocity takes a vector of both distance and bearing over time.
This post was very timely for me. The whole idea of having a strategic direction, clear goals and objectives has been coming up in my work place as some are pushing for being more "agile" without understanding what that really means.
I've worked in successful agile environments before and they were actually the most controlled, the most strongly directed projects I've ever worked on.
'Agile" is not Latin for "no direction."
Without a strong vision for where you want to go it's just a hip and cool way to flounder around and fail.
Kent Beck, one of the founders of the agile software development movement advises us to "Make mistakes faster." Another similar statement came from a famous episode of ABC's Nightline when they followed IDEO as they re-designed the shopping cart. The manager of that effort, Peter Skillman, (who presented at the 2007 GEL) had a great quote that I remember well, "Fail often in order to succeed sooner."
Both of these share an underlying assumption. In order to know if we've failed or succeeded, we have to know what criteria we're using. We have to have a vision for what success is in order to recognize it when it comes. Without a clear vision we also can't learn from mistakes because we have no standard against which we can compare our efforts and spot the gaps.
That's not to say that we can't move the goal as we learn more. That's the part of agility that, I believe, causes all the confusion. Some mistake this flexibility at the end for not having to know what you're doing or where you're going when you start.
So, how well does your organization do strategy? Many companies can do short-term tactical goals, but how many actually can see far enough to develop a true strategic vision and then find the best tactics to achieve that strategy? In my experience it's pretty rare. Have I just worked at the wrong places?
(cross posted from Linked-in GEL Conference discussion http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2061599&trk=hb_side_g)(cross posted from Linked-in GEL Conference discussion http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2061599&trk=hb_side_g)
Excellent thought Mark.
I have rarely seen the capacity for getting the right direction, including in myself. Many inventions and discoveries are the result of unexpected turn--a cross pollination of insight.
In the absence of good planning, or the need to respond to the change, agile and iterative process has its uses. If you have the vision and you are leading the others, you can demonstrate the error of their ways iteratively. And if you are leading yourself through the darkness, you can find your way through trial and error.
But you have to be persistant.
Did you read The Art of What Work?
The thesis is that you have to have an initial insight, a coup d'oeil that launch you in a direction: the big picture. Then you deduce your strategy along the way, depending what works and what doesn't.
You can't read a map while running. You can't read a map without have run a little and now where you want to go, and which way you're able to take.