Strategy, clarified
More than one year ago while I was still studying, I wrote this short post called Uncle Mark’s Fourth Duvel. The purpose, back then, was to motivate myself to gain a clearer understanding of a field that is open to many interpretations within a fast-paced industry: strategy in service design.
Nowadays, I am working in an agency in London as an Experience Strategist and I have to admit that things are still not crystal clear.
I have the feeling that our industry is partly to blame. First, there are too many personal definitions floating around. If you’d ask ten strategists to define in one sentence what it is they do, you’ll get two similar answers. Secondly, I believe that our future-facing industry feels the constant urge to redefine the unnecessary. Adding a super fluffy word like “experience”, is not going to facilitate the wedding conversation you’re having with your tipsy uncle.
Recently, I found out that the reason for this confusion partly lies within myself and my inability to see the red thread between many stories. I felt the need to connect and simplify in order to clarify.
One model I find very intruiging is Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle. Mostly because it makes you go beyond a definition, right into the motivational zone.
Simon Sinek’s model helps businesses leaders to reflect about their purpose in order to align their activities to that purpose. When your purpose is to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful, you’ve created a framework on which you can plant your how (by creating a kickass culture of smart creatives) and what (Gmail, Google Images, Google Maps, Google Drive, Google Loon, etc.)
The concept of Simon’s circle also works especially well if you want to distinguish the most essential from the most redundant. In other words, you can use it as a tool to understand more by noting down less.
I have decided to try to come up with an answer to what are, according to me, the three most relevant questions I can ask myself this point in time:
What is strategy?
How do you do strategy?
Why do you need a strategy?
What is strategy?
Probably the best definition out there is what Richard Rumelt calls “the kernel of strategy” in his book Good Strategy, Bad Strategy.
The kernel contains three elements and is very straightforward:
1/ A diagnosis that defines or explains the nature of the challenge. A good diagnosis simplifies the often overwhelming complexity of reality by identifying certain aspects of the situation as critical.
If we want to deeply understand the true nature of the challenge, it is in my view crucial to have a broad spectrum of critical challenges informing that nature. We need to define critical challenges as generalists, i.e. look at problems from different lenses.
2/ A guiding policy for dealing with the challenge. This is an overall approach chosen to cope with or overcome the obstacles identified in the diagnosis. A guiding policy should anticipate competitors’ actions, reduce complexity, exploit points of leverage and action coherence.
The guiding policy directs and constrains actions without fully defining its content. A guiding policy is, in my view, really powerful when it aligns well with the nature of the challenge and when it marks out a field in which creativity can play, i.e. it triggers the imagination to come up with a set of tangible and coherent actions closely related to the guiding policy.
3/ A set of coherent actions that are designed to carry out the guiding policy. These are steps that are coordinated with one another to work together in accomplishing the guiding policy.
In my view, actions are a set of intertwined interpretations of the guiding policy. They should take the shape of ideas that articulate the guiding policy in a very tangible way. What does every action mean? How does every action work? What is needed in order to make it work? How can we explain every action in the best possible way? E.g. well-informed hypotheses, sketches, journeys, working prototypes, etc. These actions are the very first attempts to ship as quickly as possible.
How do you do strategy?
In its essence, strategy is a structured approach to solving problems. This structured approach can be applied to problems that take different shapes and levels of complexity. I have tried to make a (highly oversimplified) problem hierarchy model that visualizes what problems people are solving nowadays.
The interesting thing is that the threefold kernel of diagnosis, policy and action can be applied to every problem level. Strategy is a way of thinking and doing. The only difference is that different problems require different types of expertise and different resources. And of course, some of these problems are more complex and scary than others. We all want to be Neil deGrasse Tyson.
While problems can take many shapes, I feel that there’s a general skill set every strategist should have. I used Design Council’s Double Diamond model to help me illustrate the core skills of every strategist. The cool thing is, is that there’s almost a complete overlap between Richard Rumelt’s and the Diamond model.
Step 1 — Diagnosis — Discover
In order to make the right diagnosis, it is key to go broad, start from different angles and analyse how these inform the challenge. Good strategists have the skill to do a deep analysis across different perspectives that lead to observations. Combining observations, or looking at where there’s friction between different observations is key to unravelling insights that truly have the power to define the guiding policy.
- strategists are generalists
- strategists are analytical
- strategists are lateral thinkers
Step 2 — Define — Policy
Defining a policy or overall approach chosen to deal with the challenge is for me personally the hard bit. In this phase of the strategy process, it is key to be able to synthesize a complex and often heterogenous range of insights into a policy statement that initiates action. Furthermore, this statement should highlight the points of leverage that need to be explored in the next phase. Strategy is focus.
- strategists are able to synthesize
- strategists know which buttons to push
Step 3 — Develop — Actions
The strategy process is a constant dance between moving from an open to a closed thinking and doing space. In step three, strategists generate high level and coherent ideas that could help realize the policy.
- strategists are able to generate ideas within a previously defined space
- strategists are able to imagine a world that doesn’t exist yet
It is this ability to do abductive reasoning, that truly allows great strategists to imagine interesting and surprising solutions to difficult problems.
Step 4 — Deliver— Embodiment
I would argue that the fourth level “Deliver” should also be part of the skill set of a strategist, even though it is often not expected. John V. Willshire expresses this way of thinking really well in his post A Planner’s Day Of Things To Make.
We need to push ourselves and embrace “making”. Showing a low-fidelity prototype that embodies an idea is way more powerful than three bullets of actions that need to be undertaken. A prototype has the ability to inspire the real crafstmen among us (or at least inspire them how it shouldn’t be done).
I tried to consolidate Richard Rumelt’s definition and the Double Diamond model into a strategy diamond. It looks something like this:
Why do you need a strategy?
So why do you need a strategy? The single-minded answer is mentioned in step 2 of the diamond model.
Strategy is about focus.
People’s natural tendency is to go in a lot of different directions. We constantly hear words like choices, optionality, etc. — which is often about not making a choice. It’s the easy way out. Finding focus is hard. Making though decisions requires accountability, responsibility and mainly courage.
Tim Brown explains this really well. It’s the most beautiful definition about strategy I could close this post with:
Strategy should bring clarity to an organization; it should be a signpost for showing people where you, as their leader, are taking them — and what they need to do to get there. People need to have a visceral understanding — an image in their minds — of why you’ve chosen a certain strategy and what you’re attempting to create with it. Because it’s pictorial, design describes the world in a way that’s not open to many interpretations.
Tim Brown, CEO of Ideo.
Thomas
P.S.
Thank you Andrew Gregoris and Francesco Cara for giving me plenty of stuff to play with.
