Nested Strategy, Parallax, and Walt Disney’s Multiplane Camera

Manufactured luck is a funny thing. Entirely by accident, I discovered this short video on Disney’s multiplane camera: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YIR39KeJMk which led me to explore a concept that escaped me for nearly 25 years. Disney created the multiplane camera to solve a problem in 2D animation concerning a phenomenon called parallax. Their solution is ingenious, effective, and relatively simple in concept. Yet it takes specialized skill to execute flawlessly. This parallels everything great strategy should be. As tempting as it is to expand on that, what I want to dig into with you is parallax and, more accurately, how the multiplane camera deals with it as a way to better understand strategy. Why? read on…

Before we go too far, what are nested strategies?

Organizations typically have several layers of interdepended strategies that, if purposefully designed support, influence, and complement each other. At the very top is the overarching corporate strategy; often, this will include elements such as the vision, purpose, and values (but contains significantly more than that). The broad strokes of why the organization exists, the value it offers the world, how it delivers that value, and where it wants to go. Below is a myriad of intertwined strategies that drive the overall strategy forward. A simplified version might look like this: corporates strategy → divisional strategy → product strategy → sales strategy. Where there might be multiple divisional strategies, multiple corresponding product strategies, and so on. In parallel (and every other direction), different strategies cut across all of these, such as the organization’s technology, brand, and/or people strategy. All of these are nested strategies (think matryoshka). You may know nested strategies by another name, and that’s fine. This is not a 100-level university class where you get marks for using one term instead of another. As long as we are aligned on the concept, we can press on.

There is a name for it, parallax, and it is inherent in your strategy.

I grew up in Saskatchewan; if you don’t know anything about Saskatchewan, it is a geographically flat Canadian prairie province. When you drive down the highway, you can see far, far, far, out onto the horizon. When I was a child, I remember staring out the window and trying to understand how we were moving so fast, but the trees, or farmhouses, out in the field seemed to move so slowly. So I did what any six-year-old would do… I asked Grandpa. His response: “Look at the side of the road”. Sure enough, the grass on the side of the road was a motion sickness inducing blur. In almost twenty-five years, I never explored this observation beyond ‘The further away an object is, the slower it looks like it’s moving.’ This is a real story, and I have no idea why it has embedded itself in my memory in a way few other life moments have. I still think about it every time I travel down the highway. About 2:30 into the Disney video, they talk about the mood behavior while walking down a country road, and I was finally compelled to investigate further, discovering the concept of Parallax.

The design of Disney’s camera provides us something tangible to help visualize how parallax is naturally embedded in strategy. Let’s start with how the camera works? The best way to understand and get a feel for it is to watch the seven-minute video. For those without seven spare minutes, the camera creates depth by having several panes with images stacked on top of each other. These panes can move in three dimensions and at different speeds. Therefore panes closer to the foreground can move faster than those in the background, mimicking how the environment would look in the real world as the viewer moves through it. Simultaneously they can move closer or further from the camera to create depth effects, like walking down a country road toward a farmhouse.

Now we get to the insight and challenge: not all strategies in an organization move at the same pace, but they all have to move in unison to create a smooth and coherent scene.

For example, a product strategy has to evolve much faster than an overarching organizational strategy to keep up with customers’ rapidly changing wants and needs. Imagine your product as the main character on the very top plane of the multiplane camera; it is in a constant state of motion. New versions, features, colors, packaging, functionality, pricing… It must be dynamic enough to hold your customer’s attention and deliver the promised value proposition.

But an organization’s product does not stand alone, just as Mickey Mouse does not stand alone on a blank background. It is supported by the organization’s brand promise, customer service, manufacturing quality, reputation, culture, purpose, etc. Just as each layer in the multiplane camera plays a role to create a complete and engaging scene, so to do all the nested strategies within the organization stack and manifest themselves in the overall customer experience. Remember, products perform numerous customer jobs, including functional jobs, emotional jobs, and status/social jobs. Apple products are a great representation of this. Think about how all the panes/nested strategies, including but not limited to innovation, brand, reputation, people, marketing, supply chain, and service, all stack up and manifest themselves in the final product. Few people look at an iPhone and think…”You know what. That is exactly what I need to make phone calls”. That is an unfair oversimplification, a more accurate job may be “That is exactly what I need to communicate with the world”… and inherent in that statement is the communication they are doing with the device and by having the device. Every plane (nested strategy) plays a part in creating the scene (delivering the value proposition).

Why Does This Matter?

Two reasons.

1. Strategies evolve at different paces. A one size fits all, annual top-down strategy process will be a future character flaw of laggards. That is the equivalent of the depthless flat background the camera had to solve. Look at the shift from waterfall project management methodologies to agile ones (although waterfall still has its place). Similarly, organizations need to look at strategy at different levels and design dynamic processes that allow for evolution based on the pace at which the specific strategy is impacted by external forces. This will be different for different strategies. Those in marketing might be rolling their eyes because this behavior is already embedded in the field. Good marketing strategy evolves at the pace of change, unlike most internal strategies that still revolve around the annual planning and budgeting cycle.
2. The dream of everyone knowing the corporate strategy to the point of reciting it from memory AND being able to implement it is not realistic. Maybe in a world where everyone is a long-tenured employee and has dedicated uninterrupted time each and every week to reflect on how their brush strokes impact their part of the picture and how that picture impacts the overall scene. But we know that is not the case. Fires need to be put out, adjustments made, targets met. The conscious connection to the strategy fades into the background during the day-to-day.

This is where point one comes back into play because creative problem-solving and strategy require dedicated focus. The question is, what is the right cadence, and when is the right time to bring those background panes into the foreground? Some may point to KPIs or OKRs, which are essential in executing the plan, and I do not want to downplay their importance in any way, shape, or form. However, they were likely created based on assumptions made months or years ago. What we are talking about here is how to perpetually stay ahead of the curve and consider the future as it happens.

What Can You Do?

So what can you do to stay ahead of this? Many things. Remember, problem-finding, exploration, and strategy adjustments do not have to be a time-consuming exercise (relatively speaking). Maybe a few hours a week quarterly or a half-day ideation session with the team every four months. Or even a spot session when a new trend or impactful market event occurs. The important thing is creating the space to bring the strategy forward.

The fields of strategy and design thinking are full of tools and methods you can use to quickly explore ideas. Some include:

From the world of strategy — strategy cascade, strategy canvas, business model canvas, flywheels, value proposition design…

From the world of design thinking — brain writing, systems mapping, lightning demos, or any of the other 40 plus exercises in the design thinking toolbox.

Ferris Bueller has the famous quote “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” It is no different for your organization. The world around it moves pretty fast (plenty of articles out there proclaiming VUCA and romanticizing the pace of change), if the organization only looks around once a year well…