Week 50, 2020
Good Strategy: Problem Framing, Guiding Policy, and Coherent Action
Each week I share three ideas for how to make work better. And this week, those ideas serve to distinguish good and bad strategy.
Why am I writing about this? Like most organizations, MAQE is spending part of December thinking about 2021. But what is strategy? And more importantly, what does good strategy actually look like? Rumelt’s Good Strategy / Bad Strategy provides the answer:
1. Problem Framing
Good strategy helps us overcome specific challenges. Note the emphasis. Good strategy starts with a diagnosis of the situation coupled with clear problem statement. What’s holding us back and why? Take care not to confuse cause with effect. Low profitability is not a problem, it’s a symptom of a problem. Frame the root cause.
2. Guiding Policy
Good strategy helps us focus; it forces us to make tough decisions. And that’s why a guiding policy is needed. Like the guardrails on a highway, policies help direct and constrain actions to specific a domain (e.g., people, technology, process) — without defining exactly what needs to be done. (Amazon calls it “tenants” and they’re included in all operating plans).
3. Coherent Action
Last but not least, good strategy explains how the guiding policy should be carried out. It should not be confused with goals or targets. Nor should it be conflated with implementation details. Good strategy is actionable and coherent. That is, it outlines a series of coordinated initiatives. that support and reinforce each other.
I’ve shamelessly paraphrased Jeff Zych’s reading notes above.
I find Rumelt’s trinity to be helpful. It provides a much-needed scaffold for the strategy formulation process. But I’m still left wondering what coherent actions actually look like? Especially so in the context of self-management. Because how do you strike the right balance between clarity on the one hand, and openness on the other?
The grid pictured above is my answer to that question.
What I’ve done here is to combine 7Ps of Service Marketing (vertical axis, replace with the framework of choice) with JD Meier’s Agile Results (horizontal axis, see w462020). And the product is another scaffold.
Long-term initiatives for each category are defined in the right-hand column (if needed). These are then broken down into next-actions as we move to the left: from this year to this quarter to this month.
Meier’s reliance on the Rule of 3 provides room to breathe. Our list of initiatives isn’t exhaustive. It can’t be. And the further ahead we look, the less exhaustive we understand the list to be.
But, and this is important: the initiatives that are specified helps indicate what coherent action looks like. And because each initiative is assigned to specific people and groups, it helps us get started.
That’s all for this week.
Until next time: Make it matter.
