Jan 17, 2024 | Analytics, Strategy
Imagine. Possibilities.
‘Strategic thinking’ has been overtaken by the ‘quants’.
Those that believe that by generating loads of data, analysing past events, behaviour, and outcomes, you can create a model that will give answers to the key strategic question: How best to deploy limited assets for the best return’?
Aristotle 2,500 years ago observed that in some things the past will always be the same as the future. Think about gravity. We know it will be there tomorrow exactly as it is today.
Your task in this case is to identify and quantify cause and effect.
Aristotle also observed that in other things it is not the case that what happened yesterday will be repeated today. In that case, you must form hypotheses, test them, learn, then rinse and repeat.
In other words, you need to imagine possibilities.
Look at the evolution on the mobile phone for evidence. On January 9, 2007, Steve Jobs officially announced the original iPhone. On January 10, 2007, despite luminaries like Steve Ballmer poking fun at it, all preconceptions about what a mobile phone was, were out the window. The past was not representative of what the future would look like.
The world is a messy place, today rarely looks like yesterday. In that messy place our task is not to look at the past and project onto the future, our task is to imagine possibilities.
Strategy development is all about imagining those possibilities, making choices on what appears to be the best bet, and putting your money down, adjusting as necessary as more information and insight are gathered.
Aristotle did not conceive the OODA loop. He left that to John ’40 second’ Boyd 2,500 years later, but it was inherent in the ‘scientific method’ he articulated, and should be required learning for every decision-maker.
Header is a representation of the ‘Johari Window’, made famous by Donald Rumsfeld
Jan 15, 2024 | Collaboration, Leadership
‘Do not ever patronise me again.’
Those words are seared onto my brain, coming from the mouth of a new boss many years ago.
I had not long been employed and wanted to make an impression. Therefore, every conversation was a combative one, a conversation I set out to win, seeing that as a way to impress.
As the conversation which took place in my office ended, the new boss for whom I had quickly built a strong regard, stood up and walked out. He turned around just outside the door, and walked back a couple of paces, and uttered those words.
‘Do not ever patronise me again’.
He then turned on his heel, and walked out.
I was both astonished, and very concerned. It was only after a painful re-run and examination of the conversation that I realised he was right.
I had, completely unwittingly, patronised him.
What had driven that destructive behaviour?
It took a while for me to understand my own behavioural characteristics. In those days I went into every similar conversation with a point of view that I was prepared to defend aggressively. While I was always prepared to adjust my position in the face of good arguments, this was deeply hidden. In addition, I failed the most significant test of a good debater.
I failed to listen.
My ‘tin-ear’ did not hear a word that was said in any context other than: ‘with me or against me’.
No such thing as active listening, understanding the basis of a differing view, or reflecting on the quality of the foundations of my own.
Later that day I did go into the boss’s office and apologise, acknowledging my mistake, and thanking him for bringing it so painfully to my attention.
We worked together very productively for a decade after that incident in two different companies. We had many debates, and rarely was the outcome black and white, right, and wrong. It proved absolutely that two heads are always better than one, assuming the heads are aligned to the same objective.
Header acknowledgement. My thanks to Dilbert and Scott Adams.
Jan 8, 2024 | Leadership, Strategy
2023 was a difficult year for everyone. Uncertain economic conditions, war, dodgy deals, politicians cuckolded by their own weasel words, and the emergence of AI.
The last one is the only one over which any of us working to pay the bills can have some level of control.
AI has emerged from a long gestation since Alan Turing first made it a topic of conversation 72 years ago. It is now firmly on the plate of every person in business.
Like any tool, it is in the hands of the user, and cannot do any job without being directed. The cookies in 2024 will be awarded to those that best direct AI capabilities in their businesses.
It will not happen by itself, but is one of the secrets of competitive success.
The world is filled with noise and distraction. To cut through and resonate with an audience you need clarity.
Clarity of strategy, and clarity of all your messaging from the advertising and marketing collateral, the stories of the salespeople, to the colour of your delivery trucks, and the greeting of your receptionist.
Clarity.
AI will not give you that clarity in the absence of instruction from you, the user. Lack of such user clarity will deliver generic burble that will be unnoticed wallpaper.
Clarity Wins.
What AI will deliver in spades is the killer tool to leverage that clarity.
Header illustration courtesy DALL-E in about 20 seconds and two sets of instructions.
Jan 5, 2024 | Change, Strategy
The Christmas break is a good time to have that delayed conversation with mad Uncle Charlie. Good old Charlie is a Luddite that the originals would have been proud of, we all have one somewhere. The conversation was about AI, a topic in which I claim little expertise beyond the bits I have read, and superficial fiddling I have done.
However, Charlie was adamantly opposed to any notion that AI was anything more than a gimmick used by computer companies to sell their devices.
In trying to make the case for the continued growth of AI, and stuff emerging, I used an old chestnut.
Compounding.
As Einstein observed, compounding is the most powerful force in the universe. The story of the peasant who did a favour for the emperor and was rewarded with anything he wanted and asked for a chess board to be covered with grains of rice, doubling at each square explains it. At casual observation, easy, but the maths is different. There are 64 squares on a chess board. Doubling the gains at each square ends up in billions of grains of rice. The first few are easy, 1,2,4,8,16, but after a modest number of iterations, the numbers really take off.
Digital transformation is similar.
One step compounds on top of the next, and next, and so on, until you recognise it is not a destination, it is a journey.
Fascinating to think we are at the very beginning of the journey.
An idea that has been attributed to many is that we overestimate what can be achieved in the short term, and underestimate what can be achieved over a longer period.
This is compounding at work.
If you think the developments of the last decade have been huge, unpreceded in history, I suspect the next one will make the last one look like it was snail’s pace.
Charlie has his good points, but he really is a devoted Luddite.
Header graphic is via DALL-E. A Luddite trying unsuccessfully to stuff AI back into its box.
Jan 1, 2024 | Governance, Strategy
I cannot believe another year has gone by. The older I get, the faster time seems to go.
As I considered how to articulate the emerging landscape that will be 2024, two headline items screamed at me.
Strategy, and governance.
Without a solid, deeply considered and articulated strategy, you resemble a flock of sheep, moving here and there in response to the latest and closest barrier or threat.
Without a thoughtful governance process, performance measurement and improvement are simply out of reach.
From running the local café to running the country, these two driving parameters remain the guardrails of progress.
A year ago Strategy and Governance were on my mind as I wrote a 2023 new year post that used the removal of Dave Rennie as Wallabies coach, and reinstatement of Eddie Jones as the example.
A lot of water has gone under the bridge since. It seems both strategy and governance were not on the agenda of anyone in the administration of Rugby. The Wannabees were bundled out in the preliminary rounds of the World Cup, then Eddie walking away from a five year contract. The lessons I suggested they learn from tennis Canada ignored. Who knows what is now concerning the new management of Rugby. Whatever it is, there seems to be scant concern at the long term health of the game.
Rugby is in trouble at all levels, in the myriad of ways that a lack of strategy and governance exhibit. Stakeholders shooting off in differing directions, poor competitive performance, the grasping of new shiny things supposed to fix everything, (eg Joseph Suaali) turmoil in leadership ranks, strapped for cash, but long on promises of better times to come, and previously loyal ‘customers’ turning away.
Is this just a failure of strategic intelligence, being able to develop and stick to a challenging long term strategy, an abject failure of governance, or both?
January 1 also sees copyright on a number of major creative works coming to an end. Significant among them is the first cartoon feature that synchronised the sound with the animated visuals. Steamboat Willie, the cartoon that saw the emergence of Mickey Mouse heads the list, with a range of works becoming free of copyright.
The release of Steamboat Willie, while being just 7 minutes long, was one of those seminal moments that led to an explosion of creativity and technical innovation. As it was with the 1991 release of the HTML software that created the www by Tim Berners-Lee, and release of ChatGPT by OpenAI in November 2022, the world crossed an inflection point and nothing would be the same again.
We look back on 2023, and hope that 2024 will be an improvement, coming from what we learnt from the mistakes of 2023.
Sensibly we should ask ourselves a series of questions:
- What did I get right, what did I get wrong, and what were the drivers for those choices?
- What did I miss that I should have seen?
- What did I see that others may not have seen?
- How will I progress personally and professionally in 2024
If you genuinely ask yourself those questions, deeply consider the answers, and act on them, chances are 2024 will be better than 2023.
Happy new year.
Header: Mickey Mouse as depicted in Steamboat Willie in 1928.
