Strategic Thinking & The Game of Chess: Myth and Reality

Greg Githens 3 Comments
This animated GIF was created on 29th July 200...

This animated GIF was created on 29th July 2007 by Sylvain Gadenne. In the context of the Budapest Gambit (an opening in the game of chess), it presents the strategy of pressure against the e3-pawn. It is intended to be used in the Wikipedia article about the Budapest Gambit. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“Make sure your resume says that you play chess. It shows you are a strategic thinker,” advised the older businessman to the young man networking into an industry trade group. The young man knew that his next job would largely define his career prospects, and he wanted to get into a position where he could provide impact.

For good reason, chess has become an iconic representation of strategy. Chess is a game that requires structured thinking and deliberation. However, chess is not a perfect analogy for organizational strategy.

The Myth: Chess Strategy is a Linear, Pre-Calculated Plan

A Vice President of OnStar, the General Motors subsidiary, was being interviewed in an article on the topic of innovation for a professional association magazine. Guided by the “overarching business strategy of creating great customer experiences,” he likened “his company’s innovation strategy to the way chess masters approach their game.” He said:

“They decide before they begin what their checkmate will be and work back from that point, unraveling all the moves necessary to get to that outcome. By beginning with a specific goal, they don’t get mired down in the myriad possibilities in front of them.”

Research shows that chess masters do not work with a goal and establish a linear (step-by-step) strategic plan.  Here is supporting research cited in the chess entry on Wikipedia:

In his doctoral thesis, Adrian de Groot showed that chess masters can rapidly perceive the key features of a position.  According to de Groot, this perception, made possible by years of practice and study, is more important than the sheer ability to anticipate moves. De Groot showed that chess masters can memorize positions shown for a few seconds almost perfectly. The ability to memorize does not alone account for chess-playing skill, since masters and novices, when faced with random arrangements of chess pieces, had equivalent recall (about half a dozen positions in each case). Rather, it is the ability to recognize patterns, which are then memorized, which distinguished the skilled players from the novices. When the positions of the pieces were taken from an actual game, the masters had almost total positional recall.

The de Groot research illustrates well the essence of strategic thinking. In this case, chess acumen – acumen being considered the accumulation of knowledge of useful patterns and key features of the situation – is applied with thinking that is imaginative, systematic, and opportunistic. Chess masters have the ability to perceive, classify, and use patterns.

The context of chess is different from the context of business, games, or war because the patterns of activity are different. Strategic thinkers develop acumen – the knowledge of patterns relevant to their competitive context, and blend it with a cognitive framework. Because the mind structures knowledge differently, the definition of strategic thinking as an individual competency is reinforced.

Reality: Chess Strategy is Developed – But there is a Role for Preparation

Here are some more research insights useful for understanding chess’s application and limitations to strategic thinking.

Eric Leifer, an American sociologist, asked chess grand masters how many maneuvers they pre-calculate.  The answer was none to one maneuver. Rather than working backwards from the end point of winning the game; instead, they develop it a move at a time. One obvious reason: chess is a competitive game, and opponent’s moves cannot be predicted.

Chess grand masters build up their game as do their opponents. Leifer asked for the reason for this strategy and got the answer that it is the only way to correct mistakes from the beginning of the game. As each player builds up their game, the winner eventually – in the endgame – finds a maneuver that breaks any resistance and puts the opponent out of action. Leifer found that skilled players seek to preserve flexibility.

This might lead you to believe that chess talent is inborn, and there is no need for planning. But, chess masters do prepare for their matches. What do they do? In planning for a chess match, chess masters spend little time visualizing the win and the steps to get there. Instead, their preparations focus on game development: the patterns of moves in their own games and that of their opponent. Key to this is looking for things that might be habitual, especially regarding the willingness to recognize mistakes, repeat mistakes, and correct mistakes.

Reality: Chess Is Strategic Venturing with Willingness to Say, “How Might I Be Wrong?”

In research described in Nature magazine in 2004, Michelle Cowley and Ruth Byrne found that chess players indeed “mentally map out the future consequences of each possible move.”

Cowley and Byrne found that good chess players do something that is qualitatively different; they invest more time thinking in an imaginatively and conceptual way about their opponent’s response.  Specifically, they imagined how the opponent could or would react and exploit whatever weakness is present in their position.  Good chess players falsify their own strategies by imagining the competitor’s response.

This expert approach has leadership implications: Experts are constantly testing their approach to find its vulnerabilities, and make their best choices that least-weaken their strategy.

Novices, on the other hand, tend to be blinded by their own optimism. They start telling themselves a story that they will be successful. In the case of novices, hope is a strategy.

Here is a great question that I heard asked by my friend Paul O’Connor when we were interviewing managers at a scientific instruments company:  What could your competitor do to you that would totally destroy your business?  In this particular instance, we learned that the company’s business thrust into China was very vulnerable, and needed to be made more robust.

More than Deductive Thinking

In my experience, I have seen many people flounder in strategic situations. Much of this can be explained by their preference for (and habits of) deductive thinking.  Deductive thinking is a style of thinking where the thinker takes broad principles, rules, conclusions, and truths and “backs into” the facts and arguments that support the outcome.

The VP quoted early in this article appears to be leaning on deductive thinking (“They decide before they begin what their checkmate will be and work back from that point). Perhaps he simply selected a poor analogy for making his point (planning a road trip involves knowing your goals and deducing the best ways to achieve it). Strategy involves recognizing competition and counter moves; moves which can only be guessed at.

Thus, we can see a distinction between long-range planning (the road trip) and strategy (winning at chess).  Long-range planning is relatively more deductive; however, it has a limitation because the planner needs useful, valid knowledge as a planning input. Who can predict what an equally talented and motivated competitor is going to do?

Strategy is often frustrating to people who habitually rely on deduction as a style of thinking.  As Richard Rumelt points out, treating strategy like a problem in deduction assume that anything worth knowing is already known. To generate a strategy, one must put aside the comfort and security of pure deduction and launch into the murkier waters of induction, analogy, judgment, and insight.

What are the other differences of chess with business strategy? Are there any transferable learnings?

Strategic Thinking versus the “Facilitation Fluff” of Strategic Planning

Greg Githens 3 Comments

Picture of marshmellow fluff

Too often, companies hire professional facilitators to support their strategic planning meetings but get nothing more than fluff. Many of these facilitators (under the claim of being a certified and master facilitator) have only a superficial understanding of strategy. They help the meeting produce something – but that something is definitely not strategy. Instead they help expensive executives and managers facilitate the production of fluff statements.

This article is not an attack on the idea of facilitation of meetings. Indeed, many meetings are wasteful and frustrating; and to be clear, a facilitator can be helpful.  However, experience shows that many facilitators push their technique at the expense of strategic thinking.

Mission, Vision, and Values: Is This Simply “Polishing the Doorknobs?”

Statements of mission, vision, and values are important; especially to small businesses. It is a good idea to have written something on paper about mission, vision, and values.  JUST DON”T TELL YOURSELF THAT YOU ARE PRODUCING STRATEGY!

  • A mission tells the organization its purpose
  • A vision establishes a verifiable future
  • A statement of values expresses those aspirations thought to be important.

If you already have a reasonably good statement, don’t let a facilitator waste your time on refreshing or rewriting them. It’s just an exercise in wordsmithing.  This activity is “doorknob polishing;” the doorknob is functional (the statement has been written), but there is not need to make it gleam and impress others.

And, while we’re at it…..

Strategic Plans are Documents – Let’s Hope that We Can Find a Strategy

In the last 3 weeks, I have reviewed three statements of strategy.  Only 1 of the 3 documents actually had something that I would recognize as a strategy.  The other two were just statements of goals and aspirations.  The one good strategy document clearly showed the nature of the business situation and constructed a focused set of guiding actions that would address the business situation. The good strategy was the result of insights that came from thinking strategically.e

Interestingly, the “strategic plan” that was produced by a professional facilitator looked great. However, I could find no strategy. It was attractive and concise, but an exemplar of fluff.  It probably worked fine to for internal alignment, but INTERNAL ALIGNMENT DOES NOT MAKE A DOCUMENT A STRATEGY!

How do I know? If I gave this document to a competitor of the company they would just yawn. If it were truly a good strategy, the reaction would be to mount a counter-response to avoid loss of advantage.  One of the acid tests of a good strategy is simply this: would your competitors be worried if they saw your strategy?

Facilitators and the Myth of High-Energy Meetings

Granted (again) that meetings are frustrating, boring, and wasteful; most of us would prefer entertainment and energy – even fun.  A facilitator that knows lots of good facilitation techniques can create the illusion of progress.  But it is really a dulling of the pain.

Your goal should NOT be to have a high-energy strategic planning meeting. It should be to design a good strategy….one that provides the organizational focus, leverage, investment guidance, and policy guidance.  As I wrote in a prior article, any written statements might be as straightforward as describing the objectives, scope, and advantages.

If you are really interested in creating a strategy that provides your organization a competitive advantage, you need to do the hard work of strategic thinking.

Hard Work – Nice Guys Finish Last

The truth is that strategy (in general) strategic thinking (in particular) is hard work.  Strategic thinking produces insights. This insight generation can be creatively fulfilling and powerful.  In my experience, this requires these essentials:

  • Quiet and undistracted time for individual reflection
  • Facts and data, not just gut feeling and aspirations
  • Listening to others, even if we have to patiently work with those who “think out loud”
  • A tolerance of ambiguity
  • A framework for taking strategic insights and putting them into a strategy

My own experience in facilitating strategy is this: you have to be clear in your own mind what good strategy looks like, and be able to discern it from doorknob polishing fluff.  You have to help your client find insights and knit those insights into a coherent set of activities that positions the organization’s resources in a logical way to meet serious and proximate competitive challenges.

There are thousands of charismatic facilitators who have a confused understanding of strategy as mission, visions, values, goals and the like. Facilitation fluff is common.

Do you agree that facilitation fluff is common and a problem? How have you seen it in practice? Do you agree that strategic thinking and insights needs a subtle and nuanced approach to finding insights and applying them?

Insights are Design Elements in the Design OF Strategy

Greg Githens 2 Comments

Insights & Design of Strategy

Strategic thinking is an individual activity that produces insights for use in strategy development. The appearance of insights signifies a deepened understanding of factors that are meaningful and relevant to the strategic question at hand.

Let’s imagine a manager asking, “OK I now have some strategic insights. What do I do with them? What’s next?” The short answer is this:

Use insights in your design OF strategy.

The Strategist is a Designer of Strategy

The most important book on strategy in recent years is Richard Rumelt’s Good Strategy/Bad Strategy. Chapter Nine is devoted to explaining strategy as design. Some of the relevant points include the following:

  • Rumelt explains that “Strategy is more like designing a high-performance aircraft than deciding which forklift to buy.” Rumelt concludes (see page 140), “Good strategy is design, and design is about fitting various pieces together so they work as a coherent whole.” These various pieces involve tradeoffs, a point that I’ll discuss shortly.
  • Rumelt explains strategy as a design (see page 134) as “an adroit configuration of resources and actions that yields an advantage in a challenging situation.” The tradeoffs prescriptions are these:
    • If there is a great competitive challenge, and limited strategic resources, then the strategist has to have a clever and tight integration of resources and actions.
    • If there are higher quality resources, then there is a lessened need for the tight integration of resources and actions.
  • Rumelt identifies three elements of design of strategy: competitive challenge, strategic resources, and actions. I illustrate in nearby graphic with the added notation that the search is for insights. Thus, the design of strategy framework, involves working with three things: insights about the competitive challenge, insights about strategic resources, and insights about actions to apply the resources.  The strategist is also concerned about the relationships between the three.

Thus, the strategist fits various pieces together to achieve a purpose. Those various pieces (design elements) include insights, as I will explain later in this article.

Tradeoffs in the Design of Strategy: Starbucks as an Example

To explain the relationship of insights and design of strategy, consider this example of Starbucks. Starbucks designed its strategy by allocating its resources in light of the competitive challenge.

Howard Shultz, traveling in Italy, recognized an opportunity to replicate the coffee bar experience in the United States. His insight on competitive challenge was that no potential European rival was operating a similar concept in the US, and competitors in the US were not focusing their efforts on delivering a retail coffee experience. The strategic resources at the time of founding of the concept were Starbuck’s presence in the coffee business as a roaster, which gave it the strategic resources of a viable supply chain and business presence. Shultz realized that he could apply the strategic resources by extending them into an area that had no competition, and he could experiment and learn from mistakes because the there was insufficient competition.

Let’s examine the Starbucks situation then through the lens of Rumelt’s tradeoffs. Importantly, the competitive challenge was weak. This reduces the pressure to possess high-quality strategic resources and the need to act in a clever fashion. Starbucks could experiment with its resources to find the right combination for the American market.

Finally, let’s look at Starbucks in contemporary times. In the US, Starbucks faces strong competitive challenge from numerous national rivals: Dunkin Donuts, McDonalds, Caribou Coffee to name just a few. Theory suggests that greater competitive challenge means that there needs to be greater strategic resources combined with coherent action to apply the resources. That is what we see in the case of Starbuck’s. It has built a strong base of strategic resources: a well-known brand, network of stores, distribution channels and strong supply chain. It more cleverly applies its resources: its focus on consumer experiences and loyalty (store design, loyalty cards), its product development (instant coffees, teas), and its international market expansion.

In domestic markets, Starbucks’ enduring success is going to depend upon finding and applying insights that give it advantage over its rivals.

Design Thinking and its Relationship to Strategic Thinking

A strategic thinker should be familiar with an emerging management literature that I will call design as strategy. It might be easy for some to confuse the notion design of strategy with design as strategy. Here are two distinctions:

  • Design as strategy is concerned with gaining advantage through well-designed products and other offerings.  Apple Computer’s products are frequently cited as exemplars in this case.
  • Design of strategy is concerned with gaining advantage of the overall business model to gain or sustain competitive advantage. Apple’s skilled designers are but one competency (manufacturing, branding, channels being other notable strategic resources) that determine Apple’s ability to prevail over rivals like Samsung, Google, or Microsoft.

By using trail-and-error development of the business model, Starbucks was able to learning about customer needs and build up its resources before others recognized the scope of the opportunity. This is an example of design thinking: Starbucks uses design of logos, store layouts, and product as element of its strategy. Starbuck’s design talents are strategic resources, but not its only strategic resource.

There is now a growing discipline of design thinking.  Tim Brown, CEO of the design firm has written a book titled Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation.  Advertising for the book explains design thinking as “the collaborative process by which the designer′s sensibilities and methods are employed to match people′s needs …. It′s a human−centered approach to problem solving that helps people and organizations become more innovative and more creative.” The Wikipedia entry for Design Thinking is as follows:

“As a style of thinking, design thinking is generally considered the ability to combine empathy for the context of a problem,
creativity in the generation of insights and solutions, and rationality to analyze and fit solutions to the context.”

Substitute the word strategic for design in the above Wikipedia definition. I think this substitution explains strategic thinking’s characteristics quite well, especially if you consider the context of strategy versus, say, the context of a physical item. Consider:

In design thinking the context of the problem might be a piece of land or a medical device in a patient’s body; the design problem is to optimize the form, function, and fit of the designed solution. In strategic thinking, the context includes the external business environment, stakeholders, and rivals. The specific design problems to be solved in strategy is devising a set of actions that results in a gained advantage over rivals.

As an interesting idea for guiding strategic thinking, I believe we should differentiate the design of strategy from design as strategy.

Do you agree with the idea that strategy is designed, not decided? How have you used this idea?

Strong-Minded Thinkers find the “One Thing:” How Curly’s Advice Applies to Thinking Strategically

Greg Githens Leave a comment

The 1991 movie Cityslickers provides a great lesson for strategists on the vital topic of focus and provides an excellent introduction to strong-mindedness.

Actor Billy Crystal plays the role of Mitch Robbins, a 39-year old man with a mid-life crisis. Mitch and his two friends take a trip to a Western US dude ranch, where they will participate in a cattle drive. Jack Palance plays the role of Curly, the tough cowboy who will supervise the cattle drive.

Mitch and Curly do not like each other at first. However, as they spend time together, Mitch discovers that Curly is wise to life. In this important scene, the two are riding through canyons, talking:

 Curly: Do you know what the secret of life is? [points index finger skyward] This.

Mitch: Your finger?

Curly: One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and the rest don’t mean shit.

Mitch: But, what is the “one thing?”

Curly: [smiles and points his finger at Mitch] That’s what you have to find out.

There you have it! The secret to life is to find the one thing that you need to stick to. It’s a line of dialogue that provides profound advice for those who want to become strong minded and improve their strategic thinking skills.

Before exploring examining what finding the one thing means in the sense of thinking strategically, let’s explain how Mitch discovered his “one thing:”

Curly and Mitch must deliver a pregnant cow’s calf. Mitch names the calf Norman and informally adopts it. The final test of the drive involves crossing a dangerous river during a violent storm. The men successfully drive most of the herd across the river, except for Norman, who is caught up in the river’s rapid current. Mitch impulsively chases after him, successfully lassoing the calf, but in turn gets caught in the rapids, nearly drowning. All are saved. Then, Mitch reveals that during his dangerous struggle to save Norman, he realized his “one thing” is his family.

The sweet and sentimental part of the story is that Mitch’s one thing was his family, and he returned from his trip with a renewed sense of values. This is not uncommon in Hollywood movies, Mary Poppins being another example of a husband/father gaining perspective of the importance of family.

Insights and Strong Mindedness

Mitch’s realization of his one thing came by way of insight, and it came to him as he faced extreme danger. As I have explained in earlier articles, insights are sudden realizations of the true nature of something. The purpose of strategic thinking is to foster insights.

Now, here is the connection to strong mindedness.  If a person can find that insight of the one thing AND act upon it determinedly, we can say that they are strong minded.  People who lack this strong mindedness either are missing the insight that reveals their personal values and/or the determination to put the values into action. Both ingredients need to be present. I’m not saying it is easy, but it doesn’t need to be a grandly-sophisticated endeavor.

Consider this a definition of strong-mindedness:

The ability to stay true to important principles.

Strong Mindedness as a Pre-Requisite for Strategic Thinking

It seems to me that strong mindedness is something of a pre-requisite for strategic thinking, and the personal values and determination are the result of ambition. Strategic thinkers must become comfortable with ambiguity and conceptualizing, something that often does not come easy.

In an earlier article, I identified Christopher Columbus as a strategic thinker. He had little formal schooling, and his ambition and insights were at the core of his success.  I could point to other successful historical people – Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford – as individuals who we could characterize were foremost strong minded and ambitious. I believe that these individual had to think strategically simply as an outlet for their ambitions.

Strategy and the Focus on Success

Curly’s advice to find the one thing is simply as way of emphasizing the importance of focus.

In the book Competitive Strategy, Michael Porter explains that focus has two meanings. One meaning is the organization’s power – its advantages – is focused on the right target. Again, Curley’s wisdom is simple: find the one thing. Here is where many organizations get into trouble: the say the “one thing” is profit, or cost containment, or growth.  These are all lagging indicators of performance: they are not the causes.

Thus, a strategist needs to appreciate Porter’s other meaning of focus. It has to with the way that economic power is created through coordination of actions (policies) that interact and overlap in ways that provide power over competitors. When we are talking about business strategy, we are really talking about the acumen of understanding how value is created, for which I will provide two examples:

  • Steve Jobs of Apple Computer relentlessly focused the organization on workable and elegant product designs. Apple did this better than its competitors, and its success has been legendary.
  • Sam Walton of Wal-Mart recognized opportunity in serving the rural retail market with everyday low-prices stores. Instead of copying the best practices of larger competitors like K-Mart, he focused his organization on supply chain policies and resources that redefined the concept of the store as a network

Organizational Strong Mindedness

Reiterating earlier points in this series of articles, good strategic thinkers are the source of insights that foster good strategies. To leverage the talents of individuals, organizations need to allow or encourage the sharing of insights and ideas.

In the organizational setting, strong mindedness is the ability to identify a focal point for success, and maintain attention to that focal point. Strategy is about focus and the application of leverage. The question for the strategist is, what is the “one thing” that is most important for my organization’s future success?

Shunryu Suzuki, a popularizer of Zen philosophy in the United States said, “The most important thing it to find out what is the most important thing.” How have you applied focus in your strategic thinking?

Absolut Vodka’s Search for Strategic Insights: Lessons for the Strategic Thinker

Greg Githens 6 Comments

Lessons for Strategic ThinkersHere is a problem statement.  This article explores its resolution, applying the perspective of a strategic thinker and developing lessons applicable for other situations.

Absolut Vodka is a go-to name for ordering cocktails at the bar. But when it comes to entertaining at home, beer, wine, and other spirits are also top of mind. However, celebrations are increasingly happening in personal places – houses, apartments, rooftops, and backyards – especially in the summer. So we wanted to get people thinking of Absolut for all their house party needs.

This was the situation faced by Pernod Rickard USA, the US distributor of Absolut Vodka. Do people buy liquor for home parties because of the quality of the liquor, or for something else? What insights could be useful in constructing a strategy to effectively penetrate home-party market segment.  These are the kinds of questions that can’t be determined in data mining and “hard data” analytics.

Absolut Vodka’s Search for Insight & Strategy

To get answers to these fundamental questions, Absolut paid a research company (ReD) to apply its expertise in ethnography. ReD dispatched a team to several locations, including Min Lieskovsky who allows Graeme Wood of the Atlantic magazine to shadow her at a home party in Austin, Texas (see his article titled “Ethnography Inc.” in the March 2013 issue). She spent the evening carefully observing people, especially when it came to activities involving alcoholic beverages. Lieskovsky would watch carefully as guess arrived, greeted the hostess, and interacted with other guests. She would note what happened at each step and note the patterns (which became essential to the strategy).

The academic discipline of ethnography is associated with anthropology, and involves careful observation of native cultures.  Now being increasingly applied to business contexts, ethnographers carefully observe people (in this case, the behaviors of party goers) and objects they interact with (liquor). In this case, the researchers were searching for patterns in “the rules and rituals – spoken and unspoken –that govern Americans’ drinking lives, and by extension their vodka buying habits.”

Pattern Searching

In analyzing observations from 18 home parties in Columbus, New York and Austin, Lieskovsky and her colleagues noticed a common pattern in the giving of liquor to the hostess:

“They told anecdotes about their own lives in which the product played a central role – humorous self-depreciating stories about first encountering a vodka, or discovering a liqueur while traveling in Costa Rica or Mexico.”

The anecdotes had to do with humor and adventure. The chemistry of the liquor (Absolut’s branding premise for beverages sold in bars), was of little importance. We’ll see how this pattern was valuable momentarily, but first we need to quickly review the role of sense making in the generation of strategic insights.

Sense Making & the Generation of Strategic Insights

Sense-making is the ability to interpret patterns, where the interpretation forms a story that is relevant to the stakeholder. When we make sense of things, we take the data and look for connections. The result is the ability to gain alignment and commitment in areas that have complexity, ambiguity, or high uncertainty.

Tip: it is often useful to say to yourself, “What is interesting about this?” In this case, gifts were not about alcoholic purity.  The gift had deeper meaning revealed something about the story teller’s identity and functioned to make the giver and giftee more intimately connected as people.

Wrapping your product in story is the insight for the product developers. It is an opportunity to develop a marketing brand strategy. Maxime Kouchnir, VP of Vodka Marketing of Absolut’s distributor said, “At the end of the day, we manufacture a spirit, but we have to sell an experience.”

The core insight for marketing Absolut at home parties is to recognize the importance of conviviality and humor. People desire to be conversational and witty.

A Focused Strategy for Home Parties

Good strategies are coherent and focused. Here we have a defined market segment, and we now understand something about the motivations of the consumer.  We need to exploit it.

Given the trends for mobile computing, it was natural to develop a mobile application for home party planning. The party planner now has a tool for selecting a clever party theme. Then there are ideas for sparking conversation and wittiness. In Big Spaceship’s explanation, they said, “rather than simply telling people that Absolut is perfect for parties at home, we decided to help them host one. By creating a useful party generating tool we were able to communicate the brand’s message and give people something valuable to use.”  In the design of the app, you can draw a direct connection back to the themes found in the research of the ethnographers.

Strategic Thinkers “Go Native”

Now let’s step back.  One important learning from this example is that the strategic thinker can gain sights from “going native,” that is going into the field and directly observing the consumer experience.

Obviously, this immersion into the world of the customer takes time. So if you don’t personally think your time is better spent elsewhere, you can still practice strategic thinking by considering questions that need to be asked.  Try to step outside the normal frame to discover the crux of the matter.

Another lesson is that it’s not always about hard data. Qualitative data and observation is often the source of powerful strategic insights. Insights come from using empathy and probing for deeper meanings.  Often customers see the product entirely differently than does the product developer.

Finally, stay alert for patterns, look for interesting things, and strive to make sense of complexity. Insights will result.

How have you developed a deeper empathy for a business problem?

A Lesson on Recognizing and Applying Strategic Insights || 3M’s Post It Notes as an Example || Thinking Strategically

Greg Githens 1 Comment

recognizing and applying strategic insightsIn the article How Strategists Produce Strategic Insights, I introduced the concept of insights, defining them as a person’s realization of “the true nature of a thing” and/or its relationship to some contextual factor. The following example of the development of 3M’s Post It notes shows that it’s a valid definition. I found six strategic insights.

Insight #1 – A Strategic Thinker Recognizes Interesting Functional and Physical Properties

In 1968, 3M research scientist Dr. Spence Silver first developed the technology was working on an assigned project to improve the acrylate adhesives that 3M uses in many of its tapes. In a classic case of innovative serendipity, Silver found something quite remarkably different from what he was originally looking for. It was an adhesive that formed itself into tiny spheres with a diameter of a paper fiber. The spheres would not dissolve, could not be melted and were very sticky individually. But because they made only intermittent contact, they did not stick very strongly when coated onto tape backings.

Silver knew that he had a highly unusual new adhesive. Now the challenge was: How to find a commercial opportunity? For the next five years, Silver gave seminars and approached individual 3Mers, extolling the potential of this new adhesive and showing samples of it in spray-can form and as a bulletin board.

Insight #2 – A New Product Needs a User Who Will Find Utility

Art Fry a product developer at 3M was frustrated at how his scrap paper bookmarks kept falling out of his church choir hymnal. Fry’s insight was that using “Silver’s adhesive could make for a reliable bookmark.” This was the first practical application of what we now know as Post It notes.

Fry extended the bookmarking insight and realized that there was a broader application. In a BBC interview recounting the insight, Fry slaps his forehead with his palm and exclaims, “What we have here is not just a bookmark. It’s a whole new way to communicate.”

Insight #3 – Find New Ways to Gauge Market Potential for New, Unfamiliar Products  

Market research is difficult with really new products. Four test marketing experiments in different cities in 1978 had proven disappointing. Few people wanted to pay for a product when they could use cost-free scrap paper. Two 3M executives became personally involved in a test in Richmond, Virginia and achieved as useful insight when they experimented with giving away samples to fellow executives.  People liked them and wanted more!

The next trial was a marketing demonstration called the Boise Blitz, because of its intensity. It scored a 90 % reorder rate from free samples, twice what 3M had seen with any other office product.

With the results of the Boise Blitz, 3M knew that a market existed.  It could now commit to the time and cost of engineering and manufacturing the product on a commercial scale, which it accomplished in 1980.

Insight #4 – Exploit Your Core Competencies for Strategic Advantage  

There were many engineering challenges to solve with this brand-new product. One was the paradoxical challenge of getting a weak adhesive to adhere to the paper.  A second challenge was designing machines and manufacturing processes.

All US production was centered in a manufacturing facility near Louisville, Kentucky. There, 3M could apply its core competencies in engineering and manufacturing. 3M’s ability to design a robust, qualified, efficient manufacturing process was the key to the profitability of the product. An engineer who had worked at the Kentucky facility for years told me that they would joke that the Post-It manufacturing process was so lucrative that they were really just printing money.

It takes insight to recognize and match core competencies to engineering and production challenges.

Insight #5 – Extend Your Advantages (Product Family Line)

The “genius” of the technology is in the adhesive and its binding to the paper.  Now, with just a little imagination you can create an entire product line.

Insight #6 – Persistence and Ambition Are Components of Strategy

The story of Post-Its makes for a great narrative and it illustrates the formation of a strategy of opportunistically combining insights.  Yet, the product would have gone nowhere without the of the people involved.

  • It took twelve years from the time that Silver developed the adhesive until the product was launched.  At times, both Silver and Fry were working on the development “off budget.”
  • The company kept at the market research, too, not being discouraged by the poor results. Executives championed the somewhat-risky idea of giving the product away and watching for insight in the results.

As I look at the relationship of strategic thinking to strategy in this and other examples, I come to the conclusion that strategy is assembled out of insights and other things. Those other  things must include the  persistence and ambitions of individuals, which is the quality of strong mindedness. (Watch for a future article.)

Conclusion

I introduced this article by characterizing strategic insights. I wrote that they are a person’s realization of “the true nature of a thing” and/or its relationship to some contextual factor. In the above, I mentioned two individuals – Silver and Fry – who had realized something that seemed relevant and important.  The insights had to do with the contextual factors of materials, users, markets, competencies, and personal values. There are other contextual factors present in the case; however, it seemed a bit of an overkill to discuss them. They include: opportunities, viewpoints of the past/present/future, competitor behavior, macroeconomics, and 3M’s historical narrative from its founding to the time of the case.

Individuals acquire insights through conscious analysis mixed with unconscious (intuitive) cognition. The first example of this is Fry’s conscious effort to apply the adhesive to scrap paper for marking hymnals, combined with the realization that “this is a new way to communicate.” A second example was the market research that mixed formal analysis of demand with a leap-of-faith demonstration: Here are free samples. Use them and let us know when you want more.

Note that activities that involve trial and error often generate insights. Indeed, the very discovery of the adhesive was a result of experimentation and serendipity. Fry developed and tested a hypothesis: “Would this adhesive-coated scrap paper function effectively as a place holder in a hymnal?”  The initial attempts at market research did not signal potential, but a breakthrough insight came with the response to free samples in Richmond and its confirmation with the Boise Blitz.

Does the story of 3Ms Post Its provide you with a better understanding and appreciation of the value of strategic insights?  Would you like to learn more about how to generate, recognize, and organize them?

How to Improve Your Ability to Imagine the Future

Greg Githens 3 Comments

how to improve your ability to imagine the futureStrategic thinking is a style of thinking that – among other things – is concerned about the future.  When done well, we could say that strategic thinking makes a person more “futures ready;” that is, having an attitude that is comfortable with change, anticipates change, and proactive with responses. Unfortunately, this futures-ready stance is not common. However, we can train people to be more futures ready. This article provides an approach that starts with the individual.

A Thought Experiment

Try out this exercise. Imagine yourself 15 years ago. The year is 1998.  Consider these questions:

  • In 1998 mobile phones were gaining widespread use. Could you have imagined how they would have taken over functions like time keeping, photography, and gaming?  Could you have imagined laws being promulgated to restrict texting while driving?
  • In 1998, would you have imagined that any of your friends or family would have died “before their time?” I can say – based on my own experience with a death of someone close to me – that it makes a lasting impression and causes a re-thinking of priorities.
  • In 1998, most babies in the US were born to parents married to each other.  Today, more are born to single women than to married parents. Would you have predicted that?
  • In 1998, could you have imagined these two economic slowdowns: the “dot com bust” and the “Great Recession?”
  • In 1998, would you have imagined a terrorist attack on US soil that would have changed the structure of government, airport security, and entry into sporting events? The scope and far-ranging impact of the 9/11 attacks has created all kinds of change to the daily life of Americans and others.

I have conducted the above thought experiment with many people, and note this pattern: the person realizes that the amount of change has been astounding.  One person called their experience with change, “jaw dropping.” These memories and reminiscences can be quite strong and stimulate some interesting conversations; but, the point is to get them to shift their thinking towards the future.

Now, some readers would answer the thought experiment with this response, “Sure, I could have imagined this.”  However, you probably didn’t. You were probably concerned with the joys and problems of your life at that moment in time. You were (and are) probably like most people: you the present time is your reality. It is concrete, whereas the future is an abstraction that gets little of your attention.

After looking 15 years into the past, I next ask them to imagine 15 years into the future. If I want to really stimulate their imagination (or aggravate them), I ask them to imagine as much “jaw dropping change” for the future as they recall for the past. This is difficult, and requires encouragement.

Most people think tomorrow will be more of today. They develop views of the future that linear extrapolations of the current condition.

Let’s put the 15-year span into perspective. Home mortgages are typically 15 or 30 years.  Some people own their cars for 15 years and are even wearing the same suits and shoes. Fifteen years is the lifespan of a family dog. Those examples show us that 15 is an understandable span of time.

One common pattern is that people — looking back in time –often refer to the passage of time as a “blink” or “time flies.” However, when looking into the future, people tend to discount how fast it will arrive.  This asymmetry tells us that it is tough to be “futures ready.”

Envisioning the Future – Start With Some Easy Questions

The following questions are about the future, and have answers that require only a bit of arithmetic and imagination. Write down your answers to these questions.

  1. What is your age in the year 2028?  Imagine your parents or grandparents at that age and their physical and mental health? How old will your children be?
  2. How many years has your organization (employer) been in business in 2028?

Expand your answers with some written words or images. Linger on this description, engaging your intuition; does it feel right? Then try to look at that future with a different perspective and consider other questions that might help you with envisioning.

Trends – Useful but Remember the Wildcard Scenario

Invariably, the discussion of the future brings in trends and forecasting, so go ahead and make note of the them. The typical list includes: climate change, wearable technology, population growth, nations that we now consider developing are fully developed, more weapons (international and domestic), and more globally-interconnected communications.

Futurists recommend that any futures-ready view include a “wild card scenario.”  Consult the above thought experiment placing you in the year 1998: terrorist attacks and the Great Recession might qualify as wildcards: extraordinary events that might be difficult to anticipate but have far-ranging effects.  Here are a two ideas for wildcards that could disrupt life as we now know it: pandemics and a large meteor strike.

Delight and Disaster Scenarios

Here is one more exercise for your imagination. Imagine two futures. One is optimistic and wonderful. It is the ideal world.  The second scenario is one that is more pessimistic.  Explore what that scenario is like for you personality, your organization, and your network of friends, family, and social organizations. Emphasize the impact of the scenario, rather than the probability of occurrence.

Recognize How Status Quo Becomes a  Barrier

Earlier I noted that people don’t do as well with future imaginings compared to past rememberings.

One reason is that  people tend to remember things that are recent, concrete, and salient. This is often referred to as the  anchoring bias.  A second reason is that the future is ambiguous and people tend to be ambiguity avoiders. People prefer to think and talk about things that they have evidence for, and avoid things that don’t.

What is most real? The present. This shows up as status quo thinking. Recognize it as a barrier, and apply both imagination and analysis to developing a view of the future.

Expanding the Future

These thought experiments add value to your strategic thinking because they place patterns and ideas into your memory. Your subconscious  works with these concepts by recognizing patterns and producing insights.

What other ideas do you have for helping individuals become more “futures ready?”

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Action Without Thought is Impulsiveness, Thought Without Action is Procrastination

Greg Githens 5 Comments

Action with thought is impulsiveness thought without action is procrastination - Greg Githens

Impulsiveness is “the trait of acting suddenly on impulse without reflection.” Impulses are often described as “whims, sudden involuntary inclinations, unpremeditated, and instinctual urges.” Impulsiveness is good in some situations: an almost child-like quality marked by spontaneity, playfulness, and humor.

On the other hand, impulsiveness may be nothing more than bad habit and selfishness. When impulsiveness is unwanted, the message seems to be this:

think – that is, reflect at a deeper level – before acting.

The opposite of strategic thinking might be mindlessness. The characteristics of mindless thinking are little concern with outcomes, present focused, focus on concrete elements of the task, little imagination, little courage, lost in details, and unconcerned with opportunities.  When scientists want to study people with high degrees of impulsivity, they research inmates in prisons!

Procrastination is a habit of delaying action on something that is important. It is often habitual and arises from analysis paralysis, lazy thinking, fear, or unclear values. Procrastinators should take action, but don’t.

Procrastination is not an intentional delay to minimize the probability of loss.  As psychologist Piers Steel (author of the The Procrastination Equation) points out, procrastination is an irrational delay. Thus, procrastination is not strategic in the sense of avoiding threats or capturing opportunities.

Both Impulsiveness and Procrastination Are Disengaged Thinking

The extraordinary availability of gadgetry – smartphones and the like – seems rule people’s life: stories emerge of people checking for updates in the most inappropriate of places or times: church, job interviews, seminars, driving, and even sex!

Gadgetry and impulsiveness seem to go together. People need to think through the consequences.  Impulsive use of gadgetry is also procrastination, in that it defers action something important that you know you should be doing (developing a spiritual life, showing a basic courtesy to an interviewer, paying attention to new learnings, being a safe driver, being intimate).

People who thinking strategically focus on that which is important to their success. They know that there are more and less important things in life, and they need to make choices about when to be bold and when to be cautious.

To Think Strategically is to Balance Thought and Action

Both impulsiveness and procrastination seem to be in tension with each other. That means that each is a polarity to manage, and the key in any polarity is to manage a balance. How?  First, I try to monitor and manage my attention so that I don’t spend too much time in thought, and to catch myself when I am impulsively plunging into action.  Even better, I trying to both “think and do” simultaneously; with practice, it is not too hard.  Also, I find perspective in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s quote:

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.

Second, I keep in mind the idea that mistakes can easily be made (by me and by others). I constantly try to be alert for mistakes, and I have internalized that into a technique that I call The Compact Approach to Strategy.

The third thing I do is related to mistake avoidance: I maintain the vision or working definition of success for myself or the endeavor at hand. Strategic thinking is not the same as creative thinking; creative thinking is concerned with cleverness and strategic thinking is concerned with strategy and success.

Fourth, I recall experiences in agile product development organizations, where they divide work into discrete chunks, and use experimentation and prototyping.  This iterative approach gives us useful information that allows them to rapidly move towards workable ideas.  They are not concerned with the perfection; they are concerned with workable ideas that serve as small wins for betterment.

Are You “Lost in the Weeds?”

I frequently am asked a question by people who know they should be strategic, but are trapped by habit into a comfort zone of technical activities. They ask, “How do I keep myself from being lost in the weeds?”

My reply is that they first should congratulate themselves, because they are recognizing they have a problem that is limiting their effectiveness. This is not unlike addiction recovery programs; the first step is to “admit that you have a problem” and understand how this problem is affecting yourself and others.  (Admittedly, the problem of “being tactical” rather than strategic may not equate to the misery of drug addiction, but it still affects your life in that you may be missing opportunities that could lead to your success.)

“Being tactical rather than strategic” is a form of procrastination.

Regardless, being “lost in the weeds” is both a habit of spending too much time in your comfort  zone (rather than your learning zone). As basic as it may be, the advice is simple: raise up your head (pay attention) and look around (at the strategic context).

Competent strategic thinkers manage their attention, and are aware of the balance between contemplation and action. As you get more comfortable with this balance, you will find that thought and action are more similar than they are different.

How does the idea that “action without thought is impulsiveness and thought without action is procrastination” apply to your goal to be a better strategic thinker?

Alertness for Strategic Opportunities: Hold These Three Attitudes

Greg Githens 3 Comments

opportunities are everywhere

All though it is true that strategy involves some sort of premeditation, any experienced general knows that the plan will change with the first shots of battle. Opportunities will open up in unexpected places; so, strategic thinkers want to be alert – watchful, vigilant, and perceptive – for opportunities.

Passive and Active Opportunity Recognition

An opportunity is an event, observation, or option that has the potential to be favorable to someone. The word opportunity in Latin is a contraction of the words “ob” and “portus,” meaning facing in the direction of harbor.  Picture yourself as a Roman seaman, sailing in from the treacherous sea, with the wind blowing you naturally into the harbor. This is passive opportunity recognition: sometimes opportunities happen on their own. Luck is a good thing! Accept the gift and move on.

Entrepreneurs develop a sense of discovering, pursuing, and capitalizing on opportunities that lead to principled success. They are active in their thinking. Again, picture yourself as a Roman seaman entering a port filled with people who want to trade with you.  Your short-term opportunity is to buy and sell. Your long-term opportunity is the recognition of patterns and development of business relationships.

There are three attitudes that can help you be more alert to opportunities.

Attitude 1: Expect to be Surprised

Status quo situations are stable, predictable, and understandable. Although future can be these things, it can also be the opposite. You will be more likely to recognize opportunity if you assume your situation is characterized with these terms: dynamic, ill-structured, ambiguous, and unpredictable.

Evidence is all around us that some industries are undergoing profound and disruptive change. The winners are not those who have the grandest aspirations and goals and most polished processes; they are the ones who can recognize the change early enough and adapt with agility. You will increase your chances for success if you,

Assume the situation is chaotic, and then ask yourself: where are the opportunities?Strategic Thinking Definition

Attitude 2: Have a Mentality of Abundance

Here we choose an assumption that we are blessed an abundance of creativity, talent, connections, ideas, technology, karma, and so forth. Admittedly it is optimistic, but holding an attitude of abundance doesn’t need to be seen as unrealistic.

Here is a personal example: I don’t particularly like to prospect for new clients. However, I find that when I assume (imagine, visualize)  that people will say, “I’m really glad you contacted me,” I find that I am more motivated to make the contacts.  Sometimes the prospecting pays off handsomely!

I see the opposite attitude frequently: the attitude of scarcity. The attitude of scarcity appears when a person assumes that there is finite and limited time, money, people, or resources.  Here is one example of how it manifests itself. In my seminars, I often have an icebreaker game that involves designing a structure out of pipe cleaners where teams have to design and construct it in 10 minutes.  When we debrief afterwards, participants typically note that the time limit restricted the quality of their design. My response to them is, “I would have given you more time if you would have asked for it. I also have more materials available and I would have given you more if you would have asked.”  Their faces show amazement as they realize their scarcity assumption about time and resources has foreclosed on an opportunity.

You will be more alert to opportunity if you hold an attitude of abundance.

Attitude 3: The Criterion is Plausibility, Not Perfection

When opportunities emerge, they are usually messy and incomplete. These imperfections are discouraging if not downright unattractive. Sometimes and it seems little use in building a business case. This observation from venture capitalist Don Rainey shows the value of looking past imperfections,

Your ability to see the imperfection shouldn’t blind you to the larger possibilities. In my venture capital firm, when we hire new, (typically younger people), into the business, we are accustomed to the newcomers hating every deal. They are smart enough to see the imperfection but not yet experienced enough to be confident accepting that the imperfection doesn’t define the opportunity. Endeavor to see the opportunity in spite of the imperfection of the current presentation.

I suggest that you consciously use the word “plausible” as you evaluate the worthiness of an opportunity.  This helps you make a nice conceptual fit with the 4Ps futures that I discussed in this article.

Calm and Relaxed

As with any kind of strategic thinking, you will get better results if you are in a relaxed and playful state of mind.

The right attitudes and mindset towards opportunity will make you a better strategic thinker. In addition to these three attitudes, what mindsets will help you?

How Strategists Produce Strategic Insights

Greg Githens 6 Comments
how strategist produce strategic insights

In my book, How to Think Strategically, I describe a map of strategic thinking. One of the most important landmarks on that map is insight. When you want to assure that you are thinking strategically, remember this:

The purpose of strategic thinking is to produce insights

 Insight is,

A person’s realization of “the true nature of a thing” and/or its relationship to some contextual factor.

 Examples of Strategic Insights

The discovery and application of  insights is central to strategy. The process of thinking strategically is purposeful in that the strategist intends to create advantage in the future. A few examples of strategic business insights are:

  • A marketeer’s realization that a customer need is not being met adequately by existing products or functions
  • An employee’s realization that an impending piece of regulation or legislation will fundamentally alter the industry.
  • An auditor’s realization that a pattern of transactions show fraud
  • An engineer’s realization that they have created a novel invention

Strategic insights are those insights that are useful for developing organizational strategy.

Three Kinds of Insights Needed for Business Strategy

In the context of organizational strategy, the strategist is searching for three kinds of insight. They are:

  • Insights about the current situation. What are the problems and opportunities?  What are stakeholder aspirations and motivations?
  • Insights about the future. What will be different, and what is preferred? Since choice of customers tends to be one of the most strategic decisions, what customers might be best to serve?
  • Insights about how to bridge the gap between present and future. These insights involve problem solving: taking into account a full range of constraints: competitive response, political will, resources, and organization.

Insights are a Neurological Flash

Research into the functions of the brain reveal  the right hemisphere a region (more specifically in the right hippocampus) is the location responsible for  insights involving verbal information. As neuroscientists continue mapping the brain, we are sure to get a better understanding of those mechanisms responsible for the practice of thinking strategically.

How to Generate Insights: Balance Thinking Hard with Detachment

Individuals have their own style of doing things. Research has not shown one best practice for generating insights. Rather than give you a cookbook, let me encourage you to apply some energy to each of these five activities.  Be patient, and insights will emerge!

  • Preparation – identifying issues, collecting and categorizing information, assembling resources
  • Analysis – actively looking for relationships and patterns in data. Continually asking questions and reframing to find new perspectives. Searching for what is interesting. Validation and hypothesis testing.
  • Detachment – Getting away from the issues and allowing the subconscious to work on the issues.
  • Articulation – Explaining the crux of the situation to others. Trial and error solutions.
  • Refinement and iteration – Returning to earlier activities.

Strategic Insights Are Those That Are Relevant and Meaningful

I earlier defined insight as  a person’s realization of “the true nature of a thing” and/or its relationship to some contextual factor.   I close out this article with exploring the final part of the definition, the “relationship to some contextual factor.”

When people hear the word “insight” they typically assume that it must be a brilliant new observation: an epiphany.  However, I find that kind of “aha” to be rare. Instead of brilliance, I keep it simple by testing it with this criteria of relevance and meaningfulness. Here’s a useful question:

Is the insight relevant and meaningful?

A relevant insight is one that is connected to current situation, future, and the bridge between the two (these were mentioned earlier in this article). Ideally, this creates some sense of alignment.

A meaningful insight is one that makes sense in a narrative. Here, I imagine myself in the future explaining how I created a successful strategy. If find that as I grapple with expressing the insight, I get a better sense of its worth and its motivational power.

Finally, a “contextual factor” is something that is external to the organization.  Examples include technological change, the economy, a social trend, etc. For example, Absolute Vodka had data that its products were purchased for drinking at home parties. But, why? It turns out that many people buy a particular brand of spirits because that they connect it to a personal anecdote; telling that anecdote to others is a way to be humorous or to relate an adventure. This insight gives the company a foundation for creating marketing and product development strategies.

Implications for Organizational Process

Because organizations do not share a single brain, strategic thinking can only be a capability of individuals. This has important implications for the process of strategy. Most importantly, a good strategy development processes should allow time for individual research, analysis, and reflection. Individuals acquire insights through conscious analysis mixed with unconscious (intuitive) cognition.

It is has been said that genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. Doesn’t it make sense that the perspiration is the act of thinking strategically to produce the insights?

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