Adventure of Strategy

"Find people who disagree with you. If you get mad at them, it's a good sign you need to think. Fight as if you're right; listen as if you're wrong."

Bob Sutton (Co-author : Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths and Total Nonsense)

Expanding on this, I've just come across a paper by Aneen Karnani at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, titled Essence of Strategy: Controversial Choices.

While not aimed at professional service firms specifically, the paper does address many of the challenges faced by professional service firm strategists in today's complex world. Especially the idea of embracing controversy and dissent and channelling it as a tool to create better strategy, rather than try to subdue and avoid conflict in favour of collegial "group-think."

The abstract .....

"The essence of strategy is to make controversial choices; this is the only way to gain a competitive advantage. Both strategy development and execution require making difficult choices and trade-offs often in the context of much uncertainty. Smart managers are bound to have opposing views given the nature of strategic decisions. This paper presents a process for strategy development that can help managers surface this conflict, and then manage and resolve the conflict, thus resulting in more effective strategic choices."

On Vision (A Vision is not a Strategy) .....

"In the lobby of many companies you will find a beautifully framed vision statement. However, if you take that vision statement and hang it in the lobby of a different company, most people would never notice the difference. These statements are often trite and full of platitudes. Besides, they are generic and exchangeable, not controversial and hence, not strategic!"

On confronting differences .....

"Confronting differences is the key. We need to bring conflict out into the open. This is how wise trade-offs among competing alternatives can be made. Intellectual debate among managers with divergent views is a vital source of creative and innovative solutions within the company. Conflict is the source of creativity;dissent is the source of learning. We learn by talking with someone with whom we disagree. Managers must confront conflict rather than avoid it. Conflict, of course, needs to be managed such that it is constructive and intellectual."

On generating conflict .....

"Do not settle for a premature consensus. The firm should explore different strategic alternatives and analyze the trade-offs involved, thoroughly. A quick decision on a particular option might mean that a better alternative is ignored. Even if the 'right' course of action was chosen, the managers may not fully understand the negative aspects of the chosen alternative well enough and risk running into problems implementing the strategy. A complete understanding of the various alternatives and their pros and cons, usually achieved through extensive debate, is essential to making a good choice and executing it well."

and

"It is not enough to merely tolerate dissent; firms must actively encourage dissent. [This is almost completely counter-intuitive for most professional service firms - Rob] Senior managers need to actively seek out opposing points of view and draw out people who are hesitant to volunteer negative or contrary opinions. It is important to keep in mind that as a senior manager, it is beneficial to not express your position too early in the discussion since it will intimidate some subordinatesfrom voicing a differing opinion. An outside facilitator can help the company to bring forth different points of view during the strategic planning process. To avoid 'group think', diversity among the management team is also important. This is diversity in terms of education, functional expertise, work experiences, and business perspectives. You may invite someone who does not 'belong' there as well, such as a manager from a different division in the company, to your next task force or strategic planning meeting to gain his/her perspective."

Well worth a read (17 pages.) The article can be downloaded as a PDF by clicking here, or from the Social Science Research Network (free registration required) which has a whole library of interesting articles. Thanks to ÊîøÊ?ªÂ§ßÂ??ȆêÊ?¨Â?dž¥Á†îÁ©?‰??ÂøÉ (Center for Prediction Markets, National Chenchi University) for the pointer to this resource.

Thanks Rob. This is great stuff and right on target. Conflict is the key to changes that work, not change for change sake.