Lean Means Don’t Be a Dumb-Ass

By Pascal Dennis

I owe this gem to our friends & colleagues in the great state of Alabama.

Our partners there have a way with words, and a fine appreciation of Lean fundamentals.

Lean is ‘simple’, is it not?

1. Define Purpose clearly
2. Make problems visible at all levels
3. Treat people with respect – team members, customers, suppliers and the community
4. Involve everybody In problem solving

Lean methods like visual management, standardized work, Help Chains and the like are about making problems visible, so we can fix them.

Once the problem is visible, the countermeasure is often obvious, no?

To be sure, some problems (e.g. Strategic, Design, Supply Chain, machine, information flow etc.) are complex and have multiple causes.

Countermeasures reveal themselves only after much reflection and experimentation. Lean methods enable this process. (Without them we often jump to a dumb-ass ‘countermeasure’)

An old Henny Youngman joke goes like this:

Henny, flapping his arms like wings. “I went to my doctor and told him it hurts when I do this!” Henny makes a face. “The doctor told me, don’t do that!”

Lean methods help us understand what ‘that’ is, so we can fix it.

Our challenge is that we often learn dumb-ass things in college and in dysfunctional organizations. Things like, let’s hide our problems, let’s brutalize our team members, let’s try to hoodwink our customers, and the like.

The truth will out.

Don’t be a dumb-ass.

Best regards,

Pascal

PS Andy & Me and the Hospital, describes how not to be a dumb-ass in healthcare.




In case you missed our last few blogs... please feel free to have another look…

Scatter - Our Nemesis
The Biggest Weakness is Contemporary Business Culture?
What Makes a Great Sensei?
Beware Prizes, Belts & Self-appointed Experts

Scatter - Our Nemesis

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

Big Company Disease has many causes.

One of the most subtle is our inability to ‘wrap our arms around’ the PDCA cycle.

Myriad improvement cycles begin – but they become fragmented:

• Group A develops the Plan,
• Group B deploys,
• Group C checks the Plan, and
• Group D adjusts it.

I call this Scatter, with a deep bow to the late, great Al Ward – friend, colleague & profound Lean thinker.

Al described this syndrome to me over lunch a decade ago, and then again in his splendid book Lean Product & Process Design.

Improvement, whether a Kaizen Workshop, Problem Solving cycle or Strategy A3, requires complete PDCA cycles

One person (or team) needs to wrap her arms around the cycle, and thereby develop the profound, sympathetic knowledge central to breakthrough.

Thereby, our entire brains start firing – Left, Right, prefrontal cortex etc.

The countermeasures we select are usually simple and clear.

There’s usually a sense of release. “Of course! Why didn’t we see it before!”

As opposed to the ponderous, countermeasure-by-committee stuff that blights so many report outs.

So how to reduce Scatter?

Lean fundamentals like visual management and Leader standard work are a good start.

Veteran Lean companies like Toyota have developed the Chief Engineer role in Design, and Key Thinker (aka Deployment Leader or Pacemaker) role in Strategy Deployment.

Their job is to oversee & manage broad PDCA cycles – and to record & share the learning.

There are all a good place to start in your never-ending battle with Scatter.

Best regards,

Pascal



In case you missed our last few blogs... please feel free to have another look…

The Biggest Weakness is Contemporary Business Culture?
What Makes a Great Sensei?
Beware Prizes, Belts & Self-appointed Experts
Aikido & Lean – It’s All the Same

There is No Right Answer in Strategy

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

Building on a blog from earlier this year, the strategy is not about perfection. In fact, there is no right strategy.

This is often difficult for senior leaders to accept because it runs contrary to their experience.

Senior leaders are usually the smartest kids in the class, the ones who always have the right answer.

They naturally enjoy the glow of being ‘right’ (synonymous with being ‘smart’). This pattern deepens as they embark on their chosen professions.

Again, they are the smartest people in the room, the ones with the answers, who confidently define what we need to do next.

Such confidence is an important element of leadership. Indeed, good leaders exude a feeling of ‘we will succeed beyond any possibility of doubt.’

Such confidence allows people to relax and get on with the job.

And so, most senior leaders have been conditioned to want to be ‘right’. But, as I said, there is no right strategy.

The past is not the future, and no amount of analysis and reflection will predict the myriad permutations the business chessboard will express.

Some people conclude therefore, that there is no point to developing strategy, that it’s best to ‘just react’ to what happens.

[For strategy geeks, in my opinion, doing so entails misunderstanding the great Henry Mintzberg’s ‘emergent strategy’ concept.]

Yes, it’s true that nowadays it seems there are ‘Black Swans’ everywhere. So why bother with strategy at all?

Twas ever thus – and forever will be. You want to see Black Swans? Check out Ken Burns splendid Vietnam documentary – the episodes that focus on 1968.

There is no right strategy – but there is a right process. By reflecting deeply on what’s happened, on where we want to go, and on what’s preventing us, we better understand the chessboard, the terrain, the pieces, competitors, and our capabilities.

If our strategic planning and deployment process is simple, waste- and hassle-free, we begin the understand the important gaps in technology, customer experience, culture, capability and management systems.

And we take action, we strengthen our weak points, we plug the gaps, we prepare.

In effect, we are projecting our nervous system in to the future, so that when and if the Black Swan appears, we’re not paralyzed. We’re alert, focused and confident. “Folks, this isn’t anything that hasn’t happened before…”

Sound strategic planning, therefore, builds fortitude and tenacity. This is most obvious in sports, where Black Swans are not uncommon. Nobody can predict which way the ball will bounce, or what the score is after the first ten minutes.

But is you have a clear plan and a good understanding of the terrain, competition, your capabilities and have worked on your gaps, you’re much more likely to recover from whatever fate throws your way.

Our articulated Purpose and strategy, therefore, should be clear and simple, as should our strategic planning process.

Nimbleness is of the essence. We should be able to quickly align and deploy, and just as quickly realign and redeploy.

Modular plans, visual management, stand-up meetings, brevity, a shared simple problem solving method are important elements of agility. (How does all this fit together? My books are essentially movies about it, pardon the plug.)

Corporate planning in many large organizations is, sadly, the opposite of nimble. The following adjectives come to mind: ponderous, heavy, boring, wasteful, difficult, confusing…

By adhering to a heavy, formal annual planning process, we are, in effect, projecting our punches. A droll competitor might wait till we publish our strategy, and then the day after, change theirs…

There is no right answer in strategy, but there is a right process.

Best wishes,

Pascal



In case you missed our last few blogs... please feel free to have another look…

Content Follows Form or Acting Your Way to New Thinking
Value & Waste at the Imperial Grill
Value in an Age of Endless Innovation
The Power of One Page

Strategy in a Time of Explosive Change

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

May you live in interesting times – Chinese Curse

Interesting times indeed, no? The reasons are too long to recite here – changing technology, customer expectations, internationalization, rapid cultural shifts, the explosion of information…

Technological change, for example, is so rapid and severe that in many industries we can no longer confidently define value.

The ‘Eight Essential’ technologies – Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, AI, Blockchain, Robotics, Drones, Internet of Things, and 3-D Printing have exploded the ‘design space’.

Only by developing deep empathy with our customers & their customer journeys can we begin to understand what’s important to them. And even then, value is a moving target.

So it goes…

How to manage one’s business (and one’s life) in such times?

Let’s focus on the most important things first: How do we develop and deploy strategy in ‘interesting’ times?

Quick & ‘Easy’ Strategy

Keep it simple – if you can’t tell the story with one-page, do you understand it?

Accept that when it comes to strategy, perfection is impossible - and not even desirable! Remember, there is no right answer in strategy – only a right process!

Ensure, therefore, that purpose & logic are clear so that when you inevitably ‘pivot’, you’ll know what parts of your hypothesis were sound or not, and why.

Choose!

Strategy is not about deciding what’s important. All the ideas your team proposes are likely ‘important’. But you can’t do them all – you have to choose.

Too often, leaders try to hedge their bets by choosing too much, with predictable results. Choose the critical few, check frequently, and be prepared to pivot.

Please don’t misunderstand the great Henry Mintzberg’s ‘emergent’ strategies concept. Just because you’re prepared to pivot, doesn’t mean you needn’t articulate a hypothesis!

Failing to do so, of course, condemns you to the limbo of endless reaction & limited learning.

Avoid Boring Strategy Docs

The typical corporate strategy comprises a ‘Mission’, ‘Initiatives’, and in effect, a ‘Budget with Prose’. (Tip of the hat to another great, Dr. Roger Martin, for this.)

These are deadly dull and have a soporific effect on your team. ZZZZZZZZZZZZ…..

Keep your strategy to one page, tell your story, and answer the Big Questions as simply and clearly as you can:

1. Who are we and what do we believe in?
2. Where are we going?
3. How do we get there? (What’s our underlying logic?)
4. What’s preventing us?
5. What capabilities do we need to develop?
6. What management systems do we need to develop?

These are difficult questions, of course, which require deep experience and reflection. To develop a good strategy we need to bounce between the worlds of action and thought.

As the saying goes, get out of the building.

And finally, even though we live in times of explosive change, remember that some things are eternal.

Reflection, experience and the intuition gained thereby are innately human, and unlikely to be replaced by technology.

More likely, in my view, technology will enable the strategist, just as a horse enables the rider.

But that’s the topic of another blog.

Here’s to interesting strategic journeys.

Best regards,

Pascal



In case you missed our last few blogs... please feel free to have another look…

The Function of Leaders is to Produce More Leaders
Complexity is a Crude State, Simplicity Marks the End of a Process of Refinement
Can Lean & Agile Help to Fix Our Courts? Part 4
Can Lean & Agile Help to Fix Our Courts? Part 3

Complexity is a Crude State, Simplicity Marks the End of a Process of Refinement

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

This one’s like gravity – not just a good idea, it’s the law…

It’s my privilege to help leaders develop strategies for complex organizations.

A recurrent refrain is ‘our business strategy is too complicated to explain simply.’ If so, do we really understand our strategy?

Don’t want to be misunderstood. I am all for deep dives into complexity armed with the latest analytical methods.

Doing so helps us understand our key gaps with respect to technology, customer experience, capability, culture and management systems.

With one proviso: we come out of the deep dive with 1) a clear purpose/destination, and 2) clear logic as to how we’re going to get there.

By clear logic, I mean something like: ‘To achieve our aspiration, the following things have to be true: 1) ..., 2) ..., 3) …..’

(Here’s another caveat: if our business strategy is truly too complicated to explain simply, maybe we’re too big… But that’s another blog.)

Simplicity reflects refinement in many other endeavors besides strategy. The great masters in art and music tend to refine, condense, concentrate, and consolidate as they develop.

Picasso famously evoked the figure of a massive bull with a single line. Count Basie’s piano solos are famous for their brevity, often no more than a few notes.

Ditto B.B. King, whose blues guitar solos are so ‘simple’ that ‘anybody’ can play them. (Guitarists can attest to how hard it is to play so ‘simply.)

Why then do we like complexity in strategy?

To a great degree, that’s how we’ve been trained. Business schools love complex analytical tools and equally complex case studies. You can fill a semester nicely thereby.

And students, usually perfectionist & driven (like yours truly), gobble them up. “I know something now!”

As I said, that’s all fine, provided we come out the other side with clarity & simplicity.

Another reason is that complexity in strategy can reduce accountability, and therefore individual risk. It’s hard to be wrong if nobody understands what you’re proposing.

There is no objective test. By contrast, defining a clear Purpose, and the logic as to how we’ll get there is testable, and therefore puts you on the spot.

Therein lies another important misunderstanding. We’ve been taught, wrongly, that the purpose of strategy is to be ‘right’.

And that’s wrong – and the topic of our next blog.

Best regards,

Pascal



In case you missed our last few blogs... please feel free to have another look…

Can Lean & Agile Help to Fix Our Courts? Part 4
Can Lean & Agile Help to Fix Our Courts? Part 3
The Role of Senior Leaders (Part 1)
Can Lean & Agile Help to Fix Our Courts? Part 2

Strategy is Not About Doing What’s “Important”

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

Be willing to make decisions. That's the most important quality in a good leader.
General George S. Patton

Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.
Napoleon Bonaparte

Plenty of misconceptions about this one.

We seem to think that developing our strategy entails asking each member of our senior team for their ‘laundry lists.’

Result? An overflowing project hopper, a pipeline that’s turned to cement, and a confusing message to team members.

Strategy is about choosing. “Here’s where we’re going, and these are the activities that’ll get us there. All these others are good ideas but they’re not our priority, so we’re going to put them in the Parking Lot for now.”

Of course, as noted in my earlier column, there is no ‘right answer’ in strategy. So, we articulate our hypothesis with the understanding that we’ll adjust it based on what happens.

Quick adjustments depend entirely on a strong management system that allows us to detect changes, and adjust and deploy our ‘emergent’ strategies.

Strategy is about deciding and about accepting the responsibility therein. ‘Deciding’ is the leader’s most difficult job.

Napoleon Bonaparte and George Patton were clear on this. (George W. Bush, perhaps dyslexic, was less elegant: “I’m the decider and I make the decisions.”)

Deciding means we’ve grasped the situation on the chessboard, and have articulated a plan. The ‘story’ behind the decision is an important test of the plan.

Does the story make sense? Is it compelling? Can we communicate it to our management team and organization?

Thus strategy is also story-telling. I write stories and poems for fun and to record my adventures around the world [Reflections of a Business Nomad].

Stories & poems keep our strategic thinking skills sharp. They help us read the chessboard - and decide.

Best regards,

Pascal




In case you missed our last few blogs... please feel free to have another look…

Agriculture - The Next Frontier?
Lean Thinking in Software Design
Problem Solving and the Worlds of Reflection & Experience
Learning How to Manage

Strategy and the Worlds of Thought & Experience

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

Strategy, like all problem solving, entails moving fluidly between the worlds of Thought & Experience.

We begin by trying to understand our core problem in the world of thought. We reflect on core strategic questions such as:

• What happened last year, and why?
• What worked, what did not work, and why?
• What do our customers expect of us?
• What do we need to achieve this year?
• What are our biggest obstacles?
• What’s changed in our environment?
• How capable is our team & our processes?

We use analytical tools like the ‘Q7’ and ‘New 7’ Quality Tools to begin to dispel the fog. Based on our understanding of our customers, organization, industry, technology etc. we begin form hypotheses around the core questions. (A professor pal tells me this is called ‘deductive reasoning’.)

Now we’re ready to ‘go see’ the world of experience. We want to sample as much of this world as we can. In a large organization, we should visit as many sites as possible. Stand in a circle if you can, as Taiichi Ohno suggest, until you see what’s actually happening. Then go somewhere else and do the same. It’s akin to crossing a river by jumping stone to stone, lingering a while at each. The more we sample, the more likely we are to grasp the underlying situation. (My pal tells me this is ‘inductive reasoning’.)

We then return to the world of thought to define the strategic problem (What Is Actually Happening & What Should Be Happening), what’s preventing us, and what we might do about it.

This movement between thought & experience is central to strategy and problem solving in general.

We need to be comfortable in both worlds - one hand digging deep into the earth, the other reaching for the sky.

Thought without action is lifeless. Action without thought is aimless.

Best,

Pascal




In case you missed our last few blogs... please feel free to have another look…

PDCA in the Trades
Nick Saban on the Power of Process Thinking
Lean and the Martial Arts
Daily PDCA is a Meditation

What is Courage & What’s It Mean for Strategy?

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

Strategy entails answering two questions: 1) Where are we going?, and 2) How are we going to get there?

Last time I talked about how we might create a pull for achievement, and thereby transcend the limitations of the carrot & stick.

Today I’d like to talk about how we stay the course. Achievement is hard, achievement hurts. How do we sustain our drive in the face of hurtles, hassles and hammerheads?

The ancients defined Four Cardinal Virtues: Prudence, Temperance, Justice and Courage.

Courage is the most admired, and rightly so. (Marcus Aurelius called in Fortitude). Breakthrough – transcendent, enduring achievement – requires all the Cardinal Virtues, and courage most of all. In fact, Courage makes the other virtues possible.

So what is Courage? It is not fearlessness. Courage is the capacity to overcome fear.

Courage, like True North, entails head and heart. [Getting the Right Things Done]

Courage without the head is simply foolhardiness. Courage means you understand the risks, and do it anyway.

Is courage a virtue under any circumstance? I'd say not. Is a courageous terrorist admirable?

Courage is only admirable when exercised in the service of others, of the greater good, of True North.

So what does this all mean for the practicing manager? Define & communicate Purpose clearly. Seek to develop Courage in yourself and your team.

Courage is our fuel. Understand that achievement hurts, and that you will fall down many times.

‘Fall down seven times, get up eight times…’

Best regards,

Pascal




In case you missed our last few blogs... please feel free to have another look…

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What is a Good Life?
To Learn Corporate Strategy, Study the Military Masters
Why is laughter important in business?

Lean Means Don’t Be a Dumb-Ass

By Pascal Dennis

I owe this gem to our friends & colleagues in the great state of Alabama.

Our partners there have a way with words, and a fine appreciation of Lean fundamentals.

Lean is ‘simple’, is it not?

1. Define Purpose clearly
2. Make problems visible at all levels
3. Treat people with respect – team members, customers, suppliers and the community
4. Involve everybody In problem solving

Lean methods like visual management, standardized work, Help Chains and the like are about making problems visible, so we can fix them.

Once the problem is visible, the countermeasure is often obvious, no?

To be sure, some problems (e.g. Strategic, Design, Supply Chain, machine, information flow etc.) are complex and have multiple causes.

Countermeasures reveal themselves only after much reflection and experimentation. Lean methods enable this process. (Without them we often jump to a dumb-ass ‘countermeasure’)

An old Henny Youngman joke goes like this:

Henny, flapping his arms like wings. “I went to my doctor and told him it hurts when I do this!” Henny makes a face. “The doctor told me, don’t do that!”

Lean methods help us understand what ‘that’ is, so we can fix it.

Our challenge is that we often learn dumb-ass things in college and in dysfunctional organizations. Things like, let’s hide our problems, let’s brutalize our team members, let’s try to hoodwink our customers, and the like.

The truth will out.

Don’t be a dumb-ass.

Best regards,

Pascal

PS Andy & Me and the Hospital, describes how not to be a dumb-ass in healthcare.




In case you missed our last few blogs... please feel free to have another look…

Lean – So ‘Easy’, It’s Hard
“Failing to Plan is Planning to Fail”
Building Quality into the Process
Standardized Work for Knowledge Workers

What is Intellectual Capital?, Part 2

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

In our last post, I suggested that, in the age of Apple, Facebook and Google, Intellectual Capital was at least as important is financial & physical capital.

If you agree, then our annual People Plan is as important as our Financial Plan.

What's the nature & current condition of our IC?

Does our IC match the needs of our Strategy?

What are our 'hot spots' with respect to IC?

How do we, as a management team, develop a shared understanding of our IC hot spots?

How do we grow our people so as to address our hot spots?

Difficult questions, which take time & skill to pose, let alone understand.

The best companies intuit such questions, and actively manage IC.

(Lean thinkers will remember Toyota's cornerstone: Respect for People.)

But these trail-blazers are still a small minority. We need to extend their insights & practices in the years to come.

Why is it so important to manage Intellectual Capital?

Because only thus you can prosper in high cost economies like Europe, America, Canada, Australia, Singapore etc...

Only by investing wisely in your people can you compete with low-cost competitors.

We have enough data points. The best companies in Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden and such out-compete their low-cost rivals by a wide margin.

China has a massive trade deficit with, wait for it, Switzerland...

Managing Intellectual Capital will be an on-going theme here.

Best,

Pascal


In case you missed our last few blogs... please feel free to have another look…

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Value Stream Maps
What is a Key Thinker?
Macro Value Stream Kaizen – Zoology

Neither Too Rigid, Nor Too Loose

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

When it comes to fundamentals like Strategy, Management System, Standardized Work, Quality in the Process and the like, it’s easy to become rigid and even doctrinaire.

After all, these are the concepts that underlie TPS, the ‘world’s most powerful production system’. In the circumstances, we’re right to be doctrinaire, aren’t we?

“We have to have four mother A3s – one each for People, Quality, Delivery and Cost! We have to have strategy A3s and dashboards for everything!

Standardized work means Content-Sequence-Timing-Expected Outcome! Quality in the Process means detect the abnormality, stop the process, fix the immediate problem and develop countermeasures for root causes!”

No doubt, you’ve heard this sort of thing too.

In fact, as we apply these timeless ideas in areas further and further from manufacturing, finesse is of the essence, and rigidity, a recipe for failure.

The further from manufacturing we get, the more important it is the we translate the principles, and not insist, “This is how did things at Toyota, or Honeywell, or Proctor & Gamble or…”

This is a major challenge for ‘Lean’ practitioners in these times of tumultuous change. Who cares if your muffler manufacturing factory has the best SMED process in the industry?

Demand for mufflers is going nowhere but down, no? But the principles underlying SMED – separate internal & external work, convert internal work to external work etc. – transcend manufacturing.

SMED principles can readily be applied to shortening changeover times in healthcare, aviation, and software design.

The same applies to any ‘Lean’ principle. Principles are eternal, countermeasures temporary.

And this reflects the deeper challenge facing the Lean movement these days.

Is ‘Lean’ a principles-based profession, or a skilled trade? The distinction is important.

I don’t want to be misunderstood. I respect and admire skilled tradespeople. They’re an honorable and essential element of successful organizations.

But they’re insufficient if you want to transform an organization or an industry. For that you need principles.

Principles are harder to internalize than countermeasures. But principles are eternal, whereas countermeasures are temporary.

Which brings me to the title of this piece, which a wise old gentleman taught me many years ago. The old gentleman is gone, and I am his scarcely adequate proxy.

Neither too rigid, nor too loose, expresses reflects the subtlety and intelligence needed to apply principles in ever more complex situations.

It reflects the need to be humble and learn from quick experiments – because we don’t really know, and can’t really know what’s going on unless we study the situation.

As a colleague likes to say, “If your first hypothesis isn’t embarrassing, you’re not really trying.”

Good advice in a world where Value is often a vague shadowy thing, and changing with every new technological miracle.

Best regards,

Pascal

Scatter - Our Nemesis

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

Big Company Disease has many causes.

One of the most subtle is our inability to ‘wrap our arms around’ the PDCA cycle.

Myriad improvement cycles begin – but they become fragmented:

• Group A develops the Plan,
• Group B deploys,
• Group C checks the Plan, and
• Group D adjusts it.

I call this Scatter, with a deep bow to the late, great Al Ward – friend, colleague & profound Lean thinker.

Al described this syndrome to me over lunch a decade ago, and then again in his splendid book Lean Product & Process Design.

Improvement, whether a Kaizen Workshop, Problem Solving cycle or Strategy A3, requires complete PDCA cycles

One person (or team) needs to wrap her arms around the cycle, and thereby develop the profound, sympathetic knowledge central to breakthrough.

Thereby, our entire brains start firing – Left, Right, prefrontal cortex etc.

The countermeasures we select are usually simple and clear.

There’s usually a sense of release. “Of course! Why didn’t we see it before!”

As opposed to the ponderous, countermeasure-by-committee stuff that blights so many report outs.

So how to reduce Scatter?

Lean fundamentals like visual management and Leader standard work are a good start.

Veteran Lean companies like Toyota have developed the Chief Engineer role in Design, and Key Thinker (aka Deployment Leader or Pacemaker) role in Strategy Deployment.

Their job is to oversee & manage broad PDCA cycles – and to record & share the learning.

There are all a good place to start in your never-ending battle with Scatter.

Best regards,

Pascal

Digital Transformation - the Critical Questions

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

Digital is eating the world, as they say, and every industry is feeling it.

How do you steer a digital transformation? How do you decide on a purpose and strategy, and deploy a course of action?

We need to translate the eternal questions of strategy to suit our new terrain:

1. What’s our Purpose?
2. Where will we play?
3. How will we win?
1. What’s preventing us?
2. What are our critical gaps in Technology, Customer Experience, People, Culture?
3. What’s our overall approach?
4. What capabilities are needed?
5. What management systems are needed?

Job One, as ever, is defining our aspiration – not a trivial task in a world of tumultuous technological change!

Our best hope is to get close to our customer, and develop empathy thereby. What are her jobs, pain and gain points?

Proctor and Gamble and the great A.G. Lafley famously defined the critical ‘Moments of Truth’ as 1) Seeing the product on the shelf, and 2) Using the product at home.

These are correct, of course, and especially so for consumer goods. But even in this industry, as we digitize our offering, other meaningful pain and gain points arise, no?

How else to explain the explosive growth that some commodity products experience – even in the face of the incumbent’s overwhelming marketing might?

Such products can develop loyal social media followers who unite, communicate and promote the product for no outwardly apparent gain.

Clearly, there are ‘invisible’ and satisfying gains at work.

In my view, these invisible gains and satisfactions entail some form of ‘this product/service makes me better/smarter/cooler than I am’.

Seen in this light, our critical questions take on new meaning, no?

And this is a big reason why digital transformations are proving much more difficult – it’s not just about coding.

Here’s to a safe, healthy, big-hearted and prosperous 2019,

Pascal

Strategy in a Time of Explosive Change

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

May you live in interesting times – Chinese Curse

Interesting times indeed, no? The reasons are too long to recite here – changing technology, customer expectations, internationalization, rapid cultural shifts, the explosion of information…

Technological change, for example, is so rapid and severe that in many industries we can no longer confidently define value.

The ‘Eight Essential’ technologies – Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, AI, Blockchain, Robotics, Drones, Internet of Things, and 3-D Printing have exploded the ‘design space’.

Only by developing deep empathy with our customers & their customer journeys can we begin to understand what’s important to them. And even then, value is a moving target.

So it goes…

How to manage one’s business (and one’s life) in such times?

Let’s focus on the most important things first: How do we develop and deploy strategy in ‘interesting’ times?

Quick & ‘Easy’ Strategy

Keep it simple – if you can’t tell the story with one-page, do you understand it?

Accept that when it comes to strategy, perfection is impossible - and not even desirable! Remember, there is no right answer in strategy – only a right process!

Ensure, therefore, that purpose & logic are clear so that when you inevitably ‘pivot’, you’ll know what parts of your hypothesis were sound or not, and why.

Choose!

Strategy is not about deciding what’s important. All the ideas your team proposes are likely ‘important’. But you can’t do them all – you have to choose.

Too often, leaders try to hedge their bets by choosing too much, with predictable results. Choose the critical few, check frequently, and be prepared to pivot.

Please don’t misunderstand the great Henry Mintzberg’s ‘emergent’ strategies concept. Just because you’re prepared to pivot, doesn’t mean you needn’t articulate a hypothesis!

Failing to do so, of course, condemns you to the limbo of endless reaction & limited learning.

Avoid Boring Strategy Docs

The typical corporate strategy comprises a ‘Mission’, ‘Initiatives’, and in effect, a ‘Budget with Prose’. (Tip of the hat to another great, Dr. Roger Martin, for this.)

These are deadly dull and have a soporific effect on your team. ZZZZZZZZZZZZ…..

Keep your strategy to one page, tell your story, and answer the Big Questions as simply and clearly as you can:

1. Who are we and what do we believe in?
2. Where are we going?
3. How do we get there? (What’s our underlying logic?)
4. What’s preventing us?
5. What capabilities do we need to develop?
6. What management systems do we need to develop?

These are difficult questions, of course, which require deep experience and reflection. To develop a good strategy we need to bounce between the worlds of action and thought.

As the saying goes, get out of the building.

And finally, even though we live in times of explosive change, remember that some things are eternal.

Reflection, experience and the intuition gained thereby are innately human, and unlikely to be replaced by technology.

More likely, in my view, technology will enable the strategist, just as a horse enables the rider.

But that’s the topic of another blog.

Here’s to interesting strategic journeys.

Best regards,

Pascal

There is No Right Answer in Strategy

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

Building on my last blog, the strategy is not about perfection. In fact, there is no right strategy.

This is often difficult for senior leaders to accept because it runs contrary to their experience.

Senior leaders are usually the smartest kids in the class, the ones who always have the right answer.

They naturally enjoy the glow of being ‘right’ (synonymous with being ‘smart’). This pattern deepens as they embark on their chosen professions.

Again, they are the smartest people in the room, the ones with the answers, who confidently define what we need to do next.

Such confidence is an important element of leadership. Indeed, good leaders exude a feeling of ‘we will succeed beyond any possibility of doubt.’

Such confidence allows people to relax and get on with the job.

And so, most senior leaders have been conditioned to want to be ‘right’. But, as I said, there is no right strategy.

The past is not the future, and no amount of analysis and reflection will predict the myriad permutations the business chessboard will express.

Some people conclude therefore, that there is no point to developing strategy, that it’s best to ‘just react’ to what happens.

[For strategy geeks, in my opinion, doing so entails misunderstanding the great Henry Mintzberg’s ‘emergent strategy’ concept.]

Yes, it’s true that nowadays it seems there are ‘Black Swans’ everywhere. So why bother with strategy at all?

Twas ever thus – and forever will be. You want to see Black Swans? Check out Ken Burns splendid Vietnam documentary – the episodes that focus on 1968.

There is no right strategy – but there is a right process. By reflecting deeply on what’s happened, on where we want to go, and on what’s preventing us, we better understand the chessboard, the terrain, the pieces, competitors, and our capabilities.

If our strategic planning and deployment process is simple, waste- and hassle-free, we begin the understand the important gaps in technology, customer experience, culture, capability and management systems.

And we take action, we strengthen our weak points, we plug the gaps, we prepare.

In effect, we are projecting our nervous system in to the future, so that when and if the Black Swan appears, we’re not paralyzed. We’re alert, focused and confident. “Folks, this isn’t anything that hasn’t happened before…”

Sound strategic planning, therefore, builds fortitude and tenacity. This is most obvious in sports, where Black Swans are not uncommon. Nobody can predict which way the ball will bounce, or what the score is after the first ten minutes.

But is you have a clear plan and a good understanding of the terrain, competition, your capabilities and have worked on your gaps, you’re much more likely to recover from whatever fate throws your way.

Our articulated Purpose and strategy, therefore, should be clear and simple, as should our strategic planning process.

Nimbleness is of the essence. We should be able to quickly align and deploy, and just as quickly realign and redeploy.

Modular plans, visual management, stand-up meetings, brevity, a shared simple problem solving method are important elements of agility. (How does all this fit together? My books are essentially movies about it, pardon the plug.)

Corporate planning in many large organizations is, sadly, the opposite of nimble. The following adjectives come to mind: ponderous, heavy, boring, wasteful, difficult, confusing…

By adhering to a heavy, formal annual planning process, we are, in effect, projecting our punches. A droll competitor might wait till we publish our strategy, and then the day after, change theirs…

There is no right answer in strategy, but there is a right process.

Best wishes,

Pascal

Complexity is a Crude State, Simplicity Marks the End of a Process of Refinement

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

This one’s like gravity – not just a good idea, it’s the law…

It’s my privilege to help leaders develop strategies for complex organizations.

A recurrent refrain is ‘our business strategy is too complicated to explain simply.’ If so, do we really understand our strategy?

Don’t want to be misunderstood. I am all for deep dives into complexity armed with the latest analytical methods.

Doing so helps us understand our key gaps with respect to technology, customer experience, capability, culture and management systems.

With one proviso: we come out of the deep dive with 1) a clear purpose/destination, and 2) clear logic as to how we’re going to get there.

By clear logic, I mean something like: ‘To achieve our aspiration, the following things have to be true: 1) ..., 2) ..., 3) …..’

(Here’s another caveat: if our business strategy is truly too complicated to explain simply, maybe we’re too big… But that’s another blog.)

Simplicity reflects refinement in many other endeavors besides strategy. The great masters in art and music tend to refine, condense, concentrate, and consolidate as they develop.

Picasso famously evoked the figure of a massive bull with a single line. Count Basie’s piano solos are famous for their brevity, often no more than a few notes.

Ditto B.B. King, whose blues guitar solos are so ‘simple’ that ‘anybody’ can play them. (Guitarists can attest to how hard it is to play so ‘simply.)

Why then do we like complexity in strategy?

To a great degree, that’s how we’ve been trained. Business schools love complex analytical tools and equally complex case studies. You can fill a semester nicely thereby.

And students, usually perfectionist & driven (like yours truly), gobble them up. “I know something now!”

As I said, that’s all fine, provided we come out the other side with clarity & simplicity.

Another reason is that complexity in strategy can reduce accountability, and therefore individual risk. It’s hard to be wrong if nobody understands what you’re proposing.

There is no objective test. By contrast, defining a clear Purpose, and the logic as to how we’ll get there is testable, and therefore puts you on the spot.

Therein lies another important misunderstanding. We’ve been taught, wrongly, that the purpose of strategy is to be ‘right’.

And that’s wrong – and the topic of our next blog.

Best regards,

Pascal

Strategy and the Worlds of Thought & Experience

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

Strategy, like all problem solving, entails moving fluidly between the worlds of Thought & Experience.

We begin by trying to understand our core problem in the world of thought. We reflect on core strategic questions such as:

• What happened last year, and why?
• What worked, what did not work, and why?
• What do our customers expect of us?
• What do we need to achieve this year?
• What are our biggest obstacles?
• What’s changed in our environment?
• How capable is our team & our processes?

We use analytical tools like the ‘Q7’ and ‘New 7’ Quality Tools to begin to dispel the fog. Based on our understanding of our customers, organization, industry, technology etc. we begin form hypotheses around the core questions. (A professor pal tells me this is called ‘deductive reasoning’.)

Now we’re ready to ‘go see’ the world of experience. We want to sample as much of this world as we can. In a large organization, we should visit as many sites as possible. Stand in a circle if you can, as Taiichi Ohno suggest, until you see what’s actually happening. Then go somewhere else and do the same. It’s akin to crossing a river by jumping stone to stone, lingering a while at each. The more we sample, the more likely we are to grasp the underlying situation. (My pal tells me this is ‘inductive reasoning’.)

We then return to the world of thought to define the strategic problem (What Is Actually Happening & What Should Be Happening), what’s preventing us, and what we might do about it.

This movement between thought & experience is central to strategy and problem solving in general.

We need to be comfortable in both worlds - one hand digging deep into the earth, the other reaching for the sky.

Thought without action is lifeless. Action without thought is aimless.

Best,

Pascal

What is Courage & What’s It Mean for Strategy?

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

Strategy entails answering two questions: 1) Where are we going?, and 2) How are we going to get there?

Last time I talked about how we might create a pull for achievement, and thereby transcend the limitations of the carrot & stick.

Today I’d like to talk about how we stay the course. Achievement is hard, achievement hurts. How do we sustain our drive in the face of hurtles, hassles and hammerheads?

The ancients defined Four Cardinal Virtues: Prudence, Temperance, Justice and Courage.

Courage is the most admired, and rightly so. (Marcus Aurelius called in Fortitude). Breakthrough – transcendent, enduring achievement – requires all the Cardinal Virtues, and courage most of all. In fact, Courage makes the other virtues possible.

So what is Courage? It is not fearlessness. Courage is the capacity to overcome fear.

Courage, like True North, entails head and heart. [Getting the Right Things Done]

Courage without the head is simply foolhardiness. Courage means you understand the risks, and do it anyway.

Is courage a virtue under any circumstance? I'd say not. Is a courageous terrorist admirable?

Courage is only admirable when exercised in the service of others, of the greater good, of True North.

So what does this all mean for the practicing manager? Define & communicate Purpose clearly. Seek to develop Courage in yourself and your team.

Courage is our fuel. Understand that achievement hurts, and that you will fall down many times.

‘Fall down seven times, get up eight times…’

Best regards,

Pascal

Stories, Poems & Strategy

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

I write stories and poems for fun and to record my adventures around the world.

But stories & poems also keep my strategic thinking sharp. Articulating a story entails deeply grasping a situation, a person or group of people, or an organization.

We’re hard-wired for stories. At day’s end our ancestors on the African savannah sat around the fire and told stories. They didn’t show PowerPoint slides.

Day’s end for me often means sitting in a restaurant somewhere, scribbling and doodling in my note book.

With luck & time I’m able to boil my impressions down to a few words and an image or two, which are the door to a deeper understanding.

I studied chemical engineering and business. My electives were literature courses. I love Walt Disney and his splendid invented word: imagineering

Reading a chessboard, a story or poem, a business situation – it’s all the same. The pros in every profession know this in their bones, do they not?

I’ve met a number of great CFO’s – they’re were all good at articulating the story behind the numbers.

So let me challenge my fellow propeller-heads. Crack open a book of stories or poems now and then.

Good for the mind, good for the soul.

Best regards,

Pascal

Strategy is Not About Doing What’s “Important”

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

Be willing to make decisions. That's the most important quality in a good leader.
General George S. Patton

Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.
Napoleon Bonaparte

Plenty of misconceptions about this one.

We seem to think that developing our strategy entails asking each member of our senior team for their ‘laundry lists.’

Result? An overflowing project hopper, a pipeline that’s turned to cement, and a confusing message to team members.

Strategy is about choosing. “Here’s where we’re going, and these are the activities that’ll get us there. All these others are good ideas but they’re not our priority, so we’re going to put them in the Parking Lot for now.”

Of course, as noted in my earlier column, there is no ‘right answer’ in strategy. So, we articulate our hypothesis with the understanding that we’ll adjust it based on what happens.

Quick adjustments depend entirely on a strong management system that allows us to detect changes, and adjust and deploy our ‘emergent’ strategies.

Strategy is about deciding and about accepting the responsibility therein. ‘Deciding’ is the leader’s most difficult job.

Napoleon Bonaparte and George Patton were clear on this. (George W. Bush, perhaps dyslexic, was less elegant: “I’m the decider and I make the decisions.”)

Deciding means we’ve grasped the situation on the chessboard, and have articulated a plan. The ‘story’ behind the decision is an important test of the plan.

Does the story make sense? Is it compelling? Can we communicate it to our management team and organization?

Thus strategy is also story-telling. I write stories and poems for fun and to record my adventures around the world [Reflections of a Business Nomad].

Stories & poems keep our strategic thinking skills sharp. They help us read the chessboard - and decide.

Best regards,

Pascal