Real strategy should happen in human conversations, not on lifeless excel sheets and ppts
I recently had the chance to lead a strategy meeting on how we could use product led growth (PLG) as a new lever for revenue. Only that it wasn’t a meeting, but more of a round table conversation in the boardroom. 15 people across different functions of the company were present: design, content, product, marketing, operations, engineering and the CEOs office. I didn’t use any presentations or spreadsheets. Just a list of thought provoking questions mixed with examples from different industries. As a service driven organisation that’s rapidly scaling, we had come together to tackle a messy, open ended challenge - how to initiate a new future that was much more product first. After 75 mins of intense discussions and active participation, that were sparked by the right questions, the entire group left the room with a fresh sense of purpose, energy and a real sense of alignment.
In most cases an execution problem is not really an execution problem. Its a strategy and alignment problem. And, numerous strategy meetings at the workplace are run using charts, excel sheets and powerpoint presentations - the stuff they teach you at business school. The energy in these meetings is focused on the brilliance of the analysis vs. the mindset and concerns of the audience. However, the only way to change minds is to build on existing knowledge and experience rather than argue against it. Most humans have an amazing ability to twist data to fit their existing assumptions. Its rare for people to change their opinions when confronted with inconvenient facts.
In a world that’s becoming more complex at an astonishingly fast pace, leaders face a dilemma of making effective strategic choices under uncertainity while engaging more people with different perspectives. Navigating and solving adaptive challenges demands the ability to have strategic conversations using a different set of leadership muscles - such as getting comfortable with ambiguity, asking penetrating questions, winning the full engagement of colleagues, and connecting insights from different sources in real time - all the stuff they don’t teach you at business school!
‘Moments of Impact - How to Design Strategic Conversations that Accelerate Change’
Fortunately, one can learn to design a Strategic Conversation (SC) by using the 5 principles from Chris Ertel and Lisa Kay Solomon’s amazing book.
Declare the objectives / Define the purpose: Is the conversation to build understanding, shape choices, or make decisions. A well designed SC requires that you develop a clear sense of the change that a group of people needs to make together - and how this conversation will advance that process.
My conversation was to help people build an understanding of product led growth (PLG) as well as shape a choice of using PLG to grow revenues.
Identify participants / Engage multiple perspectives: A well designed SC also requires that you dig deeper to understand the views, values and concerns of each participant and stakeholder group. It requires that you find out where opinions are aligned on the key issues and where they are not. And it requires that you think hard about which perspectives (not just people) must be represented such as customers or employees who won’t be in the room. Ultimately it requires that you find ways to create value from the intersection of diverse perspectives, experiences, and expertise that live inside any organisation.
To get to the next stage of execution, it was important for everyone across the company:
to weigh their understanding of value from our current service based product against what our customers thought and felt
to get a thorough understanding of the dependencies on each other while contributing towards the above value
to talk about the capabilities they could bring to the table for the future version of the product
Assemble content / Frame the issues: A well designed SC also requires that the content and issues are framed in a way that illuminates different aspects of the adaptive challenge you’re wrestling with, including how the various parts relate to the whole. These frames should help participants get their heads around a great deal of complexity thereby accelerating insight and alignment. A good frame helps make insights stick and thus accelerates progress on tough issues.
Some of the frames I used to spark a thoughtful conversation included:
the risks involved of depending on revenue only from a sales and relationship led model
an understanding of our current position in the market (differentiated vs. disruptive vs, dominant)
what could a ‘Figma for workplace learning’ look like?
Find a venue / Set the scene: A well designed SC also requires that you make thoughtful choices about the elements of the environment - from the physical space to artefacts to aesthetics. The room setup and seating arrangements should send a message about how participants are expected to relate to one another. Food and other comforts should be consistent with the tone of the session. Like a great theater production, all the parts should come together in a seamless and integrated way.
My conversation took place in the boardroom in a round table like format with me moderating the discussion by being the guide on side vs. showcasing a ppt as a sage on stage. It was a ‘lean in’ vs ‘lean back’ experience.
Set the agenda / Make it an experience: A well designed SC requires that you attend to the emotional and psychological experience of participants. The experience should not only be logical but also intuitive and energising. It should tap into participants’ full capabilities and perspectives - their logical and emotional, analytic and creative selves. A great SC is not just an intellectual exercise - it’s an exhilarating and memorable experience.
Being the head of customer success helped, and I used humour to put people on the spot as well as vividly bring to life stories from our most loyal customers. These stories inspired the group to collectively bond as one through the conversation.
It’s hard to set strategy when the playing field keeps shifting and the goal posts won’t stop moving. Today more than ever, strategy is the conversation, and we have to put people back into strategy. A leader's real job is not to find the right answer to a complex problem but rather to help shape people’s perceptions of the problem - and thus of potential solutions. With adaptive challenges, the nature of our interactions will play a huge role in determining how we resolve them. Nobody is as smart as all of us combined - real strategy should happen in human conversations, not on lifeless excel sheets and powerpoint presentations.
