What If Everyone In Your Organisation Is Already Strategising? | Garin Rouch

Strategy can look brilliant on paper and still fail the moment it meets the organisation that has to deliver it. We sit down with Gavin Rouch, an organisational development practitioner, to get honest about why that happens and what to do instead. We talk about organisations as interconnected systems in all their messy glory, where incentives, history, board pressure, and filtered information create strategic blind spots that senior leaders rarely see from the strategy room.

We dig into what “good strategy execution” actually demands: participation that brings operational reality into the process, decision-making that generates real options, and the humility to speak in probabilities rather than perform certainty. Gavin shares why strategies often become propaganda, full of glittering generalities, why tough choices should provoke anxiety, and why the most valuable work is often the dialogue behind the tools. We also explore how emotion and sensemaking shape whether people invest in the direction, and why broadcasting strategy through comms alone leaves teams cold.

From meeting waste and invisible knowledge work to HR and L&D translating strategy into capability building, we map practical ways to close the gap between intent and delivery. We finish with a clear message: strategy is not the exclusive domain of the senior leadership, and everyone has more agency than they think. If this sparked a few uncomfortable truths, subscribe for more, share the episode with a colleague, and leave a review with the biggest strategy gap you see right now.

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Transcript

Welcome And Guest Setup

Mike Jones 0:00

Most people do think of strategy that way. Developing a new strategy.

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Strategic blind spots.

Mike Jones 0:05

When strategy meets reality. Strategy and innovation. In the strategy world. Drive their strategic goals. And welcome back to Strategy Meets Reality Podcast. Welcome back to Strategy Meets Reality Podcast. It's great to have Gavin Rauch on today. I was on his podcast with Danny, All Dead Podcast. It was sort of the it was definitely the pivotal moment for me to want to actually step on this endeavour. So I thank you because if it wasn't for you and Danny, I I wouldn't accept this podcast and enjoy this conversation. So well, thank you for that. And also thank you for joining me today.

SPEAKER_00 0:37

Brilliant, yeah. Really glad to join you. And and yeah, you were a brilliant guest, so we do recommend uh to check out Mike's podcast on our s on our channel.

OD Thinking And System Context

Mike Jones 0:45

Too kind. Just uh for our listeners, do you mind giving uh a bit of background and a bit of context about yourself, about what you've been up to lately?

SPEAKER_00 0:53

Yeah, sure. So um uh by profession, I'm an organization development practitioner. Um, so for those that don't know what organization development is, it's been around for about 75 years or so. Um, and it's essentially sort of seeing an organization as like an interconnected system in all its messy glory, um, and that there are so many different things at play, and and often sort of organizations, what we kind of call socially constructed, so it's what we build in relation to each other. And so, organization development, what it does is it's about sort of understanding the context that an organization is in. So uh Kurt Lewin is sort of one of the founding fathers of organization development, kind of came up with the phrase if you want to understand a system, try and change it. So, a lot of it is about actually understanding an organization's unique uh context and then understanding like what it is that the organization wants to achieve, making sure that we're not actually working with things actually on the surface, we're actually digging deeper, looking beneath the surface about what might be driving the challenges that organizations are having. And in terms of work that we're doing, um I've been doing this for about 20 years or so, and I do it with Danny Bacon, um, and we're quite a busy consultancy. We're out in the field, we work across a whole variety of different sectors, and we work with everything from private equity to government institutions to universities. Um, but there's one thing that all organizations have in common, and that's just people under one roof, just trying to make sense of things and trying to do what they want to do. And so, I guess this week, a lot of things we do with the Org Dev podcast is about inspiring the next generation of OD practitioners. So last night I was at the London School of Economics talking to the next cohort of potential OD practitioners. Um we've been working with a university with a senior team this week that's got um really big growth ambitions, but it's about making sure that the this senior leadership team works collectively on it rather than just sort of parallel portfolios of work today. So um a lot of it is actually in the in the room getting teams to work together more effectively.

Mike Jones 2:42

Oh, nice. Yeah, I saw your post about the um London School of Economics. Yeah, it must be really great to speak to the up-and-coming sort of org dev. Definitely trying to get them on the right track because there is a lot of um dirty roads they could go down.

SPEAKER_00 3:02

Yeah, well, it's it's always a joy working with students. Um obviously working with organizations is is is really good, it's it's really stimulating. You know, even after 20 years, you're still seeing new things, but with with students, there's not necessarily that cynicism that's been built in, and you have to work with the cynicism as well. So it's people being open to new ways of working. And but the thing we all say to students is this is just our perspective. You know, one of the things that the organization development field can be critiqued about is that we don't necessarily have one definition of what organization development is, and definition is really important in organizations, and I guess that's one of the reasons why I listen to your podcast so much, because I think, like you sort of say, is that strategy has lost its meaning. There's a lot of language that we use in organizations that we kind of throw around things like agile, strategy, customer centricity. We throw these words around, but we never really unpack what they actually mean in action. And so my journey into strategy was sort of born of frustration more than anything. I was working in organizations, but not necessarily in the strategy room, but you could really sort of see the impact of what a strategy does to an organization. It does something, but it's not often what it's intended to do as well. So eventually starting to work in the strategy room and then seeing how decisions are made, the group process that goes on, the constraints that's that's built into the process, and also often the lack of participation in the organisation as well. It's it's is often made by a small group of people that aren't necessarily connected to operational reality as well.

Mike Jones 4:28

Yeah, or and that's the thing, it's you know, I'd I had Julia Haltz on and we talked about open strategy, but around all that is the is the importance of the feedback loops that that's you're actually engaging with the edges of the organisation, getting that true understanding. But unfortunately, a lot of the information that is going up to these small groups of people to make decisions is is awfully filtered and sanitized, and so you know it isn't I I often say I don't blame the leaders, I blame the construct, the structure around them because it's telling them one thing, but reality is a different thing.

When Mandates Clash With Reality

SPEAKER_00 5:05

Yeah, and to be honest, Danny and I really stick up for managers. Being a manager in today's organizations is really hard, and the there's one thing about the human condition is we just love to portion blame, we love scapegoats, and managers are often a convenient element of this, and often sometimes they don't help themselves in the way in which they go about sort of finding their way. But if you, you know, we often get called into organizations and it we maybe we've got to undo something or initiative has failed or a change program is stalling. And so we'll go in and with organization development, a lot of it is about inquiry. The first bit, the contract, and when we enter into the system, we start to do the research and that as well. We start to understand why things are the way they are. The CEO that just seems to be like a dog in a bone with a strategy. We actually look at their context, there's a board that's driving them, and and the board are traumatised by the previous CEO. And so they've you know their expectations that they set to the CEO is we want you to disrupt. This isn't a very effective organisation. So they go in with a really strong mandate that doesn't read the context, and all of a sudden you have a strategy that doesn't honour the past, all of the hard work and all of the effort that people put in, and then obviously you know the organisation will often reject the strategy like an organ, and it's a very painful process. And you see a lot of senior leaders not make it for a variety of reasons like that.

Mike Jones 6:20

Yeah, but that's where you know all dev is really important in this subject because often the strategy is seen as separate. So you like you said, you'll get you get a person in with a mandate, they go, I've got this bold vision, got this bold vision to disrupt things, and we're gonna go for this. But they don't they don't appreciate one of the context like you mentioned, and also the the two-way relationship that exists between the organization and strategy. Like what is possible, and I'm often accused of being anti-ambition. I am not anti-ambition, but the organization limits what is possible for you in a strategy at that time, your dispositional state, so what what what you can do, so you need to understand that to see what options are available or affordances, take those, and then over time you can you can increase what you want to do, but you must respect the fact that you you can't set strategy that you've got no way of conceiving it, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:19

And I I I think you know, if you if you get that critique, I think you should almost wear it like a badge of honour. Because you know, you sometimes what the organization wants and what it needs are two different things. Um there is a all organizations carry an enormous snagging list around with them. We work a lot with sort of like high growth organizations, sometimes explosive growth, and you look around and everything's not working, um, and there's a huge growth ambition, but you've got to organizations are just constant intention. You've got like kind of growth ambition, you know, particularly like we we work with private equity, and it's like, you know, there's a board at the top and they're driving it. They only want to see, you know, growth in double digits, if not more. But you've got this messy organization oper a reality. And as you grow really quickly, if you don't have the fundamentals in place, if you don't have the right disciplines, if you don't have the right technology in place, if you if you're held together by workarounds, then eventually that drag will really catch you up as an organization. So that there's no shame in actually sort of saying that we need to s actually slow down, but it's perversely it's in order for us to kind of speed up. But it's making sure that our task is always that it's not us saying this. Um, because I think with organization development, what what what we believe, and I'm not talking on behalf of the organization development profession here, but like is is fundamentally the answer is in that system. Our job is to surface it in the right way, so it's the right people doing the right thing at the right time in the right way as well. So that means about making strategy much more participative.

Mike Jones 8:50

Yeah. And you're right, you you've got to sequence the moves, and it's not people say that you need to speed up, but if you can sequence what you need to do, the thing will work. Um like I often talk about the map, so the external environment and the internal environment. Even thinking back in the good old days of people like Sun Tzu, you know, they would have looked at the ground, they would have looked at what was possible from the ground, but then that would have been mediated by what the organizations are capable of or the forces. So they would have looked and go, Well, you know, high ground looks great, we can take advantage from that point, but you know, I don't have the capability of archers to be able to seize that right now. So you've got a choice, you can build that capability, or you choose uh different affordances, but you you must look at the internal organization and go, Well, if I want that manoeuvre, I I must develop this or you know give this direction. It it can't be separate, which often I see that happens.

Hard Choices And Probability Talk

SPEAKER_00 9:51

Yeah, and it's a really important point because I think sometimes it might be seen as bringing operational reality into the strategic process can often be accused of diluting it. Like it's like it's holding it back. But if you look at we read a lot of strategies, the first thing we do when we go into an organization is can we read your strategy? I think we had a guest on Jamie Lakarney, and she said they're glittering generalities, which I thought was a really nice thing, which they they're quite vague in nature. You know, some they get confused, some are m doing multiple things. Often they're propaganda documents and uh you know meant for different audiences, particularly we work with uh a number of not-for-profits, and so those those strategy documents are actually propaganda to actually you know impress funders. But I think it was like Richard Rommel that talks, you know, you've got to really lean into what reality is. Um, and and Derek Cabrera says the truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off. And I think you know, it's the ability of the top team to actually look in and actually look at what is real, and it does it doesn't dilute the strategy, it just basically means that you're not lying to yourself when you do the strategy because as soon as that strategy starts to get rolled out, if it's done in a you know a narrow way with just a narrow group of people, your middle managers will just look at it and they'll make their choice about whether they actually think it's real or not. You know, organizations are just a constant um mess of people improvising, prioritizing, they're trying to, you know, think as a Venn diagram of their own careers, what they're capable of doing, and what they like doing and what the organization needs, and sometimes they all overlap and often they don't. So you have to do that that really difficult talk. And that's the thing that makes slows down the strategy process as well and makes it really difficult. You know, we all say when we work with an organization, if you're going to be doing strategy properly, it should be really anxiety provoking. It should be really because you're making such tough choices. We're killing people's babies, we're saying no to these things, and we're going into places we don't know. No, research will only take you so far. Like we're into the not certainty as well.

Mike Jones 11:49

Yes, and I think that's something that people shy away from. I I remember sitting there when I was doing strategy with a um exec team, and one of the exec members said, Mike, how do we know this will work? And you know, you're like, Well, we we don't, but that's the pain and the joy of strategy. So we can only go, but the more that we are basing our decisions on reality, then the least we'll be surprised. And you see this with organizations that aren't, they get surprised pretty quickly, and they then have to react to the surprise, which then further destabilizes their organization. They're already semi-destabilized because they're trying to make new capabilities or or move things around or change stuff, but it's it's really important, and one thing I I I get really emotional about is this whole and it's this lying point, and it's all about purpose statements and the identity. The first struggle I have with organizations, I don't know if you do, and I think this is really important, like the the org dev world, is that what is it the organization actually does, not what you think it does? And I think that's a crucial starting point that mo many never really think about.

SPEAKER_00 13:03

Yeah, and and that's for a variety of reasons. And I I like some of the points you've been making in the past around, you know, kind of uncoupling strategy a little bit. So what's in play in this particular process that we're going through? Is it the grand strategy? You know, is it is it like more kind of year-to-year that we're looking at as well? You touch on something which is really important. Managers at a certain level, we all in a certain way love certainty. And in a way, you know, particularly organisations will bring in external help consultancy to provide certainty, but you you can't. It's a complex adaptive system operating in a very uncertain environment that's often shifting as well. So we'll we'll often when we're one of our big things is making sure that talk happens in the right way, that we're really exchanging perspectives and we're we're leaning into that reality. So we'll we'll we'll encourage people to talk in probability. Um, you get some very, very strong-minded people at senior level and they talk with great certainty. And that does something, and what's that saying? I'm more often certain than I am right.

Mike Jones 14:01

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:03

So we'll we'll we'll we'll often introduce like dialogical devices, so we're getting to talk about probability. So rather than certainty, it's like, well, I think based on this, we're at 60% probability. Because all we're trying to do in strategy is we're trying to stack the odds of probability that this will work out. That's all we're trying to do. And I think if we can then have that real conversation, then we can start to do things properly and go, well, well, actually, based on that, in terms of our past experience, our track record with delivering strategy, um, I think we also forget that you know strategy is often a muscle that improves over time, like strategy version one and the next iteration that you do will will be better and we have to be patient as well. So I think we're, you know, it it's about that that probability perspective and people really being honest about it and matching it into our capacity and our capability as well.

Mike Jones 14:49

Yeah. And I think it's really important you see that real split between the sort of extroverted people and the introvert or more measured people, because more measured will probably be a bit more, you know, obvious, more honest, and obviously, you know, deal well with that probability. Well, I was um I was in a room and there was a senior leader t talking about we're gonna move into a new market. And at the end of it, I I gave him a clap and said that's probably one of the most confident briefs I've ever heard in my life. Well done. But where would it go wrong? And that one question just stopped and it and it just showed that there was uh you know, it was great great detail, it wasn't his fault, but you've got to distinguish between confidence and have that what I call tactical humility to sit back and really think about where could this go wrong and have I thought about it. And I think just that where where where could it go wrong explored a whole plethora of conversation and tensions between actually what what was possible, what was not, what was what was an assumption, what was a fact. And um, yeah, it was really good.

SPEAKER_00 16:00

Yeah, and and you're touching on so many important points there, isn't it? Which is it's the role of emotion in these discussions. And I think often in the senior team area, emotion is suppressed. Um obviously we don't want to sort of start using you know the terms that might turn people off, like you know, being vulnerable in that as well. But I think emotions do play a role, and sometimes we suppress them and then try to exude confidence. But it's okay to be fearful and to say and put it on the table, because then we can actually have the proper conversation as well. But that does take a senior leader to be quite comfortable being like that, and it and it is the not knowing, and it is then inviting in as well. And I think you know, you touch on another important point there, which is you know, sometimes when we're making these proposals or we're taking our strategy of the organization, it's it's seen as a selling activity, it's communication, and I know you've talked about this before, which is you know, these comms teams that are just trying to get it right, and essentially it's broadcasting, you know, the the town hall that's just broadcasting it out to the group, you know, we'll work with organizations and say, Well, it's very effective, but people need to, you're not sense giving, you're not telling people what to think. People need to sense make, and you need to make space for that as well. And that will mean that you hear perspectives that you don't necessarily want to hear that might contravene what you want to say as well. But again, it's it's making space for it. And I think probably that's another thing that organization development does is we slow things down, we create space, we give people opportunity to ask questions, difficult questions to share their perspective. Uh, we use lots of little techniques like that as well. You know, even when we do town halls, we'll be like, okay, well, CEO talk for 10 minutes. Great. As they're talking, have these questions in your mind. Okay, stop. Everyone talk within yourself for 10 minutes, develop some questions, your perspective, and then we feed them back in that way. So the feedback is happening in real time. Town halls aren't the silver bullets or anything, but it's it's just little ways of improving things and how information flows.

Mike Jones 17:56

Yeah, it's a really good point there, especially around the motion. You know, when when we're developing strategy, we want emotion. Um, and this is one of my arguments about outsourcing strategy development to AI. You know, one, it doesn't have the you know, the the context fully that we do, it it won't surface the perceptual complexity that exists, but also it is the development you want the um the cognitive, the effective and the behavioural emotion to come out because that's what's going to get people to act on the strategy. Whether it's just outsourced, exactly the same when you communicate it out to your people, it's the same process. Like if you just broadcast it out, there's no emotion in it, there's no investment in it. And that's why we need to have these points where we go, this is this is what I want, this is this is what I view success will look like, you know, when the smoke clears, these are the constraints, these are some of the resources you have. Like go let's go work it out. Let's let's think about how you can deliver this. And I think about that, it just falls flat.

Decision Bias And Real Options

SPEAKER_00 19:05

Yeah, no, no, completely. And I think you know, emotions definitely do play a part, and bias plays a part in in strategy as well. You know, again, I think there's 186 different cognitive biases in there. But when you're in the room, you can see those biases coming out, you can see the recency effect in play, you can see the Dunning Kruger where they vastly underestimate how easy it's going to be to merge with that organization. You know, we're working with an organization that that went down that route and kind of said to their teams, this should be fairly straightforward. And then when they got into it, it was actually far more complex and complicated than they ever imagined as well. So those kind of things can make a really big difference in the organisation. So I guess it's it's it's just really being aware that the decision-making process is it's not perfect. And I think to a certain extent, there's a lot of naivety within organizations as well, expecting when they're all in thinking what happens in that strategy room going, well, they must be really intelligently working through these different options. Nine times out of ten, there's not even options, which is the really scary thing. There's some really interesting research done by uh Professor Paul Nutt, and it's a really great piece of um research on decision making. And what he basically found is I think over 20 years he studied over like a 450 strategic decisions, um, and the fifth the failure rate of these decisions was about 50%. And what he found is that predominant is because most decisions um are binary choices, are we gonna do this or not? And if you think about a strategy room where you've got the most senior person saying, Are we gonna do this or not? It would take a very brave person to say no. And so you can start to see why so many different decisions get waived through, which in the light of day should never have even seen it because we didn't have some choice in the room as well. So there's something around the group process that can mean that you know often our strategies are dead on arrival because we haven't actually really put the thought into it.

Mike Jones 20:56

No, this is a process that we we put into when we do strategy, because we we model a lot, so we'll pick all the external actors, we'll model them, and strategies will start to emerge. But we must, and it's the same in execution, is that we put a criteria of success, so we weight the options based by criteria of success, and you challenge on those. Um and what we found is that like really increases the decision making because we've not just gone, oh yeah, it's this or or or that, we've actually weighted it against these these measures and we actually surface quite a lot of risks or threats or potential opportunities that we didn't we didn't see in the the first place. So I I do think we need to move ra move away for those. And it it brings another point about choices, is that I I think there's a lot of optimism bias in strategy. They think that, oh yeah, this strategy has to be amazing, it's this thing that we got to sell. And actually, a lot of clients I work with, there are choices. But they're not great choices, but they're the only choices that are available at the time. And you know, sometimes we've got to make horrible choices, but it it is it's the what I call the least worse, and that's what we tend to look at. It's not about the being the best, it's about what is the least worse option that we need to take now. And obviously, we do that really well, more things open up to us.

SPEAKER_00 22:26

Yeah, um, yeah, um, I couldn't be more. This is probably boring for the audience because you and I agreeing on quite a lot of things. But yeah, you you you've touched on a a couple of things that we're really passionate about. So, you know, the the the mechanism you're talking about there in terms of sort of weighting things and um putting your success criteria. Um it's easy to look at those things and just seeing them as a tool that produces a number, and then we go, right, we're gonna go the one with the lowest number or the highest number. But it's not that bit that's the thing that makes the difference. The catalyst is the dialogue that goes behind it. It's the taking the time to decide what is the success criteria and what's not, how do we weight it, and then generating the options. And it's that bit that senior teams often really underestimate. It's those conversations where we're actually coming together, we're all carrying packets of information each. No person is omnipresent and knows everything, and we stay with it. And and we quite like the the cana decision model, which is like kind of divergence, grown zone convergence to be a good decision making. And it's that grown zone bit, the bit where it's really difficult. Like we know we're in it, and I think sometimes the temptation with teams is that because you've got some big personalities in there, and because you've got a lot of different professional identities, so someone's looking at it through the world of finance and someone's looking at it through the world of risk, and we've got these really strong professional lenses that it all becomes too difficult to hold this thing in the room between us. We've we've become uncomfortable, and emotion plays a part. So the teams will often make a pseudo decision. We'll just make a we'll close this off. This all looks it looks right, it looks logical, let's close off, but we haven't done the work, and then that's when you try to go to convergence, you can't, and then it starts to unravel quite quickly because that then you get into the hard choices in the organization, and then you have to start limiting the number of priorities in the organization. And that's that's often why organizations become what they become, because organisations naturally, from the arrow of time, always becoming more disordered. Entropy really affects organisations, and so it's the top team's responsibility to sort of you know pull the weeds out of the garden and to make I'll make some mess for us here, but uh pull the weeds out of the garden and make sure that it's as as tight as it can be to give all of our people, but again, part of those big conversations we're having is trying to end some things. Things don't get ended. We start initiatives, they don't get finished, they kind of just fade. But people in the organization who've committed a lot of energy and resource to these things, they never get it never gets ended, and it just gets put on the pile and it just becomes messy and more ambiguous, and and then that gives people the license in this ambiguity to decide what they do want to do. You know, they could they can use that as legitimacy.

Mike Jones 25:11

Yes, you you see that often in it's the management by objectives because they they cascade the objectives down. You know, it I don't know if you've seen this, I see it all the time. That the objectives are done in retrospective, so then they start to justify their actions against what was perceived rather than actually consciously setting this out to say, right, we're gonna do this because it's a it's is aligned, and it's that game playing that really confuses things, and you get that the more vague, the more just sort of detached from reality the strategy is. Um, and you see it because organizations they go to these things, they don't have the real conversations like we're talking about, they just they scrap around a statement, they spend more time, and I and I see this. If you spent more time wordsmithing a statement than actually trying to understand the strategy, you you're not in the right place, and it's gonna end in disaster.

SPEAKER_00 26:10

Yeah, and you're touching on some really important points. So, what what guides our choices, our actions in an organization? And I think in organizations there's so much that is invisible, particularly in knowledge work. There's a lot of things that are on the table, but there's a lot of things under the table that we don't necessarily discuss. And this might be like people's objectives aren't out in the open, right? What people are incentivised isn't out in the open. People's own objectives like aren't in the open. So if everyone's carrying three objectives each, but no one knows what each other's, you've got whatever how many number of employees you've got, times three. That's that many secret missions going on in an organization. And there are some you know different techniques to to sort of surface it. But I think with with so many things being invisible, it can be really difficult to understand how to make your organization flow. We had a really brilliant um a professor from MIT called Nelson Repenning on the on the podcast, and he does some really interesting studies uh with his partner at places like Harley Davidson as well. And he found that sort of knowledge work is really difficult to understand where things are at any one time because in knowledge work, the work will often be on someone's to-do list in their in their day book, and you can't see where things start to slow down and where the bottlenecks are as well. So, again, that makes it even more difficult for senior leaders to understand what is the capacity of the organization, what's working well. So there's a lot there's a lot to be said for creating more space for teams. I guess that what we what we don't so people listening to this who might be a bit cynical, going, well, we're just gonna all we're gonna do all day is sense make, have meetings. That that's not what we propose. We just think the effectiveness of them could be so much better. Um, Danny and I observe a lot of management meetings as part of the work, and most of them are status updates. Most of them could be two hours condensed into 30 minutes, but actually use that additional time for really big thematic conversations to get your teams onto onto the same page. So there's there's an enormous amount of waste in organizations that could really tighten things up without necessarily adding extra bodies.

Mike Jones 28:14

No, uh there's a huge amount of waste, especially in those updates. Like they they are painful. And anyone in an organization has to sit through those, know they're painful because it's the same thing, the same PBR pack that you know, update of where they're red, green, or amber is mainly gonna be green, maybe amber, they're feeling risky. And it's just it's just an update of what's happened last time. There was rarely conversations about what is really stopping me from achieving what we need to do. What's causing the difference between capable performance and actual performance? And how do we close that that gap? Um and even down to a a lot of this is structural. So like I can go I go into organizations and I I go and say, What what does this team do? And I can't get a coherent answer because they're not they're not a team or a function, they are just a mishmash because it makes spanner control easier rather than it makes the organization effective to deliver stuff, and that that's a completely different um perspective.

SPEAKER_00 29:22

Yeah, it's interesting, is it? Because I think sometimes like we've worked with organizations that are really ambiguous. It's sometimes teams are a um, you know, the the one common denominator is the manager, you know, they're just a collection of of individuals, but you know, things are ambiguous, targets aren't explicit, metrics aren't there. And when we're looking beneath the surface, it's like, well, so what is the utility of it being ambiguous? How does that serve the organization? Because frame was saying the system is what the system does, isn't it? That ambiguity can from fulfill a number of purposes that it means that I'm not accountable, or it means that I can be safe because you can't necessarily it's very it becomes subjective, or it can be that actually, do you know what? Our real strategy is we just follow the money. Like if any client walks in with a juicy thing, even if it's off track, it means we can say yes and we can then bring it on board. And again, that really shapes how organizations become what they so I think sometimes we have to wonder what's at stake. And when we try and tighten up an organization, like to make things more explicit, make the implicit explicit. I think we have to make sure that we we support the people around it because that means they're much more visible. Um, and often the organizations haven't done a good job of training them, supporting them, giving the capability to be more visible. Often people's roles continue to expand far beyond their capability. We work with high-growth organisations and the people grow with the organization. You know, today's head of is next year's VP, but we don't support them. They we just promote them because they're they're showing initiative or responsibility or whatnot. But organisations aren't fulfilling their part of the bargain. So I think sometimes it is really to blame teams going, oh, you know, but I think sometimes organizations need to take a really big look at themselves, go, well, what's what's our part in this as well? And that also sends really positive signals to the employees going, well, this initiative actually means something because I can see the support means something as well.

Mike Jones 31:21

Yeah. And then that's it all in the the structure, be it teams or functions. I don't think one thing they're not very good at traditionally being explicit about is actually what is the outcome or output expected from this. Once you understand that, you go, well, okay, so what resources do they need to be able to do that? So you think about the inputs. So what inputs do they need? If I want them to do this, what inputs do they need to be able to do this? And at an individual level, it's or even at team level function, it is okay, then so what capabilities do they need or skills to to do this? And I think by looking at the sort of inputs and the capabilities against the outputs, can start to, especially in the HR world, learning development world, can give them more focus on actually, you know, there's a common, there's a skill that we need in this organization that we don't have. Let's invest our minimal resources that we have and funding into this because this will make more of an impact overall.

SPEAKER_00 32:23

Yeah, we and and you're really touching on something that's really important here. Is it's often it's a lack of connectivity in the organization, or again, going back to not feeling secure enough. You can never be 100% secure in our buttons secure enough. So, you know, we we work with a lot of LD teams, and um, we had a lady called Michelle Parry Slate, who's a brilliant writer on LD, and her critique is that you know LD teams don't necessarily, as much as they could, read the strategy. Strategies often aren't explicit, they'll say what we're gonna do, they may even say why we're gonna do it, but they don't necessarily go into the how to to the sufficient level. So it's the responsibility of HR teams to read that strategy, and we do this exercise quite a lot, and it's often it's quite scary for teams to do. So we'll get them to sit down the strategy and say, Well, interpret this strategy into your world. What's your responsibility in this? What's not clear? And so they don't actually look at um what capabilities that organization requires. So you'd often see LD teams in perpetuity doing public programs, presentation skills 101, which they're okay, they're fine, they serve a purpose, but they're not connected into building that capability. And sometimes what you need to do is you need to bring the senior leaders back into the room again once the strategy's done and go, well, what capabilities do you think our leaders actually need to deliver on this? They can't do everything. You know, what's your employee value proposition? Like, what's our promise to our team members to support them? And so you it's about getting some of that clarity. So sometimes we have to go back to the strategy afterwards to get that clarity, but it is about HR teams and L and D teams being quite bold and saying, look, there are some gaps. Can you help us make sense of this? And often senior leaders will also really benefit from that kind of exercise because they hadn't done that thinking, and then again that connects them to operational reality because they could start to have an understanding of the real capabilities in the organisation.

Mike Jones 34:10

Yeah, I think it's crucial. There's that whole phase in mission command, which is that um I think we spoke about it briefly when I was on your podcast. We call it command and control, it's not command and control as in I'm going to control you. It's it's the process in which I can have this conversation. So, you know, this is this is what this is my intent, and I can brief that to the L and D team. And I give space to the L and D team to go away to understand what does that mean for them, what part do they need to play in this? What what's their current context of working in? What's the risks they have, what are the constraints that are placed on them that you know ideally maybe need to shift or they need to challenge. But it's that conversation that that that makes strategy real for them, and then they it gives them the best success to implement something. And I always ban the term strategy to a lot of people because they go, Oh, we've got a HR show, we've got you don't you don't you don't have that, you don't have the strategy. There is a strategy, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:10

And I I love what you're saying there because it gets to the heart of a lot of the work that we're trying to do is is to making sure that everyone in the organization takes sufficient responsibility. And in an exercise like that, and what's really heartening to know that our methodology fits into your methodology is that kind of working through it encourages you to approach things with a maturity about it and actually really thinking it through and applying your practical judgment because that's how people learn. And if organizations don't give people the space to do that, they don't develop that practical judgment that is essential, that confidence, the ability to, you know, and and what's good about that mission command process is that you still take your thinking back and you can still be guided. You know, you don't have to come back with the perfect solution, you can still I assume there's still space to develop it.

Mike Jones 35:55

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Operating Rhythms And Learning Loops

SPEAKER_00 35:56

And that's that that space is really, really important. So what you want is people taking responsibility for it. And I think sometimes, you know, we can just say, well, it's just what the strategy is, and we're just trying to fulfil it, and that's where organizations often fall down. So I really, I really like that.

Mike Jones 36:08

Yeah, and we always say the uh the plan is nothing, planning is everything, and it's it's that that conversation. But it comes to a point that I think you mentioned earlier on, and it's about that capacity for this, because it has to be deliberate. You can't you can't have it. Um, and I was having a little conversation with someone the other day about this. Um, it's got to be done deliberately, it can't be done as as a quick five minutes before the next meeting. Oh, yeah, I've I've read the strategy and I'm thinking about this, or you know, because it just won't happen, it needs to be a deliberate practice. But this then calls into the question with uh definitely with all design, especially resource, is about efficiency. You know, if if we've got all our people committed 110%, there is no capacity for this, and this is where people will look at this cynically and go, Well, yeah, I'd love to, but we ain't got the time. And it's like you you do gotta put it in, you just got to challenge where is your capacity going.

SPEAKER_00 37:08

Yeah. I think again it's that honesty, like understanding the ingredients that have made this organization successful, and understanding that maybe we in this organization we have a capability to deal with emerging opportunities. That's what we're really good at. We've got a great sales team that can actually pick up signals in the change in the ecosystem in year and then adapt accordingly. So we know we're really good at that. Therefore, what we'll do is we'll give them some some constraints around it, what what is in and what's out in there, but we'll base our capacity on on the understanding that we're probably going to bring about 30% more stuff in in year and plan accordingly. And that also gives people the exciting opportunity to have more choice about what we decide to take on and what we don't. Yeah, it is a bit of a fallacy. If you do look at the resource allocation, it is often with it's not even related to reality, it's just it's just a statement, it's just there it is. Um yeah, and I think uh one one point I just wanted to make though. So one of the reasons why strategy can be quite painful is because it becomes a set piece. Like strategy should be day in, day out, being built towards. So one of the things that we do a lot of work with is getting an organization to put in place like an operating with them. So we're big believers in everything in its place and everything has its place. If we don't have that information flowing through the year, if we don't have the senior team engaging with the manner managers in year, getting feedback and flowing and having thematic conversations about opportunities or market changes in year, then the strategy becomes just such a big exercise anyway. It almost becomes too painful and they'll often avoid it. So sometimes our phone will ring in April, I'm sorry, in January, saying we need to have a strategy by March, and that's just not long enough. If you're going to do it properly and engage people properly, you need longer time as well. So by having the operating rhythms in place, so making sure that the you know the organization is doing quarterly strategic reviews, uh, you know, constant sort of horizon scanning, that people are actually, again, operating at the right level. A lot of senior teams are operating one or two levels below where they should be. The fact that you've got that really good connection between, you know, the again a layer of management that's often neglected but isn't connected to the senior team enough is the sort of this SLT minus one, this kind of group of operating managers, they're too big to be a team. Um and people just organisations just don't know what to do with them. But these are the people that will be catalytic in whether you develop your strategy or deliver it or not. So they don't necessarily organise them very well. So we spend a lot of time trying to organise these groups of people and give it meaning uh meaningfulness as well. So if you can take a step back and say, well, get the operating rhythm for the whole organization and sort of map your year out or or even beyond as well, then when it comes to strategy, it's just so much more of a seamless process. You know, we've we've we've kind of we we have much better information to work from.

Mike Jones 40:00

Yeah, and it it has to be protected, and I think that's one thing that you know in the military we do really well. We have that operating rhythm, and it is it is everyone knows it all the way from to a private soldier, knows their grouping system and knows what um is happening, and and that makes it a lot easier, and I think that's something that it can be done. It's it's it's a you know, it's a time thing, it's a bit of a structural thing, but once it's in it becomes just a natural extension of what we do.

SPEAKER_00 40:35

Yeah, I love that. Yeah, it's it's again we're we're always saying this, and there's so many benefits that you for the military that can the um organizations can adopt is that kind of it's the disciplines. We just do it, we just make time for it, and it's really sancrosanct time, but it's often it's the thing that gets cancelled when we need more space. Often we'll then do a deep dive. So, what are you actually doing? And often it's because they're in the reactive space as well. But I think probably one of the big things that organizations can take from the military that the military does really well, is learning. Um, organizations very rarely review the previous strategy. Like, what were we wildly optimistic about? What was our decision-making process? What did it what outcome did it actually achieve versus what we wanted it to do? And again, that's the senior leaders developing their practical judgment. How well did we estimate time? Because again, estimating time is a really difficult thing in organizations, and that's where overconfidence bias comes into play. So that kind of regular learning at the micro and the macro can be just so helpful. So I think that's that's great lessons.

Mike Jones 41:36

Yeah, it is. Because it's too easy for them to just post-rationalise and say, Yeah, we meant to do that, yeah. Of course, we meant to make that decision, rather than really holding themselves to account. And I think it comes to that point if you if you get that learning in, you get the the process in, you get that discipline all the way through, strategy can then become this consistent thing rather than a year-end thing where they just dust out what they've done last year. Yeah, oh, that'll do plus a plus or minus 10%, and we can move on.

SPEAKER_00 42:09

Exactly, yeah. I I th I you know the thing we all sort of say to everyone in an organisation that we work is that you're a strategist and you're always strategising. So that means it's not the exclusive domain of the senior leadership. We all play a critical role about it, and we have an obligation as an employee of this organisation, but again, sometimes that's missing from the onboarding, sometimes it's missing from the expectations that we set for people. Um, those kind of things that are really missing. So I guess, like, as we sort of said in summary, like the organizations are all so different. Where you intervene is different, and where you focus your efforts are different, but there are some really sort of common and core sort of disciplines and practices that organizations can put in place, so they're much more on the front foot. And I guess sometimes it can feel a little bit overwhelmed when you start this journey, but we all sort of work on the next step to better. Like, how can we just improve incrementally each time?

Mike Jones 43:01

Yeah. Well what would you what would you advise? Uh, because you you you said you speaking to students, but if you if you had an all dev cohort of experienced people in front of you, what what would you advise them or what would you what would you say to them about how they can get more involved into the strategy and helping the strategy deliver what it's meant to deliver?

SPEAKER_00 43:24

Yeah, it it's a really interesting question. I well the number one is read it.

Mike Jones 43:28

Yeah, yeah, that would be a good start. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:32

It's actually quite frightening. So we we often do a session where we'll sit down with everyone in the set and we'll put hands up in the room who's read the strategy, and we're like, be honest. And it, you know, we'll have 15 in the room and three will genuinely put their hand up. So we we would say read it, but then read it with colleagues, like make sense of it and think about what it says, what it doesn't say, what's missing. Because it's again it's about applying your practical judgment. The other thing to do as well is to look one level. Below as well. So think about what the group plans are of other parts of the organization. Because then you're starting to see how the thing fits together. And then you'll start to see priorities that conflict with each other. So for trading to hit its target, that means risk isn't going to hit its target. So there's a conflict there. So you're starting to see that. So this is what the document says, but this is how we go one level down. We start to see. And it just means you can then start to ask better questions. And then the next thing is to then ask really good questions and to you know be a little bold and ask questions in your own organization and say, well, what does this mean? And what were the trade-offs that you were making? Often they don't know what they were, but but again, it's just starting to be involved. And then where possible is to understand how strategy works is get involved in a change initiative, get involved in a strategic thread that's working, cut your teeth on it. There's always so many, um, and they're always related to it as well. So there's it's it's about practice. And then the other thing as well is just the other thing you can do from there is that you help those around you become better strategists, you know, by sitting down with your own manager and asking them questions about the strategy, you're inadvertently helping your manager become a better strategic thinker because you're getting them to consider it. So all of a sudden you're actually helping the organization become more strategic. And then the other thing we'd also say as well is where possible, facilitate and convene. So, you know, be bold and get your counterparts, if you even if you're not the most senior person, bring in people from other parts of the organization and just say this is the strategy, this is how we're making sense of it. How do you make sense of it? What is it, how is it driving your behaviour? And then they can say, Well, it doesn't, or it does because then you know, well, okay, well, so now you're starting to really be an agent in the system that's actually connecting the dots. We're not relying on senior management because it has to happen down in the micro. It's all the situated judgments and choices we make every day. And then again, just again, just be interested and read about it. There's there's no one source, you know, you start with the basics. There's so many different sources, but you know, like my field of strategy uh study is strategy as practice, which is a really interesting field, it's not necessarily mainstream. Read around the different practices, obviously, viable systems model, go for the basics, Richard Romeau and uh is it Roger Martin? Just gives you some then you'll at least know what people are talking about and where the language comes from as well, and then you can just make strategy how you want it to be as well. But it just it takes time and be patient. I think the big thing is that be patient, you become a better strategist over time.

Mike Jones 46:25

Yeah, I think you brought up a really good point. It boils down to knowing that you have agency in the the strategy as well, definitely when you're in those situations, because often it's it's not an argument about what they want you to achieve, it's normally the challenge around how they want you to do it. And and I always say that's always up for debate because it's the outcome that matters, not necessarily how you got there. And you can this is where we have that conversation. I I know what you want, but we can do this way. If we if you allow us to do it this way, we can actually achieve this. Otherwise, if you do this, we're constrained by that, and this is going to be the challenge for us.

SPEAKER_00 47:08

Yes, and where wherever you are in your organization, you're shaping the strategy now, you're clarifying things because you're helping make those implicit choices explicit as well. And I think BAU, for those in audio, I'm doing the uh motor moving really quickly, moves like this, and we're trying to feed new innovation into it, and it doesn't work like that. So it is about delegating upwards or moving those decisions upwards and and and doing deciding together. So, what are the choices we need to make? I can do both, I absolutely can do both. It means that the it will be a lot later. Or what are the choices we need to make? And that and that's the difficulty, and and that means that you know the strategy will be decided at the lower levels. So, yeah, we we would really encourage agency all the time in organizations.

Mike Jones 47:52

I think you know that brings real the services the tension between um change of status quo, you're talking about the BAU, and also control and autonomy. These are two tensions that will always get tested in in the strategy development and also the execution. We need to try and manage.

SPEAKER_00 48:11

Yeah, definitely. And I think a point we always want to make is that they are tensions, and organisations swing between tensions a lot. You know, control and autonomy is a real classic one, you know, centralized, decentralized. And we'll go into organizations and there'll be longer-term members of staff, and they're 20, they've been in there 20 years, and they say, Well, this is the fourth swing from centralized to decentralized, and that that's what breeds cynicism as well. What you're always trying to do in any organization, and this is where the dialogical piece of tensions comes out, is how can we reap the maximum benefit from both ends? So, what are the benefits of being autonomous, but you don't want it to be a free-for-all because then you have no control and it just becomes what it becomes. What are the benefits of control and how do we manage that? And how can we build that into people's roles? And what does it look like for each role? And it will change from time to time as well. So, again, there's some really lovely dialogical tools out there to mean you have better conversations. So always happy to share those.

Mike Jones 49:08

Yeah, yeah. There is so much tools, and I think you're exactly right. It there's benefits to both, it's just trying to manage manage that tension. It's been um you know, great conversation, but before we leave, what would you like to leave listeners to think about from this episode?

SPEAKER_00 49:24

Uh I think predominantly is strategy is not the exclusive domain of the senior leadership. We all have a stake in it and we all shape it whether we like it or not. It's the decisions we make on a Tuesday afternoon about what we're going to do and what we're not going to do as well. And we're not necessarily all by you know, we're not bystanders in an organization. We see decisions being made all around us. Don't be passive, educate yourself about the strategy, encourage others to be educated about the strategy, bring the strategy into the conversation, help people understand that they're making choices even when they're not think they don't think they are, and always be asking just what's happening beneath the surface here? What's what's actually happening here? So why isn't this strategy being implemented in the right way? What's really at play? What are we trying to protect, and what needs to be changed as a result of it as well? And and understanding that you've got a lot of tools at your disposal. You can facilitate, you can hold the mirror up, you can convene, you can coach, you can challenge, you can support, you can find the right things being done, you can find the things to critique. Your whole toolkit is enormous. You have a lot more agency in an organization than you can ever imagine.

Mike Jones 50:32

Yes, yeah, I totally agree. And I always say there's there's always constraints, but there's always freedoms, and you must exploit your freedoms. And I and I love the idea of strategies of practice, and I wish that organisations invest more into strategies of practice rather than sending people on courses to make freaking marshmallow towers or move things around with string. That's that's my my defense.

SPEAKER_00 50:57

I think there's probably the only place we disagree. I don't mind a bit of experiential actually. I think sometimes teams could be in such a dark place they they cannot even agree on what the whether it's daytime or night time. Sometimes you just you just have to bring in a higher context where they just have to find a way to work together on anything. Maybe not the marshmallow one for sure, but I think sometimes you just have to sometimes you can just you just have to meet them where they are.

Recommendations And Closing

Mike Jones 51:24

Yeah, true, true. Yeah, I'm I'm yeah, I'm not a fan of Lego either, but that's another story. Um absolutely uh fantastic having you on, and I will link um Garen and Danny's fantastic all dev podcast. If you haven't had a chance to have a look, please go look for it, and I'll have the link in there anyway, so you can watch that. You can watch my episode too.

SPEAKER_00 51:47

Yeah, and and and I would say just obviously kudos to your podcast as well. You know, even after like 20 years, we still I go to your podcast to feel grounded because you see so much stuff in organizations, and and even now you question, is this me? Am I what am I seeing? How am I interpreting it? So I think you know what you're building is a brilliant resource. You can go back, and when you go back into your organizations, you feel on solid ground. So I think just keep doing the brilliant work that you're doing, and and I think it's a great resource for people to explore strategy in more detail.

Mike Jones 52:18

Thank you so much. I appreciate that. Well, thank you for um being a fantastic guest, and uh no doubt we'll we'll be talking again soon. Um, and I look forward to our next chat.

SPEAKER_00 52:29

Brilliant. Thanks, Mike.

Mike Jones 52:31

Take care, bye.

SPEAKER_00 52:33

Bye.