Why Just Broadcasting Strategy Is Sabotaging Execution | Jurriaan Kamer

Strategy fails in a painfully predictable place: the moment it leaves the boardroom and lands in everyone else’s calendar. We sit down with Jurriaan Kamer to get brutally practical about why “alignment” so often becomes a loud broadcast, a perfect slide deck, and a quiet wave of cynicism on the ground. Instead, we dig into what actually moves strategy execution forward: orientation to real conditions, clear choices, and activation that gives teams room to interpret and self-align.

We also borrow a performance system from an unexpected teacher: Formula One. F1 teams don’t just race fast; they learn fast. Jurriaan explains how reflection is scheduled, how debriefs create psychological safety without losing accountability, and why the best teams rally around a single priority rather than a crowded list. We connect this to organisational design, cross-functional teams, and making work visible by mapping the value chain and measuring time-to-market.

Finally, we tackle the hard leadership habits that keep strategy connected to reality: explicit trade-offs through “even over” statements, strategic intent that is ambitious yet achievable over a 2- to 4-year horizon, and the overlooked power of reversible decisions. Less perfection, more experimentation, and more slack so people can think, collaborate, and adapt as the external environment shifts.

If this helps you rethink how your organisation turns strategy into daily work, subscribe, share it with a colleague, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

Find Jurriaan's work: 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jurriaankamer/
His books
Unblock: https://amzn.eu/d/0j8eVFIF
Formula X: https://amzn.eu/d/051BMbWY

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Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

Mike Jones 0:00

Most people don't think of strategy that way.

SPEAKER_02 0:02

Developing a new strategy.

Mike Jones 0:04

Strategic blind spots. When strategy meets reality. Strategy and innovation.

SPEAKER_02 0:08

In the strategy world.

Mike Jones 0:09

Drive their strategic goals. And welcome back to Strategy Meets Reality Podcast. Welcome back to Strategy Meets Reality Podcast. I'm delighted to have Jerry and Kmer with me today. It's great to have you on. We got connected by mutual connection. So I'm really thankful for that. But so for our listeners, you might give it a bit of background and a bit of context about what you've been up to lately?

SPEAKER_02 0:34

Sure, yeah. I am an organizational accelerator and that takes all sorts of forms and shapes. I live in the Netherlands, but I work worldwide with leadership teams to get from strategy to uh to actual day-to-day focus faster. Also a keynote speaker and author of two business books.

Mike Jones 0:52

Okay, cool. What are those books called?

SPEAKER_02 0:54

So my first one is uh and we're gonna talk about that today as well, is Formula One Inspired. It's a business fable. I co-authored uh with Rini van Soningen, and it's called Formula X. And my second book, which has out been out for a bit over a year now, um, is called Unblock.

Why Strategy Breaks Down

Mike Jones 1:10

Yes, cool. And I'll put the links to those on the show notes so people can get direct access to that. So that's great. So that's really interesting, especially when you're talking about helping organizations get from strategy to execution. So we pick up on that. So how how do you find that in organizations?

SPEAKER_02 1:31

Yeah, that's the that's the the secret question, right? The million-dollar question. Yeah, I think I think there's all sorts of moments in the strategy lifecycle where things can go wrong, where it's not delivering what it needs to deliver. Uh it first it starts with strategic orientation. Like, do we actually understand the situation that we're in and do we understand the obstacles that we need to overcome to win? Then secondly, it's all about formulating, which is like what is the thing that we're going to do? You know, what is the choice we're gonna make and how we're gonna write it down so people understand what the choice is all about? Um, that's something we help leaders with a lot. Like you talk a lot about that in your show, that's how many companies actually don't have a strategy, but they call it strategy. You know, it's either fluff or marketing or or wish lists or whatever. So, yeah, that's the thing. Like, what is the actual strategic intent here and how can we articulate the trade-offs in a way so that everyone actually can translate that into day-to-day work? And then on the third level, it's it's all about activation. So we tend to talk about cascading the strategy. It's uh it's a term that I I really dislike.

Mike Jones 2:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:35

Because it's all about you know, water flowing down as a cascade, it never flows up, you know. But activation is really about getting people that are doing the work to understand it and to integrate it into their day-to-day work.

Mike Jones 2:48

Yes. It's important. You know, I've read about this around the interpretation. So it's all you know, people think it's just a communication problem and they just amplify and amplify stuff, and it's normally nonsense stuff. Um, they're gonna be cynical. But actually, what what you're talking about there is how how do you make that space for interpretation so that they've got clear intent, they have a space to understand it, and if you understand it, then they can then understand okay, well, what part do I what what's actually required of me to execute this?

Activation Needs Dialogue

SPEAKER_02 3:19

Yeah, I think the the big distinction there is that the communication bit is all about broadcasting. But the thing is that we what we need is dialogue, right? Yeah, it's it's actually having a conversation with each other to create mutual understanding of what's meant. And you can perfect your your deck, you can perfect the words, but ultimately it's about having a conversation with the the teams and the people that are executing and understanding their realities and taking in their feedback when you when you the the the choices that you want to make.

SPEAKER_01 3:47

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 3:47

Um and that feedback looks is also often missing. Like the the cascade is often done through middle management layers, which is like a practical thing to get cascading done quickly. It maybe sounds very efficient, but it's not so effective, right? The more effective way that I've seen leaders do is having daily lunch sessions with people all across the organization, right? Really being close to the teams, going to the teams rather than getting the team inviting the teams to some kind of town hall presentation, right? It's the opposite uh direction. Um the other thing is that it's really helpful to think about is like it's not like alignment is important, but but the process is actually self-alignment. And that's close to your your phrase of interpretation, because it is interpretation, and then it's like, okay, now I kind of get it. How do I align myself now to this new reality rather than I'm just gonna hear what my priorities are from from my boss, you know? It's a very different thing.

Mike Jones 4:37

And and and then what tends to happen for that then is they just post-rationalise whatever they're doing anyway and justify it towards their but it was yeah, and so you you you brought them, I think is really good and overlooked is that you know, so there's that power distance all the time in organization. We know that you know the the shorter the power distance is perceived, the better you've got more dialogue. I suppose this is where you'll get more trust and uh you know of outcomes such as safety. But and it doesn't just happen, you've got to you've got to go there. And I see a lot of organizations when they're trying to do a new transformation or something, they do the same thing, they bring like all Teams calls, so all on Teams call, these people, yeah, yeah, yeah, and there's a broadcast and stuff, and they're wondering why no one's actually getting involved. Yeah, all the big town halls. Well, I'm like, well, especially if you've got perceived low power, you know, or far high distance, yeah. High distance, that's the word. Actually getting up close and going to them and have that smaller group to allow that dialogue, I think it's really important and can start to build up that that trust.

SPEAKER_02 5:41

Yeah, and it also shouldn't happen after the executive team made a decision. It should happen earlier or it should happen constantly, actually. It's not like because uh sometimes this process starts after the executive team have have set the new strategy, and that may I put a uh in Dutch we say a strick on it, which is like we put a tie on it, a bow tie or whatever it is. And it's like it's done, it's wrapped. Now the only thing we need to do is getting into getting it into people's hands and hearts and and and and hands, you know. But but actually what should happen is that this strategy should be influenced through day-to-day conversations. If you have an early idea of a potential choice, especially if those choices are like tough trade-offs between two things that you really want at the same time, this is the moment to start talking to people, to understand the reality. And you can you can put earlier, like unformed ideas to them. Like, hey, what would happen if we would make this trade-off? You know, what would would it work? Would it really help you? Do you think that would be uh smart? Or am I am I missing something? So and I think you had Julia on the show as well, Julia Houtz at one point. Yeah, she's she's about she's all about open strategy, which I really believe in too. It's like getting as much minds on your strategy as possible because ultimately the people that are doing the work they are in contact with with the customers, you know, they are in contact with the reality of the day-to-day, and the executives are not. You know, they're they're always basing their decisions on filtered information. So yeah, you better just be there on the front lines rather than the other way around.

Mike Jones 7:01

Exactly. That comes about that feedback loop that you said that feedback loop doesn't just happen once you've executed your strategy, it's a it's a consistent feedback loop. Getting to the edges of the organization. Um and I think some leaders are and I think we might have even brought this up on Julia's episode, but I think some leaders are afraid of of what they may hear, but also I think more relevant to this, I think leaders are afraid to tell or give a hint of what may be happening because they don't want to, you know, that fear of sort of reproductions, especially I do a lot of stuff in heavily unionized organizations. There's that fear that if we say anything, then it has to be public and it causes a lot of upset.

Strategy Everywhere And Self-Alignment

SPEAKER_02 7:46

Yeah, yeah. And this I think especially in unionized environments, I mean the union is ultimately something to counter the power of the top, you know? Because apparently we cannot really trust that people at the top, you have to somehow form form kind of a counterpower, yeah. So uh I'm absolutely not against unions, but I'm just making the point that that if you are able to build a culture where leaders are constantly in touch with everyone and you have really good conversations all the time and you have good understanding and good mutual trust and you treat your people well, then you don't have to be don't have to be afraid of the unions, right? It's ultimately just a a board of people that are helping you steer the ship in a good direction and um having all the stakeholder interests. But yeah, if you're really thinking about laying off half of the company, maybe this is not the really good the good way to to to to approach it. But but like for 80% of the strategies, you know, or maybe hopefully a lot more than that, you're not doing this radical steering of direction, right? Um so yeah, that's that's how I would think about it. And the other thing is like the strategy is not something that's only happening at the top, it should be everywhere. Like strategy everywhere is a phrase I'm using more and more because I often hear people at in the teams like, ah, yeah, the strategy is not for us. Like we we don't set a strategy. Why should we set a strategy? We just hear what the strategy is. I'm like, no, actually, if we talk about self-alignment, what you're what you're doing is that you are figuring out what is our part in the bigger picture, and if this is the overarching strategy, what is our strategy then to achieve our purpose within this assignment or in this mandate or this part of the organization that we sit in? And so the strategic thinking is actually could actually happen in every layer of the organization.

Mike Jones 9:23

Yeah. And it and it goes really highlights the point you made earlier around you know getting people involved. You know, you said they put a bow on it and then just sort of throw it over the wall. But the thing is with that is that everyone worries, and I see it a lot of the time when I engage with with clients, they worry about it being perfectly clear. Is it clear enough? Is it this? Yeah, and I keep saying to it, it doesn't it doesn't need to be because you you you just need to give what you want, allow them to figure out how that self-alignment you're talking about. They'll they all know how to deliver it. You don't need to worry about the how. Yeah, the interpretation, the conversation that they will soon tell you if this is you know bit beyond all this constraints, or and that's what you want. Yeah, but you just want them to have that clear, like you said, self-alignment with it and enable them to figure out because with the strategy, we're always talking about that the the balance between status quo and change. You know, they're always trying to wrestle with stuff they have to deliver today plus the new direction, and and they'll balance that tension out, but you just need to give them the freedom to be able to do that, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:25

And and there might be many teams in your organizations where the new strategy doesn't affect them at all. Yeah, you still need uh a group of people cleaning. Yeah, still a group of people that are cleaning the office, you know. That that won't really change. Like maybe HR processes will roughly stay the same. Maybe especially some of these support functions, they don't necessarily need to change a lot. Um, so don't bother them too much with it, I would say. So yeah, that that's kind of the you have to be intentional and deliberate of where you're gonna put your effort in that sense. The thing I think I've seen working really well is to to create a sort of marketplace where after the leaders have said, you know, this is the direction, these are the choices we're making, this is what we're not going to do, and this is what we want to do, and having this invitation of, okay, can you after hearing this, can you tell me what it will mean for you day to day? Can you tell me what that that will change for your objectives day to day and present that to each other and having this kind of marketplace where leaders walk around and teams hear also from each other what they're going to do, and that creates this this sense, this this is the sense making of the new direction. And maybe that means that we have to close down the factory for two days. And that is another thing that leaders often don't want to do, right? There's this this idea that indeed, like you say, the teams call on Saturday night or Friday night, you know, after work hours sometimes, even. Or like, you know, we don't want to invest in we don't want to make the trade-off of um creating really good focus and alignment versus you know a potential short-term loss of productivity. Uh is a trade-off I don't see a lot of companies make, but if you do do that and you invest, you actually kind of take people seriously enough to say, actually, we really value your perspective and want to know if this is gonna work, then actually that actually you know that that kind of commitment that also drives commitment and creates more commitment as well.

Mike Jones 12:08

And you're right, and it we brought up this on a previous episode with Steve Hirsch, and it was about that you've got to slow down to speed up. Right, right. Yeah no no one wants to no one wants to slow down, they just don't put and in this thing when you're talking about Shaky activation, um and that that getting people involved, um that comes into you know a structural sequence. You've got to invest the time to and space to do that. Yeah, but by doing that, you're going to exponentially speed up because they've got the clarity, got the ownership, and they're gonna move forward, but they won't. They'll they'll do it over uh five minutes before you know the next meet.

Formula One Rhythms Of Learning

SPEAKER_02 12:46

Yeah, and then they're surprised that nothing changed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think like, and and this is a really good segue into the the Formula One world because these are these, and you know, you know this, I know Mike, but maybe for the listeners, you know, these are these are fairly large teams. People don't understand that often, but like an average Formula One team is a thousand to two thousand people to build and drive two cars. It's crazy. I'm still crazy when I'm saying it, but it's it is true, right? It's like these cars are manufactured from scratch, sometimes even they build their own engines. So it's a highly technical environment, it's a big factory environment. And they they are the fastest and most innovative teams in the world. And the way they've done that, the way they've been able to compete in this ruthless competitive environment, is by building in moments for pausing, learning, and reflection and improving. So the the fastest teams in the world actually have cultivated this idea of continuous improvement and continuous innovation by pre-planning in their operating rhythm, in their way of working, they just schedule reflection meetings. And they sometimes use this metaphor of when they have a race, it's usually about 90, 90 minutes, sometimes a little bit more, but they spend over two hours reflecting on how the race went and what they can learn from it.

SPEAKER_01 14:00

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:01

It's this balance of execution versus reflection and improvement that is very different from what we see in most organizations.

Mike Jones 14:07

Yes. And and when you look at the the whole process, like the time they put into it, the the approach to strategy, that's really what we mean by when strategy meets reality. Because before the race, they're already thinking and wargaming around what could happen, what would happen to this. You can hear the drivers, they're going, oh, we're going on to plan A or plan B, or even some the other day we're talking about plan G. You're like, wow, okay, cool. Um, and and then that that point afterwards that you never see, people talk about it, but that sort of after action review, that actual time where they they they're not just going, oh yeah, we could have done better, they're really pulling into the detail. Um, and the the the drivers are taking owner, and this is I think the real key point the drivers themselves are taking ownership for oh yeah, this is my mistake, I've done this, and this is what we're gonna learn from it. Everyone's there to take ownership of what what part they either could contributed really well or may have you know in in part led to some undesirable outcomes.

SPEAKER_02 15:13

Exactly, and it's it's this space where it is safe to admit failure that that actually also helps them to innovate well, you know. Um there are teams on the grid uh in the Formula One sport that have a culture where people are a little bit more afraid to speak up, uh especially if the big the big gorilla boss is in the room. But there but the best performing teams, uh people are constantly just admitting their failures and then thinking about what were all the factors that were contributing to this problem, on top of me making a personal mistake, because it's usually more than one person's mistake or one factor that is causing a certain situation. And the teams that understand that well, they instead of blaming someone for a failure, they look at all the factors and try to make improvements on all of those because the human factor will always be part of that. So, yeah, that's what happens in those reviews as well.

Mike Jones 16:01

Yeah, you see uh a definitely different approach by the different bosses. Probably the the the polarized one is at the moment is um forgot his name now, the Alpha Alpines boss now, the Italian guy. He he was yeah, yeah, I forgot his name.

SPEAKER_02 16:18

Yeah, yeah, Flavio Brigatore. Yeah, Flavio, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mike Jones 16:22

And then then you've got Wheatley on the other side. Yeah, he's just gone to um to Oswald.

SPEAKER_02 16:29

But he's moving to uh is he moving to Aston Martin now? Yeah, there wasn't for Virginia.

Mike Jones 16:33

But yeah, they're the complete polar opposites. You know, you've got Flavio one side that's like any mistake, he's like slamming doors. Cut your head off. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wheatley on the other side, he's just like just a nice happy, yeah, very friendly. And I remember him saying, like, don't confuse my uh friendliness with or smiliness with you know not being serious. Right. I think that's I think sometimes that get does get confused. People are, you know, he's they're soft, but I don't think he's everywhere soft, he just has a bit more of an open approach that invites people to to be honest, and I think that's where yeah, he just Yeah, it's it's about creating an environment.

SPEAKER_02 17:13

Yeah, so I think it's it's really about as a as a leader at the top, you set the tone for the culture of everyone else. Like if you bark to your your your colleagues that report into you, then they will bark to their people as well, because apparently that's how we do things around here, you know? And and before you know it, everybody's barking at each other. And like the smart team principals understand that the culture to build is really one of understanding, listening, empathy, but also I mean, yes, and also if you read some of Toto Wolff's interviews, like of course he is he is very okay with mistakes, but if it's happened three or four or five or five times, then you're out, right?

Mike Jones 17:48

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:49

These Formula One teams are magnets for talent, and they have the ability to hire the best talent in the world. So so they will not have a low performer for long. But even with high performers, everybody's going to make a mistake, and it's all about teamwork, and uh you have to talk to each other and collaborate.

Mike Jones 18:06

Yeah, I I think they have a great balance in there around the you know, there's there's that space to be open and emit faults and learn and and learn quick with the other side around actually there's there's accountability, there's ownership. Exactly, yeah. You know, you you need to you need to own your own own area. And I think that highlights really really crucial to your point about strategy act activation and that that self-alignment. Yeah. That yeah, you know, we're gonna learn, but the psychological contract that I have have with you is that you you will own your space.

Debriefs And One True Priority

SPEAKER_02 18:38

Exactly. Yeah and this is this is something that that I've observed also what when visiting and researching for one of one teams that on Monday morning after the Sunday race, they always have this all hands race debrief. Because when they have when they're doing the race, they can only bring about a hundred people to the track. That's limited by regulations. But there's there's always going to be 900 to 1900 people in the factory hoping that the thing they worked on last week doesn't fall apart during the race. So everybody's interested and engaged to understand on Monday, okay, we now had this race. What does that mean for me? So what you see is that you there's multiple photos of this where it's like you have the team principal in front of the group, and this is this town hall meeting where where they're going to talk through all the learnings of the race, but it also immediately gives everybody a perspective of what does that mean for my priorities up until the next race. So imagine they're focusing on improving issues with the start, and this is something between the electronics team and the and the power unit team. Everybody understands that's now the biggest, biggest bottleneck for performance. Everybody now then now know that they need to leave those teams alone, you know, in the next two weeks and don't bother them with some kind of new ideas. So at the end of the meeting, everybody walks out and says, Ah, now I kind of already know with that context what it means for me and the priorities of my team for the next two weeks. And this is this rapid, rapid self-alignment that's happening. And if this is this is done with everyone in the room, it's not only done through the management layer. Everybody's there to hear the full full story, they're able to ask questions and push back on things uh immediately. And that's this two-weekly self-alignment that's happening.

Mike Jones 20:04

Yeah, yeah. And it's great seeing I see it all the time. Red Bull used to do it a lot. They still do. Uh, every uh every Monday the the team principal will be at the factory in Monkeys and they do it. But you mentioned a really good point there and around everyone understands what the main priorities are. And we talk about the the main effort. So when we think about strategy execution, there is there is a main effort, which is the most crucial part that must must happen to enable success for everything else. And everyone knows that and you focus in on it. I rarely see it though, because they they love it, they live in this world of priorities. And yeah, everything's a priority, and then everyone's squabbling for resources.

SPEAKER_02 20:47

Yeah, I wrote this in my book and actually found this in my research that I think before the 1930s, priorities as a plural didn't exist.

SPEAKER_01 20:54

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:55

As a word, as a it doesn't exist in our like there was only one priority. That that's how it works. And so somehow we kind of uh we introduced m multitasking uh in our in our vocabulary. Yeah, it's it's it's crazy how how many people still believe that we need to do five projects at once rather than doing each one in sequence and just finishing them, you know?

SPEAKER_01 21:14

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:15

We think we think we're faster by doing everything in parallel, but we're not, you know, it's slower.

Mike Jones 21:19

And that's the thing. Especially when you're doing change, you've got to sequence that because we've only got so many limited resources and time. You need to sequence them. And also a lot of things do follow a natural sequence. Um and you can base that, and you you always sequence based off of constraints and resources.

SPEAKER_02 21:37

Yeah, yeah.

Mike Jones 21:38

Things will have a natural sequence, but we seem to not want to do that. I don't know why. Maybe it's this thing of this false sense of speed, or you know, sometimes I've seen it that people don't want to say that something's the priority because that'll upset Dave or or Shelly because they're not the priority. You know, oh God. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:57

I would say the other the other thing I see often is that we've hired too many people.

unknown 22:00

People.

SPEAKER_02 22:02

We have too many people at once trying to do something. And that means we have to kind of break down the work into different departments. And now suddenly all those departments are competing for the same resource. Well, if we would have just a have just a smaller team, you see this in scale-ups, right? They cannot do everything. They have to just focus on a few things because it just simply cannot do anything, everything. But now that we have a thousand people, we should be able to do everything, right? At least that's the expect expectation. But like this bit weird metaphor that that is shown a lot in software development is like you cannot have a baby in one month with nine wives.

SPEAKER_01 22:34

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:35

It's not impossible. It's just a process that takes time. And yeah, so somehow in business we sometimes think that we can.

Mike Jones 22:42

Yeah. And you see all the time, um uh what's it Stafford Beer called it pathological autopesis. It's that thing where teams then come or organizations come almost internalized, um, and they they come self-creating, so they lose touch with reality. And essentially that's what causes the bulge, and you get all these teams that bulge out. But when you actually pull it apart and you say to these teams, and I have to do, like, what do you do? You know, and yeah, and it it's it's amazing how detached people and teams get from what's actually happening. And you think that's where you that's where you've lost it.

SPEAKER_02 23:21

The moment you start growing a lot, and and you if you don't have your team structures well thought out, you get a high, you know, a high level of internal focus where where we have to go through management layers to get something done, especially when there's dependencies. It is not a problem to have a large amount of teams, but you have to think about first of all making them cross-functional, you know, having thinking about what is actually the process of delivering value in this particular organization, and how can we make separate smaller teams that are able to deliver end-to-end without any dependency on a certain domain? And if you're able to kind of have that in place, well then you can go fast and maybe making you know, paralyzation is is then possible. But you know, unfortunately, we do tend to think that if we put all the specialists of one craftsmanship in one team, or we have this matrix organization that drives everybody crazy, yeah. It's it's hard. You know, it's it's not an easy thing to do. But yeah, I mean going back to to what I do on stage often when I talk to audiences, I show them a pit stop. You see you see 22 people doing one thing at once, everybody has their own little task, it's all synchronized, everybody knows what to do. There's no meetings involved during the pit stop. How are we going to approach this? It's clear, like the work is clear, the product are clear, everybody has their role in it, and we can just do something in sub, you know, in two seconds.

Mike Jones 24:39

And that's uh Yeah, that's why I'm I I'm concerned where things are going with people in organizations. It's almost like it it's not vogue, you know, it to actually have role clarity anymore or structure that everyone's anti-structure and anti-thing, and you're like, no, no, no, there's there's a difference. You see it all the time because people will, especially on LinkedIn, they'll show like the picture with the normal traditional tree, and then there's like networked mess. They go, Yeah, bad, good. Like, no, no, no, no. You can have a network thing and still be really bad. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think people are lost going back to the basics around, you know, what what is what is this thing for? What do we need it to produce? And then thinking about, well, how do we give it all the decision rights and resources so this thing can just do what it needs to do and adapt to the turbulence it's gonna have without needing to stop and ask permission for everything, have meetings, slow everything down, which then really destroys any idea of uh of strategy execution.

SPEAKER_02 25:46

Yeah. Yeah, sometimes it's interesting to just map out the value chain on the wall, you know, to to kind of interview group people like how how do we actually produce this thing? How do we actually create value for our customers? What is the product and how do we how do we create this product? And you you kind of map out all the steps, starting with approval here, budget there, meeting this and that, uh priority setting, and then okay, so how long is actually the lead time? You know, what's the what's the time to market here? And if that's something you start steering on, you know, how fast are we able to adapt to the market and you make that visible, then things become obvious, things becomes obvious. But it's often that that leaders think their organization is really efficient until you until you make visible that they really aren't.

Mike Jones 26:26

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:27

It's like it's it's it's difficult because these things, these things are not visible on a balance sheet. But the CFO doesn't know how many time we're wasting in meetings that are useless. That's that's not being tracked often and it's not being steered on. But costs, costs are like uh you know how many employees we have, how many money we're spending, how many budgets we're allocating, those are things that are tracked, but not but not the actual the actual things that are blocking strategy execution, unfortunately.

Mike Jones 26:51

Yeah. Well that comes to another counter problem where people track the costs by heads, so they think, well, let's be more efficient so we'll just cut heads, rather than understand what those heads do. And before you knew it, they've they've crushed any sort of adaptability in there, yeah. Um because they've now overextended their their workforce. Yeah. Um, yeah, so there's always that bit that's where we're talking about you need to be curious and to actually understand. I I keep saying this, and um I said it in my previous solo one. I was talking about we need to start with reality. Like what what's the reality of the situation? What is it that we actually do? What is actually happening? And I've done that with an organization. I I said, Well tell me how does someone get the notice for work to deliver the work? And their process looked great. And I said, Right, let's let's go see let's go see reality and go track it. And and they were amazed but how difficult it was to get notice of work to get to do work, um was really sh so much shock for them.

Reality Checks From Nokia

SPEAKER_02 27:58

Yeah. Yeah, I've I've started looking into the the case study of Nokia, the mobile phones in the 19ths and 90s that were once a market leader. It's a famous example of failure, uh I guess, you know, of the iPhone is coming and then suddenly Nokia's gone. But if you look at that really closely, what you discover is that it's not that the the top leaders didn't know what was coming for them. You know, they were completely aware. Like a day after the iPhone announcement, their strategy department had created an amazing report, which is public, about how this is going to impact their business, how Nokia should respond, potential scenarios for responding to this, choices to make. Like that was super clear to the top one day after the iPhone announcement. But but then the problem started. You know, how do you get a company that is stuck in their silos, that is stuck in a certain way of producing these phones to completely steer away from that? And especially the integration between software and hardware. There was something that was completely separated in this company, and now it suddenly had to be key to integrate that design. The silos, the the incentives we're working against them, they're like all this inertia completely filled failed, created the failure that we're looking at. Yeah, they just disappeared in a few years.

Mike Jones 29:08

And that's the problem with you know, I always talk about the um you have strategy, but you have the identity, the grand strategy, which is you know, what is the organization? What's it was it good at? You know, um, what's the DNA of it, uh, the capabilities, because it limits what's possible for the strategy. Uh and if you if you're so if you've got what Boyd talks about, this uh incestor's amplification, where you're so internal, so um so much bureaucracy, so slow, then it removes any ability to be able to adapt to seize those opportunities. You see all the time it happened with blockbusters. You could argue um that this is essentially what happened with Nova Nordisk with the they they created the first uh market with the fat loss drug, but yeah, yeah, they weren't set up for mass production. So then others became quickly and they they took it. So they've they've had to I think they've uh made 9,000 employees redundant, which is huge. But but this out this asks another question, like now they've done this, do they know what they're gonna become and they're gonna be happy what they've become? Right. Because they doing that much of a a change is gonna fundamentally change their identity of an organization.

SPEAKER_02 30:22

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, they have to kind of re reset themselves, start from scratch basically, thinking about what what kind of company are we? You know, are we producing or are we producing a consumer-facing brand? It's it's uh totally different story.

Mike Jones 30:34

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But no doubt they'll get some consultants in that will do them a lovely new purpose statement, a vision statement that's completely detached from reality.

SPEAKER_02 30:46

I think I think it's more than that, actually. We've actually been in conversations to help them out, uh, funny enough. And and it's all about changing behavior on the ground. You know, if if you are are um and this is not only for Novo Nordisk. I think this this is a development in pharma that's happening in multiple places where the pharmaceutical companies would have been able for years to just consistently produce great profit margins because their their drugs were just like monopolizing, and now there's just more competition. Consumers are getting more involved in in picking which drugs they want. You know, that's that's a different like the consumers get the voice as well. So this is all about what part of reality are we are we interfacing with? Suddenly we need to influence behavior of consumers rather than just the healthcare providers, and that's a big shift in in in many pharma companies that we see a lot.

Mike Jones 31:31

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:31

So again, it's like how where are we touching reality and is that is that information really that has surfaced at that touch point integrated into how we're going to learn about how we need to be different?

Mike Jones 31:43

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:44

And if that takes five years to make that shift, that's too long.

External Change And Scenario Planning

Mike Jones 31:47

Yeah. Well this is the point with the external environment, it's so crucial. Um, a lot of strategy development, even execution is all internalized. Um, they're not really thinking about the external environment, what's changing, what's happening. And you see this a lot. Um, you've seen it a lot with the uh third sector market in America with Trump coming in, or you know, all the charities, and he even said, you know, I'm gonna cut, you know, USAID. He was he was pretty clear of it. Um they sort of just like rabbits in the headlight just stopped and stared and hoping it wasn't gonna happen. But you've you've got to you've got to look at these and coming back to the Formula One analogy, you've got to start wargaming this. Yeah. And thinking, what's our relationship currently? Where is the external environment going? How would that shape us? What can we do to shape it? What are options? And start to to think about those.

SPEAKER_02 32:39

Yeah, it's it's a very old practice, actually. It's been invented decades ago of scenario planning.

Mike Jones 32:45

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:46

You know, um, what are if you think about these strengths and weaknesses, what is a what's a potential scenario that that can really uh throw us off? And what's a potential scenario that actually can can benefit a lot? And what are responses to that and thinking about that upfront so that when they are happening, you can actually respond quickly. It's like you said, like the driver, the driver's hearing, are we going for plan A, plan B, plan C? Those are all like there's there's a couple hundred scenarios that that the teams have figured out before to respond in the actual moment of the race. Because they can they can plan all they want, but they win the race by responding to their competitors at the right time and doing something that's slightly different. So yeah, they have computers and computer simulations for this, but uh yeah, being prepared for for battle is something we uh we often skip in the organizations so for some reason.

Mike Jones 33:33

You see it a lot like I admire Hannah Schmidt, who's the Red Bull strategist, and you know it's I had the pleasure of actually meeting her and having a conversation. It was so interesting about how they do it, and but they're always thinking, it's always well, you know, they're always thinking about well, what if they do this? And then things will happen. They go, right, they are doing this, that means we're ready to go, or now this has happened, it was unexpected. Well, what does that mean to us? And they're they're they're in that that's actual that dynamic relationship with the external environment and understanding about how do we shape the the environment rather than it shaping us. Yeah, and you see a lot of organizations that detach from that and they are being shaped, they're not shaping.

SPEAKER_02 34:14

Right. Yeah, it's all about figuring out like what's the hand that that I've been dealt and what are the moves I can make to increase the odds of winning. And it's both of that, it's both being really uh being really clear about the hand uh that that you're dealt. And I think I've heard Hannah say that also like the strategy for for Max Verstappen, the driver, is different from the the second driver because because they know that Max is able to nurture his tires in a certain way that the other drivers can't. So they can deploy more risky strategies with him. So again, it's like what do we know about our capabilities? How can we improve those capabilities, but also how do we work with them every day to figure out you know what's our best response to to the environment?

Strategic Intent And Hard Trade-Offs

Mike Jones 34:54

Yes, yeah. That that that that takes a really sort of a grounded approach, and I always get challenged for my um uh sort of attack on ambition. Well, they they accuse me of attacking ambition, I'm I'm not, but I I'm I'm against blind aspiration. And you see this if you look at the Formula One, what we were just talking about then, you imagine if they'd done what most organizations do, where it's gonna go, Well, what do we want to do this race? Well, you know, we want to be the best, yeah, yeah, yeah. We're gonna win, we want to be the best um on the track, and then they're just like, Okay, cool. So, how are we gonna do that? Well, we're gonna go really fast as a one priority, you know, we're going to um have great technology. Um, we're gonna delight our um our fans.

SPEAKER_02 35:41

Yeah, exactly.

Mike Jones 35:42

And that's really about it. And then that's the strategy. Yeah, it's a strategy.

SPEAKER_02 35:46

That's a really good, that's an amazing metaphor. I'm gonna maybe I'm gonna steal that from you, Mike. It's it's a really good example of the strategy you see often. I think I think uh if you if you look at the actual strategies and the conversations, especially happening in the midfield, they say if we are going to finish fifth this year, we've done amazing. So that's what we're gonna aim at. You know, they're not gonna say we're gonna aim for the championship because they know it's not realistic. And if you set a set a goal that's unrealistic, it only demotivates people, you know? Um, so you have to be clear about that.

Mike Jones 36:14

Um that's where you go into that strategy activation you're talking about, and that's cynicism. Because if it's just broadcasted out and it's just like I said, oh yeah, we're gonna be the best amazing thing. It's not even even that, they're probably gonna say we're gonna save the world and be the most diverse team in the world. Um as a vision. Um, people look at you and go, one, I I don't know how to translate that to what I need to do. And two, you're like, that's unre realistic. You've got someone like Haas are gonna turn around and go, um, Haas are sort of midfield, by the way, and they go, We're gonna win the drivers and constructors championship this year.

SPEAKER_02 36:53

Yeah.

Mike Jones 36:54

Everyone's like, well, yeah, that ain't gonna happen. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:57

So it doesn't really help. So this is the thing about what is the job to be done for the strategy that we have? How can we make it in a way that it's actually helpful? So one thing that I help leaders do a lot is this articulate a strategic intent, which is like relatively it's long enough so you can actually be ambitious, but it's short enough so it's actually concrete and tangible. So it's it's usually on a time horizon of two to four years, where you articulate this is the thing that really needs to happen in the next two to four years for us to survive or to be successful or to be whatever. And because we're planning for two or four years ahead, you can actually put the bar relatively high. So it is inspiring, but it is not this ultimate thing of we're going to dominate the whole world because that is too far ahead for people to really grasp. But people can look at that strategy and that goal and think like I can see how that might be possible if we really focus ourselves. So I'm I'm really of the the like stretching is good, but it still has it in you know it's only inspirational if it's achievable. You know, it's kind of this paradox, but you know, this idea of 10x and like b b hags, you know, big hairy, audacious goals. Oh I mean it's it's a matter of how you deal with them, but I I found this sweet spot, like two to three years out is far enough because people underestimate uh overestimate what they can do in a year, but they underestimate what they can do in two to three years.

Mike Jones 38:19

Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, because in in in the word intent that we use that in the military and it's it's very clear, focused. Um you know, do what by means of how. Um and the final bit is is what success will look like. Um or we say when the smoke clears, what's gonna be meaningfully different um so that people understand it. But yeah, we think about trajectory. I think the trajectory is what's the what's the direction we're going? What what's the next sort of horizon that we need to think about and what that looked like? Because yeah, I think these sort of we're gonna it's sort of extremes. You get one that's like we're pretty much gonna do what we did last year, plus my ten minus uh plus or minus ten percent, or it's so vague, like we're gonna be the best selling thing, or you know, it's yeah, it's not helpful for anyone.

SPEAKER_02 39:12

The thing the thing that also really helps with this is a practice that that I really uh am a huge fan of, which is even overstatements. So for example, we're gonna apply the trade-off of speed even over cost, or volume even over product diversification. So it's it's it's really all about articulating a trade-off so that it's extremely clear what you're willing to not do to achieve the other thing. That's something that's some of them often very missing. Like it's like this is the goal, but yeah, but to get to that goal, we have to say no to certain things.

Mike Jones 39:43

Yeah. They want proof.

SPEAKER_02 39:45

Do the work of figuring out what we're what we need to sacrifice.

Mike Jones 39:49

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:49

What we're really not going to do to get there.

Mike Jones 39:52

Yeah, it's the same with NetRail in the UK, they've always struggled with trying to pick either performance or capacity.

SPEAKER_02 40:00

Which one? Which company, sorry?

Mike Jones 40:02

Network rail.

SPEAKER_02 40:03

Network rail, yeah. Yeah, it's a good idea. Okay, performance or capacity, got it.

Mike Jones 40:06

Yeah, yeah. So performance or capacity. So we know that if if you've got a lot of trains on the network, it's gonna impact performance. Yeah. So but they won't sometimes some will be clear, but some won't be clear about what's the trade-off, what we're actually going for.

unknown 40:20

Yeah.

Mike Jones 40:20

So they're sitting in this sort of middle where they don't really achieve either or. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:25

Yeah. And the funny thing is that if you are able to get performance, sometimes you get the second half of the even overstatement as a bonus by just focusing on one a lot more.

SPEAKER_01 40:34

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:34

So if if things are things are high performance, then that actually maybe allows you to increase capacity and and and volume, you know. But if we don't choose, the universe will choose for us, which is obviously often a middle middle average ground that you that is not useful for anyone.

Focus Slack And Reversible Decisions

Mike Jones 40:50

Yeah. But it this is something really good to highlight in the the dialogue that you have. And like this is what I want. What was what's the contradiction? Yeah. And they'll they'll come and they'll they'll say, Well, if you want this, then we'll sacrifice that, yeah. And you go, Yeah, that's cool. But this is where we must we must be clear about the constraints. Uh what's the freedoms, what's the implied specified tasks, you know, be have that time for that dialogue, otherwise you the strategy will just falter. It will not happen. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Like it. Um so what is the what do you think looking ahead now? What what do you think is going to be the biggest challenge for organizations in this sort of strategy field going forward?

SPEAKER_02 41:33

Another million dollar question, Mike.

Mike Jones 41:35

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:37

I mean, the thing that we consistently see clients struggle with is this focus. It's just two too many things at once, there's too many inputs, too many ideas. AI is accelerating the the amount of ideas that people have, which is on the one hand great, but how do you create those decision filters so you actually can focus? And that that all it starts with uh almost individual hygiene in terms of can I actually do my work every day without feeling overwhelmed? And really equipping your employees with that, and then can I equip my my colleagues, my employees, with enough strategic clarity so they can actually make those choices in a beneficial way, rather than just whoever shouts the the loudest gets the most attention, yeah? Or the client that shouts the loudest, or the problem that seems the biggest. And I think that is that is the that is the challenge. You know, how do you give people a compass that they can put in their own pocket, that they can help navigate actual day-to-day change and day-to-day overwhelm? That's that's something I think is is is true for many, many places.

Mike Jones 42:38

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I believe that that that focus. And it's not a new thing, you know. Um we talk about it for you know for centuries.

SPEAKER_02 42:47

Yeah, but it's uh it's different. It was different in the 1980s when we don't even didn't even have email, you know?

Mike Jones 42:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:54

40 years later, we are overwhelming people with not only email, but all other sorts of communication apps and WhatsApp groups and and then news and everything that's happening in people's personal lives, and it's it is overwhelming sometimes.

Mike Jones 43:08

Yeah. Organizations, I think, need to get to the point where they realize that having a bit of inefficiency built in is not a bad thing. Like having a bit of slack. Exactly. And to be really honest, and this is like to the the CFOs and stuff like that, it is not a good thing that your workforce are um at 120% capacity. That's not a good thing.

SPEAKER_02 43:33

I always t tell them like, what does a what does a highway look like when they're at 100% capacity? Yeah, yeah, it's a traffic jet. It doesn't work.

Mike Jones 43:42

I know, but it we seem to get in this thing where it's all about efficiency and it's it's about and and I think this is where you can think about in uh in Formula One, the pit stop. That is about efficiency, but they they it's stable. It doesn't it doesn't change except for you may get you know a lock in nut that wasn't come come undone but you know it it's it's it's a very closed system. Yep they come in and you can make that thing as efficient as possible. That's why they've gone from back in the eighties it used to be like two minutes for a stop, yeah, all the way to now it's two seconds for a stop. Yeah. Um but you can't apply that same process to everything, and I think we do there are things that just are not um stable or closed enough to be able to do that. You need to have Slack in the system to adapt.

SPEAKER_02 44:38

And you have you know you have to understand that people's brains are not wired to be productive every hour of the work work week, right? Like social cohesion, having people to talk with their colleagues, interact, have have a have a drink, or have uh really good human-to-human conversations is is actually the oil in the system.

SPEAKER_01 44:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:57

If you overload people with work or with priorities, then you know you're not getting the most out of them. I think I think that there's lots of leaders out there that really understand that. Like it's I'm not saying that the leaders don't get it, but but somehow the especially if you have a company that's stock listed and creates a quarter-to-quarter focus, that kind of trickles down sometimes in the culture that there's no time for for for chat or for pausing or for reflection or for improvement. Like it feels like everything is already fully loaded to the top. But yeah, you have to figure out as a as an executive team, like what kind of culture do you really want? Is it does it have a short-term perspective? Does it have a long-term perspective? What kind of employer do you want to be? Those are the big questions for the executives, yeah.

Mike Jones 45:37

Yeah, and they've got to match that with structure. I think that's what happens because you've got a look a lot of good leaders out there, but the structure is not designed for that. So they come a part of the system, get dragged a bit. Yeah, it's been really great. Fantastic conversation. I can't believe it's come to time already. But before you leave, what what would you like to leave listeners to think about from this episode?

SPEAKER_02 45:59

Yeah, I think there's one thing that we haven't mentioned that is also key to good strategy execution is that we tend to think that decisions are irreversible. Yeah, we tend to act as if we're going to make one strategic decision a year because we don't want to change the strategy too often. You know, we should really let go of that idea. Like it doesn't need to be perfect. It's all about doing stuff to see how reality responds, learning from that, and then doing new decisions rather than having meeting after meeting after meeting to make the perfect decision, which in reality doesn't really exist. So I think this reversibility of decisions is also kind of a key key element in in my latest The Unblock book uh that I mentioned before, where it's like, how do you do that in practice? Is it how do you actually get to more experimentation rather than more perfect decisions that are not really perfect?

Closing And Listener Call To Action

Mike Jones 46:49

Yes. I would say that shaft G is the gap that never closes. You know, when you go to execution, it's never going to meet reality how you want to. Right. So you're never going to have that perfect one where it executes smoothly. There's always going to be a gap that needs to be closed through. Yeah. You know, and again, this comes back to what we were talking about earlier about those teams that are self-organizing, they've got the resources, decision rights. They're then equipped to to close those gaps without needing to have further meetings and that. So I think that's a great point to for for listeners to think about and connect with. Yeah. Cool. Uh well, thank you so much for coming on. Um, it's been absolutely fascinating. Um, I will link your books, link to people want to get in touch. If you've enjoyed the episode uh as much as I have, having a great conversation during, please um subscribe and share to your network so we could get so other people can get value from this. But thank you so much for being a great guest. Thank you. There's a lot of great insights for people to think about.

SPEAKER_02 47:50

Thanks very much, Mike. I really enjoyed it. And uh we'll meet we'll meet again, for sure.