Transformation

Working the Puzzle – Thoughts On Knowledge

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You’re sitting at a card table. There’s a puzzle box in front of you. You open the box and realize that there are not enough pieces to complete the puzzle. You look at the picture on the box and it depicts a vague image of swirling lines. The lines make a series of blurry shapes. An outline of what the puzzle depicts.

As you begin looking through the pieces you find some that go together nicely. You look at the pieces you’ve fit together. Then at the box. The picture on the box has changed. The section you’ve put together is clearer. You seem to have more pieces available then when you started, but you’re running.

Something on the floor catches your eye. Another puzzle piece. You look up and realize you’re in a room full of card tables. Each with a puzzle box. Some with partially put together puzzles. You go to the table by the piece on the floor. You see several pieces you need. You grab them and return to your table. Again the picture on the box has changed. You plug the new pieces in. The picture on the pieces has changed as well. You go back to the second table. The picture on that puzzle has changed as well. You sit down to work on that puzzle for a bit using pieces you’ve brought from the first table.

You walk the room. You sense there’s a pattern. The puzzles closest to each other seem to be related. You move from isle to isle, row to row. The differences become greater from your original puzzle.

You meet someone as you wonder through the tables. They present you a new puzzle piece. It’s one you need. You ask where she found it. “Over there,” as she points to a far away table. You head that way. As you get closer, the puzzle boxes have fewer and fewer pieces. The pictures become more vague, then have almost no image at all. You head back in a direction where the boxes are clearer. You begin building new puzzles. Now there are more pieces in the direction you want to go.

The years go by. You’ve explored many sections of the room. The endless room. You’ve met many others along the way. Worked on puzzles together. Argued about how pieces fit. What the pictures are of.

Recently you’ve begun to believe there’s more to all of it. That the tables themselves are arranged with some meaning. That you need another perspective. To see it all at once. Then you could understand that meaning. Then you could see that the tables themselves are pieces to a much larger puzzle. Perhaps that’s the real purpose to everything. The tables. The room. If you could just see enough of it. Everything would fall into place and make sense. But the room is too big, and you’re vision too limited.

You look down and realize that you need a piece from that very first puzzle you started. When you get to the table you see there are many more pieces than when you left. The picture is more distinct. More recognizable.

You sit down. You work the puzzle.

Strategy as Story: Part 5

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Strategy is about telling stories. Good strategy is about telling the ongoing saga of your brand.

This is part five. It’s also the final part. In part one we introduced the premise and a framework to hang our strategic direction on. Then we got into Mission & Goals (What). In part two we discussed the Value Network (Who), and in parts three and four Strategy (How). In this final part we get to the heart of story, Vision (Why). We’re almost to the end. I promise.

Vision

Your strategic vision should serve as an anchor point for everyone to rally around. Human beings are curious creatures. There are people who will follow direction without much question, but without motivation you don’t get their best. There are lots of different things that motivate people to various degrees. While it’s true that a certain amount of motivation is personal, it infuriates me when I hear phases like, “we want people who are self motivated.” This is the difference between a manager and a leader. The manager is lazy and wants others to find their own motivation. The leader understands human nature and provides an environment for motivation to take root. Strategy is about leadership. The strategic vision is your main avenue to motivate and inspire. It’s your opportunity to capture hearts and minds.

How do you turn strategy into a tool for motivation? Story. This whole series has been leading towards telling the story of your strategy. We’ve talked about what (theme), who (characters), and how (plot). Now we’ll talk about why (story).

While you’ll use parts of your overall vision for different purposes, your strategic vision should consider the following:

  • Paint a picture of what the world will look like after the strategy has been executed.
  • Set the context of your story.
  • The key benefits of that future state.
  • The major opportunities and challenges along on the journey to get there.
  • It should be a simple view (vision) that everyone can understand.

I want to call out the first and last bullets, as the main reason for communicating strategies through story. The three in the middle; context, key benefits, and major opportunities/challenges, are all components of your story telling. The view of the end state (first bullet) is your overall vision. It may include technical and operational details needed for decision makers and people who need to execute strategies. The simple view (last bullet) is the true rally point for motivation. This is the vision you share broadly to build excitement. It should be a story that anyone can tell and understand. It’s the story of us not me or you.

Theme

In part one we discussed the notion of turning your larger goal into a theme for your strategy. Your theme acts a your through line. It’s a way to validate your strategic vision (story). Test the elements of your story against your theme. Do they re-enforce each other? If not, then why not? The theme doesn’t ring true to the goal? Adjust the theme. If the theme is right, then dig deeper into why your story isn’t following the theme.

In traditional forms of story telling, the author may find that through the telling of the story the theme they wanted to focus on has changed. When we’re telling the story of our goals and strategies, we have less latitude. While there is latitude, in how we get there, we don’t get to throw out the goals if we don’t like them. The theme doesn’t fit your narrative? Tough. Dig deeper and figure out why? If you truly feel that the goal is wrong then seek to understand it better. Who knows, you may be able to influence the direction. However; if you really can’t reconcile things, chances are it’s because you’re telling the wrong story. You may be telling the story of a different goal then the one in front of you. Raise your voice. Goals come and go over time. Use what you’ve learned to impact the next set of goals. If you find that your story falls more in line with a different goal, then share that knowledge. Pass it on and get back to the drawing board on the task at hand.

Another reason for feeling that you’re story has missed the theme is that you’ve surpassed the original goal. When you approach your strategic vision through he lens of story telling, it isn’t uncommon to go down the rabbit hole. The typical strategy has a three year shelf life. When you truly connect with a vision you may be seeing the next steps past that three year point. One test of this is to revisit your story with a shorter time-line. If you find you’re on theme after that then you’re in good shape. Separate out the longer vision, but don’t loose it. look at where you need to be in the next three years and let it inform you. You’ll end up with a better strategy. Spin off the longer vision as a side story and start telling it. Get feedback and refine it. You may find you have a chance to fold the two visions together. At the very least you’ll be in a position to influence the next set of goals and strategies.

Character

In part two we touched on personas. These are the characters of your story. There are several fine resources that can help you develop personas. I’m not going to cover that here. The internet is your friend for that. I do want to touch on the different types of character functions that can come into play in your strategic vision.

A few things to keep in mind about characters:

1) Try not to make supporting characters too flat. Even in the briefest encounter you should be able to find one thing to make that character distinct and add a little depth.
2) We’re telling very short stories here. The fewer character the better. Can you consolidate two characters into one? do it.
3) I’m only covering the bare minimum here in terms of character functions. There are many books on the topic of character. This list is to get you started and thinking.

The Protagonist

Every good story has a protagonist. Look back through your persona list. Is there a principal persona you want to use to convey your story? Someone who can be a vehicle for your theme? It doesn’t diminish the value of the other personas you’ve developed. It creates a way for your audience to place themselves in the story. It builds empathy and leads to motivation. This was true for ancient Greeks, and it’s true for us.

Exposition

These are characters provide our protagonist with the information she needs to reveal the theme. They tell us things we need to know and provide context.

Disruption

These are characters who move the story forward. They may bring a challenge or reveal something that changes where we’re going. If an exposition character is there to set context, the disruption character is there to change the direction of the story.

Note that the disruptor doesn’t need to be an antagonist. They may be there to support the protagonist, but through them some plot point happens that changes the story.

Assistance

Similar to exposition character, but the assist character moves the story forward through actions. They may provide a service, give a helping hand, or save the day.

Plot – Weaving Story into Strategy

We covered the elements of plot pretty thoroughly in the strategy sections. When it comes to turning the strategy into plot, I want to touch on a few considerations to keep in mind as you craft your story.

The Starting Point

think about where you want to jump into the story. In the strategy section we developed our strategies to “Get medical supplies from point A to point B.” It would be tempting to start our story at the beginning. We could. But what if instead we started our story at the point where the team hits rough weather. We could even elevate the situation to a blizzard conditions. Right off the bat our story is more compelling. We’ve raised the stakes, and have a better chance of engaging our audience.

Rhythm, Polarity, and Turning Points…

Oh my. There’s a lot to unpack there. First, I’d like to suggest the book “Story” by Robert McKee. Wile his focus may be screen writing, he covers much of what I’m talking about here in far greater detail. Here are a few things to wet your appetite.

Scenes: Every story has scenes. It sometimes surprises me when I see strategic visions that ignore this. They tend to weave the narrative into one continuous scene without depth or rhythm. “Of course we have scenes. We broke it up into separate tasks and locations.” Fail. Just moving people form place to place and having them do different things doesn’t make it a scene break. If each action is building to the same turning point, then it’s the same scene.

The Turning Point: Each scene needs to have to have a point where things change for the characters and moves the story forward. Things will no longer be the same after this. The turning point usually signifies a change in the polarity of a scene as well.

Polarity: Each scene should start with either a positive or negative charge. No matter which charge the scene starts with, it needs to end with the opposite charge. If it starts on a positive, then it needs to end on a negative. How positive? How negative? that’s where rhythm comes into play.

Rhythm: Every story needs to have a rhythm to it. Emotional highs and lows. These are different than our polarities. of positive and negative. Both positive and negative polarities can be emotionally charged to various degrees. it’s these degrees that lead to the rhythm of the story and scene. Normally a story starts in a neutral position. The world is status quo. Then something happens to raise the stakes, taking it higher. Every scene will play out as a series of steps with these highs and lows (ups and downs). Typically a scene will start low and raise to a crescendoed (the turning point), then come down just a bit at the close. Each scene will also typically raise a little higher each time until we reach the final conflict of our tale. The rhythm of each scene mimicking the overall rhythm of the story.

There’s more, but this is a good start. I’ll try to expand on these themes and touch on others such as cliff hangers and hooks in later posts.

Less is more

I once had a writing instructor tell me that you could fit all of the original Star Wars trilogy into just five comic pages. He’s right. The essence of any story can be communicated in a few pages. You want to take the audience on a journey, but it doesn’t have to be a long one to communicate and have impact.

Closing Thoughts

Let’s recap. We’ve taken our goal, “Get from point A to point B,” and identified the main challenges to success. We’ve dived into each challenge and identified a series of strategies needed to overcome those challenges. Finally we’ve put together the major steps needed to execute our strategies. We also related all of this to the elements of story craft. Conflict, plot, and outline. And finally we pulled all of our elements together into crafting our vision and telling our story.

One final note (reminder). While I covered all of this in a particular order, I did so to drive clarity and create a narrative. In reality all of these components work in conjunction. Each affects the other, and you will work on all of them in parallel.

I hope you found this a useful overview.

Strategy as Story: Part 4

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Strategy is about telling stories. Good strategy is about telling the ongoing saga of your brand.

This is part four. In part one we introduced the premise and a framework to hang our strategic direction on. Then we got into Mission & Goals (What). In part two we discussed the Value Network (Who), and in part three we started our talk on Strategy (How). In this part we finish the strategy section.

we introduced the premise and a framework to hang our strategic direction on. Then we got into Mission & Goals (What). In part two we discussed the Value Network (Who), and in part three we started our talk on Strategy (How). In this part we finish the strategy section.

Recap

Last time we took our goal, “Get medical supplies from point A to point B,” and identified the main challenges to success. We took one of the challenges (traversing the mountain) and explored where we are in relation to the challenge, identified what’s important and determined what we need to achieve success. We also drafted our first strategy to address that challenge.

Let’s jump back in with our final two steps of developing the strategy, “determine who’s accountable,” and “setup a means for review and adjustment.”

Plot (Continued)

Determine who’s accountable:

In a previous part of the framework we identified our value network. Here’s the time to start using it. We want to make sure that we have clear accountabilities for our strategies. This is where we identify roles from our Value network as being accountable for different parts of our strategy.

For our Mountaineering Expertise strategy we’ve determined that our expert guide will be accountable. In this case we need to go back to our value network and add this new role. This is a good example of how parts of the framework interact and enhance each other. All of this leads to a stronger strategic direction and improved chances of success.

Note: I’ve simplified our example greatly. We could have taken each sub-point from the mountaineering strategy and treated them as discrete strategies. I’ll try to address traversing the strategy fountain in a future post.

Setup a means for review and adjustment:

An important aspect of strategies is that they need to be reviewed constantly. The world is constantly evolving. Our strategies need to be flexible enough to allow for change, and resilient enough to keep us on track. There will be times when you need to abandon a strategy in favor of another. What you don’t want to do is throw out a valid strategy due to unfounded fear. The more necessary a strategy, the more change it brings. Change brings unknowns and people fear what they don’t know.

Enter measurable outcomes and strategic factors. Data and metrics are how we tell the difference between when a strategy isn’t working and when we’re dealing with unfounded fear. There are several methods for measuring success. In the next section regarding the Outline we’ll begin defining objectives. The SMART Goals method is a good way to introduce metrics to the execution of the strategy.

The other review tool is Strategic Factors. I’ll get more into strategic factors in a future post. For now think of them as sliders you can use to adjust your strategy over time. Using climbing as a strategic factor for our example, lets say we’re measuring how many feet we climb in an hour. We see that metric value is dropping due to the angle of the climb getting steeper. We turn the slider up on climbing and add more effort. Now lets say that the metric is dropping due to bad weather. It’s now becoming dangerous to keep climbing the same route. We turn down climbing, and turn up navigation. A new route is determined and we can now begin to turn climbing back up, as we turn down navigation. This is an example of using strategic factors to make adjustments over time. Notice we didn’t have to through out our strategy when we encountered a problem. We had a mechanism in place to deal with changes and keep moving forward. Hope for the best, plan for the worst.

Next let’s look at SMART goals. SMART goals are a popular method of tracking. The acronym stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound. Each of these are simple and self-explanatory. Instead let’s take a look at one of the tasks we need to perform and apply the SMART Framework

Plan the optimal route through the mountain

Specific? No not really.
Measurable? How would we know our route is the most optimal? We’re only planning on doing this once. We won’t have anything to compare our route to.
Achievable? Yes it is achievable.
Relevant? Getting over the mountain in the shortest amount of time is very relevant. Then again. We said “optimal” not the shortest time. “optimal” could be taken to mean, “least amount of effort.” That could actually add time to the trip. So… maybe not.
Time-bound? This is an interesting one. There’s nothing here about making this a time-bound exercise, and there doesn’t need to be. We can set time limits and outside of the definition of the task. The important thing is that there’s nothing about the task that prohibits it from being time-bound.

Let’s try again.

Plan a route through the mountain that leaves no later than and gets Joe to the river safely by .

Specific? Yes.
Measurable? Absolutely. We have a target we are working towards, “…gets Joe to the river safely by .” We can even create checkpoints along the way to make sure we’re tracking to our target.
Achievable? We can assume yes.
Relevant? 100%.
Time-bound? Yes. As stated before we could have time-bound this outside of the task description. With the addition of key dates and deadlines there’s no question. One further caution on this one. It can be easy to try and apply start and end dates to everything. This isn’t about creating a gantt chart. We could have just as easily said, “don’t spend more than x amount of time on it.” In this case we have some external dependencies at play. That makes it more appropriate.

Recap

Let’s recap. We’ve taken our goal, “Get from point A to point B,” and identified the main challenges to success. We’ve dived into each challenge and identified a series of strategies needed to overcome those challenges. Finally we’ve put together the major steps needed to execute our strategies. We also related all of this to the elements of story craft. Conflict, plot, and outline. Next time we’ll dive into putting all of our elements together into crafting our vision and telling our story.

Strategy as Story: Part 3

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Strategy is about telling stories. Good strategy is about telling the ongoing saga of your brand.

This is part three. In part one we introduced the premise and a framework to hang our strategic direction on. Then we got into Mission & Goals (What). In part two we discussed the Value Network (Who). This time we’ll be examining Strategy (How)

What is Strategy?

A worthy question, with an elusive answer. Why and elusive answer? I hate to go to dictionary definitions, but in this case it helps prove my point. Websters: “A careful plan or method for achieving a particular goal usually over a long period of time.” I’m going to digress for a moment and talk about what a strategy is not.

People often take a sequenced list of objectives, tasks, or agile stories. Then call them a strategy because they span a long period of time. They confuse the work items (tactics) with “plan or method” (strategy). If you draw the shadow of a chair have you drawn the chair itself? Strategic outcomes can look like a task list out of context. In other words, you can look at the work of others, and paint the shadow of a chair without knowledge of the chair. If you try to make adjustments without understanding the whys and what’s of a chair, you risk creating a blobby mess. To recap; a string of objectives over time is not a strategy. It may, or may not, be the tactical result of a strategy.

<Step off soapbox. End rant.>

Back on topic, how does strategy relate to story. Let’s talk a bit about conflict, plot, and outline.

Conflict

I mentioned conflict last time when talking about the Value Network. There must be some challenge we’re looking to overcome. Identifying that challenge is critical. Part of your strategy is about how you overcome those challenges. If Joe needs to take medical supplies from point A to point B, you don’t need a strategy for Joe to do that. Yet, if there is a mountain and a river between points A and B, then we need strategies for dealing with both.

Plot

This is the heart of our strategy. There are five main steps to developing a strategy. Let’s use our example of Joe’s journey to go over them. When exploring conflict we identified two obstacles to deal with. The mountain and the river. Let’s explore the problem of the mountain as our lens on the five steps of strategy.

Note: I’m walking through these steps in order. The reality is that you’ll work on one part, and that will better inform another. You’ll go back and forth like this as needed.

Determine where we are:

First we need to look at the what we know and where we’re at. How big is the mountain? What is our ability to scale it? What is our realistic chance of success given where we are now. For our example let’s say the mountain is high and steep. Joe’s mountain climbing skills are good, but his repelling skills need work. This could introduce a risk. Joe is also unfamiliar with the area and terrain. Joe has the needed expertise in how to safely transport and administer the medical supplies. Alternatively, Joe could go around the mountain adding two months to his journey. It’s a big mountain.

Identify what’s important:

What’s the most critical aspect of our goal? Is it mitigating risk? Expense? Pushing the boundaries of exploration? Knowing what’s important let’s us focus out strategies. In our example let’s say that time is our most important factor. Joe needs to get to the destination as fast as he can. It’s also important that he makes it in one piece. No second chance at success. Safety is our second criteria. With these criteria we can remove circumnavigating the mountain as an option.

Determine what must be achieved:

Now we can look at the minimum steps we need to achieve to be successful. Note that this isn’t a rehashing of the goal. It’s about what we need to do to achieve the goal. What needs to happen to ensure the medical supplies make it to the destination.

Based on what we know of our example, we’d need to achieve the following:

  • Navigate the mountain
  • Climb the mountain
  • Descend the mountain

It’s tempting to get into execution of each item. Capture the thought, and then set it aside. This isn’t about how we execute the strategy. It’s about gathering the information so we can develop the strategy.

At this point let’s create our strategy for the mountain:

Mountaineering Expertise:
1) Team Strategy: Augment the team, but keep it as light as possible. Add an experienced mountaineer with knowledge of the area to aid Joe. This will significantly increase the chance of getting the supplies over the mountain.
2) Equipment Strategy: The team needs to be properly equipped to deal with the terrain. They also need to be prepared for issues that may arise. Keep equipment to a minimum.
3) Route Strategy. There are many routes over the mountain. Select the route that offers the best chance of success given known factors.

We’ve determined that Joe is needed for the mission. We know that time and safety are of primary importance. Also, two of the three things that we need to achieve are at risk by sending Joe alone. The time factor eliminates strategies that involve avoiding the mountain. We also don’t have time to send Joe to training. We decide the best strategy is to get Joe help for the trip.

This is a simplified example. There could be a dozen more strategies developed below these three. For example under Route Strategy there may be climbing, descending and hiking strategies. Is there a packing strategy under equipment? What about food? You get the point. This is what I call the strategy fountain strategy fountain which I’ve written about before.

Checkpoint

This is a good time to stop and see where we’re at with strategy development. We’ve taken our goal, “Get medical supplies from point A to point B,” and identified the main challenges to success. We’ve taken one of those challenges and explored where we are in relation to it. Identified what’s important. And determined what we need to achieve. We’ve also drafted our first strategy to address that challenge.

Next time we’ll finish the plot by completing the last two steps in developing our strategy. “Determine who’s accountable,” and “setup a means for review and adjustment.” Then we’ll create our outline and close out this part of the framework.

Strategy as Story: Part 2

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Strategy is about telling stories. Good strategy is about telling the ongoing saga of your brand.

This is part two. In part one we introduced the premise and a framework to hang our strategic direction on. Then we got into Mission & Goals (What). This time we’ll be examining the Value Network (Who) and Strategy (How)

Value Network

Who are the primary character in our story? Is there a main protagonist we’ll tell the story (Vision) through? Is there an antagonist?

This last one is tricky. Most strategic visions are rosy pictures of the perfect world our strategy leads us into. Without conflict stories don’t exist. Even Seinfeld, a show about nothing, had conflict. The same is true here. If there is no conflict, noting in the way of success, then there is no need to develop a strategy.

Conflict can come from many places. In the corporate world there’s almost always an aspect that comes from people. Resistance to change from within. Reluctance from customers. Event external pressures from competitors. These antagonist may or may not be referenced in your strategic vision. Recognizing them will help you develop better strategies. We’ll talk more about conflict with strategy. For now lets get back to the Value Network.

Your Value Network is made up of the most impactful roles on success. Notice I said role and not people or jobs. As you start to build your Value Network focus on the roles people play. It’s common for the same person or job title to play multiple roles. By separating the role from the job your strategies will have greater longevity. This will also help to remove potential bias. Tina in sales might be great with social media, but that doesn’t make social media curation a function of sales.

Technically, once you’ve identified the roles and responsibilities of the network, you’re done. Go further. We’re here to talk about the elements of story. Understanding the roles needed is the beginning, not the end. Begin shaping your roles into characters. In business parlance these would be personas. Thinking of personas as characters creates a richer vision. The stronger your vision the easier it is for people to rally around it. But remember, each character has a role to play that moves the story forward. If they don’t, they shouldn’t be there.

Note that I’ve chosen to write this series in a way that indicates a flow. Now throw that notion away. Don’t look at these as a series of steps to be checked off. The truth is you’ll bounce around between Network, Strategy, and Vision. The Mission is the touchstone everything co-develops around. You may even find through the process a need to adjust the Mission. That’s OK, and you should have processes in place to allow that.

I’ll be talking about character and the Value Network in the future. Next we’ll be diving into strategy.

Strategy as Story: Part 1

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Strategy is about telling stories. Good strategy is about telling the ongoing saga of your brand.

So how does the structure of story relate to strategy? Let’s first review a framework for developing strategic direction I’ve been using. It comes from an article in the Harvard Business Review written by Michael D. Watkins. It breaks it down into four buckets that are all interrelated. Mission & Goals (What), Value Network (Who), Strategy (How), and Vision & Incentives (Why). Let’s tie this to how we craft a story. The Mission is the theme. The Value Network, are your primary characters. The Strategy is your plot/outline. and the Vision is the story itself. All together these create your strategic vision, or story arc. A story arc can be a part of a larger campaign, and so on.

Mission & Goals

What does it mean when I say this relates to a stories Theme? First, a quick explanation of a stories theme. Many people confuse theme with plot. The theme of A Christmas Carol isn’t that a man is visited by three ghosts and becomes a nice guy. Though change is a valid thematic element of the story.

Let’s try again with our theme. “Even the harshest of men is capable of becoming compassionate.” Hurm…Still too thematic. Like a goal should be actionable and measurable, a theme should be specific and evident in a story. This is the touchstone that everything else ties back to. When in doubt, ask the question am I moving my theme forward. Or, does my strategy move me closer to my goal(s)?

One more time. “When shown the entirety of his life, Ebenezer Scrooge recognizes the pain he’s caused and vows to become the man he should have been.” I don’t know if that’s a good theme for A Christmas Carol, but it suits our needs. It’s specific. We can measure if it’s evident in the story. Relating back to our strategic direction, it provides a focal point for network, strategy and vision.

In practice Mission and Goals are generally handed down, but it’s still important to bare this in mind. I’ve talked before about the strategy fountain. Where the objective of a strategy becomes the goal that drives the next level of strategy. We need to craft our strategic objectives through the lens of theme. This will set the next level of strategy up for success.

Next time we’ll get into the Value Network and Strategy