TAKE II – THE CASE FOR OPEN STRATEGY

This assumes you are somehow familiar with classical versus open strategy and curious about why how to fix the 'execution' gap. Let's dive in at the deep end and give the argument some edge for clarity!

On the open and emergent approach

Forget about the cascading approach to strategy. Only 5-10% get it. It is like a broken telephone.

With an emergent approach to strategy, you always work on the real strategy. There is no telephone that can break.

Do not confuse openness with democracy. Democracies are not even that open. Some call them tyranny of the majority.

Openness is a foundational necessity IF you want to break out of the productivity trap AND sustain a resilient organization.

Here is why you want to look at open strategy

Without digitizing work you will not be able to fully leverage the powers of automation, augmentation, analytics, and generative AI.

Digitizing work implies less manual coordination and control. There will be fewer physical barriers to flow and fewer people carrying information around in the organization. This is the key to unlocking the productivity trap (bureaucracy eating productivity gains, cf Gary Hamel). More hot hands, fewer cold hands.

This in turn enables organizing in broader and more loosely coupled networks. Some call it adaptive spaces. With fewer barriers there will also be fewer filters to stop important information passing in the organization. Unfiltered information is essential for capturing emerging signals that may require significant and prompt pivots.

The ability to pivot away from unfavorable positions timely and coordinated is what affords the evolutionary advantage necessary for resilience.

Unmess and unfilter is what most organizations need to do.

And here is the crux - a paradoxical bootstrap to pull digitization of work

Unlike most technology innovations that need to be introduced before you can reap the benefits, the digitization of work is different.

You cannot bridge to the future of digital work by digitizing todays non-digital ways of working.

The paradoxical challenge is that you need to change the way you govern and operate work before it can be fully digitized. The organizations who best navigate in this paradoxical bootstrap of pull, not push will be the ones to prosper. Some already are.

To put it mildly, your future digital twin will need to be a lot faster, leaner, and meaner than a mirror image of what you are today.

Open strategy - in it self an age old concept - infused with complexity thinking offers a path way to that bootstrap.

How can I get started?

The good news is that we have learned ways to accelerate this bootstrap by reconfiguring the processes around strategy and strategy execution. This is what the books UNMESS and UNFILTER talk about. (A pretty good shot at reimagining agile too.)

You essentially subordinate to and reconfigure around three collaborations – you can think of them as flight checks (top picture).

When you look in an organization for where the strategy conversation takes place, you will often find that it is very dispersed and fragmented. Reconfiguring essentially corresponds to picking up the pieces of the broken telephone conversations and assembling in one overarching conversation.

The result is the contribution alignment collaboration (much like a SAFe PI planning or a QBR), supported by the two other collaborations.

If you really want to, it will take you about a week to get started. In comparison introducing SAFe LPM takes 9-18 months (and most cases I know of do not really succeed with this anyway).

How is this possible you may ask?

Well, with that question you are ready to watch my keynote from this year’s strategy execution in Amsterdam. Enjoy! It contains practical guidance on how to get started with each of the flight checks.

If you find any of this compelling, you can find more from www.openstrategy.works