Embracing Contradictions

A Hail of Bullets

In WWI's Western Front trenches, you could be court-martialled for desertion, losing your weapon, or even falling asleep on sentry duty. The punishment was severe: death by firing squad. 306 men suffered this in the British Army.

Who formed this squad though?

Your own regiment, of course. To avoid crushing morale, 4 - 6 soldiers were assigned the task, half of whom had 'non-live' ammunition. As the hail of bullets hit their target, nobody knew whose bullet had done the work.

Indonesian healthcare is like this too: my wife was once prescribed four different medicines for bronchitis (including a hospital-strength post-operative antibiotic). She took them and, next morning, was feeling much better.

Which worked? We don't know.

Could fewer have worked? Probably.

Question: Do you know which part of your service offerings really work?

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That Which Can Kill You

Thirty thousand feet over Rome, I spotted something that shouldn't exist: a thriving ecosystem where predators and prey have figured out how to coexist without anyone getting eaten.

The Apennines extend down the full 'spine' of Italy, and in this region of picture-perfect hilltop fortress towns there remain large areas of forest which, just like in Roman times, house vultures, wolves and bears.

For centuries, farmers ‘protected’ themselves by reducing the predators’ numbers, through hunting and poisoning. But, by the turn of the millennium a more enlightened approach, called “rewilding”, has taken root.

Yes, these animals have the power to destroy our property and livestock - and even kill us. But, why do we see these lands as ‘ours’, and not ‘theirs’? Rewilding starts with a fundamentally ecological premise: that co-existence isn’t just desirable, but possible.

What it does require is a mindset of collective good — and deliberate practices that block access and divert. This means that bears will forage in wild areas, not in fruit orchards.

When organisations 'rewild', what they see is that their most dangerous competitors often create the conditions that make everyone stronger. I watched this with a non-profit sector where two (large) rival NGOs spent years trying to eliminate each other's influence. Once they stopped the organisational equivalent of poisoning wolves and started coordinating access to territory, both thrived, to the benefit of the communities they both served.

Question: How can you better co-exist with threats to your existence?

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Disagree to Disagree

Have you ever ended a discussion with, “I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree”

Unsatisfying, isn’t it?

In the past week alone, I’ve led strategy meetings where board directors and executives had vigorously disagreed about the following

• ‘We have a crisis’ vs ‘We have a manageable long-term risk’

• ‘We are providing poor service’ vs ‘Our customers have unrealistic expectations’

• ‘We should expand our clinical network’ vs ‘We should educate consumers so they don’t need as many clinical interventions’

Any of these sound familiar?

My belief is that, in any substantive strategic discussion, such differences should be expected, not avoided.

The aim of leadership is collective conceptual agreement. Leaders should look for three things: (i) that on which people are unanimous (anything); (ii) that on which there's majority agreement (with some blurred edges) and; (iii) that on which there is split opinion (usually less than you think).

To test potential movement on (iii) leaders can use a 'deep democracy' process. A leader makes a proposal and asks for people to nominate one of Three Ls ("I like it", "I can live with it", "I loathe it"). Ask the 'loathe' people what would have to change for them to 'live with it'. Usually that change also causes 'live with it' people to move to 'like'. Open discussions of this nature typically shift the sentiment of the entire group, positively.

Finally, I often have clients ask me, “How did you get us to agreement so quickly?” I’ve got three ‘secret weapons’, which relate the early part of the conversation. Before the first break (so 60 - 90 minutes) of ANY strategy sessions:

• I define common interests: “We agree that we’re all wanting …”

• I discern higher order objectives: “We agree that the end game is ….”

• I distill principles: “We agree that the way we work is . . . ”

A client said to me this week, “Strategy is part science, part art, part magic”. She’s right. With these basic agreements in place, you can proceed to use your science, and art, and magic, to test appetite and ambition on a wide range of strategic questions.

Question: How can you set up conversations that then more easily resolve strategic disagreements?.

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That's this week's dose of strategic ambiguity.

If any of these ideas sparked a thought, disagreement, or "aha!" moment, hit reply and tell me about it. Unlike Indonesian medicine, I'll know exactly which part of your message worked.

Stay strategically curious until next Friday,

Andrew