Oblique strategies
Have you ever needed a nudge to get you out of a rut? When you find yourself going over the same variations of solutions?
The famed music producer Brian Eno (who worked with Bowie, and U2) came up with an ingenious solution to ‘stuckness’ in creative processes back in the 70s. With his recording partner Peter Schmidt, Eno developed a card deck with provocations, or tiny insights.
They called them ‘oblique strategies’ and each card contains a short aphorism that nudge you to solve problems tangentially, rather than head-on. Some examples:
Emphasise the flaws
Reverse
Use unqualified people
Define an area as ‘safe’ and use it as an anchor
Don’t be frightened to display your talents
Now, I’m a consultant, not a music producer or artist, but I maintain that strategy, change and leadership are fundamentally creative acts. And, even if I wasn’t a huge Eno fan (he ‘invented’ the genre of ambient music which I listen to endlessly while working), I would enjoy having a simple tool to help me get unstuck, simply by prodding my mind in a different direction.
Question: What’s the smallest creative nudge you can make that has the biggest pay off?
Over-reaction?
Here are two numbers. Nine. Eleven. What do you think of?
Even if you’re not American you quite possibly relate these to the event that was commemorated last weekend. But, after 20 years of distance from that shocking event, and having just exited Afghanistan, I think we can realistically ask whether the political, economic, military and security response to 9/11 was an over-reaction?
After all, it was an act performed by an insignificant group nobody outside intelligence communities had heard of, and who turned out to be hiding in caves. The buildings were symbolically meaningful, but not strategically. Yes, 3000 people tragically died, but multiples of that number die from flu, or road accidents (or guns) - every single year. Was the American military threatened? No. Was the economy? Not at all. Did it weaken infrastructure? Hardly.
So, what was at risk here, that merited the colossal expenditure on two wars ($5 trillion at last count), with twice as many military deaths as occurred on the day of 9th September 2001?
Just like nations, organisations need accurate Fear Barometers. Ideally, this is shaped from a thoughtful debate about shared appetite for strategic risks (which I like to define as “the effects of uncertainty of desired results”). Because, it’s only when leaders know what results they want, they can talk about the uncertainties that can imperil those.
Remember that Al Queda was incapable of harming the USA. What they were capable of was instilling fear - and distorting the population’s risk appetite.
Question: How good is the debate in your organisation on your tolerance of uncertainty?
Prioritising
Steve Jobs once answered a question about how Apple picked a succession of winning products: the Mac, the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad. Jobs told Nike CEO Mark Parker, “Focus means saying no to the hundred other good ideas.”
I’m working right now with two organisations — that each has hundreds of good ideas — on how they prioritise these. One is state-based, the other trans-national. They are both household names, both politically accountable, and both with budgets in the billions of dollars.
Each suffers from what I call the ‘missing middle’. At the top, their high-level strategy is sound (in one case, I wrote it), so they know what’s valuable. At the bottom, their thousands of people are busy. Very busy. But, when they have 100 options, which should their executives choose?
We’re working with three keys, in turn.
First, non-negotiability. It’s mostly easy to select the non-negotiables: those political masters have promised, or that are essential enablers of their strategy. The next two keys enable you to select in or out what remains.
The next key is reversibility. This means filtering IN those which are beyond a point of no return: for policy reasons, sunk costs, or because significant ROI is imminent.
The remainder is then subject to the third key: optionality. This is an assessment of “4Ds”, simultaneously conducted to allow trade-offs to be visible:
Don’t do it: What would happen if we simply didn’t do this? Would our strategy be affected? (This is what Jobs was expert in, and following his example, Parker at Nike, too).
Delay it: Where constraints exist (time, money, expertise), what time-shifting could occur?
Do it differently: How could it be re-scoped to make it smaller, or more efficient? What innovations could enable us to design and deliver at twice the speed, or half the cost?
Delegate it: Who else could do it? Or do parts of it?
What both organisations want — and what we’re building — is a disciplined way of prioritising that combines judgement with criteria, that can be replicated periodically to account for changes in the environment.
Question: How systematically are you prioritising effort? And, how willing are you to let go of great ideas?
I always enjoy hearing that you’ve enjoyed reading. So, as a minimum, please click the heart or, even better, drop me a line or a comment.
Two weeks ago, I had so much correspondence about my “17 Minute Strategy” approach, that I’ve agreed to put together a one-page ‘cheat sheet’. It’s designed for any leader who wants a nudge (well, six nudges) when having strategic conversations with their teams. Let me know if you’d like one.
Until next weekend, go and prioritise the highest value activity in both your professional and personal lives.
Andrew
Thanks Andrew. If we are not living in a cognitive tunnel of reactive responses, which sadly many of us are in at the moment, there are creative nudges in many places. Our brains just need space from the cortisol and adrenalin to find them. If we do not have this space or make this space, no nudging will work.
Refreshing insight on prioritisation, Andrew. Great thought stimulator and timely for one endeavour I am involved in, and so I shared it with fellow members.