Transporting thoughts

Strategic gravity without the weight

Failure of imagination

If you’ve ever watched Star Trek, you know that they could imagine a future in which a technology assists to disassemble a person into atoms, send them into space, and reassemble them perfectly somewhere else.

But, they couldn’t imagine a society in which smoking was eliminated.

Sociologists call this “stabilisation”, where a technology, a social structure, or a practice holds such widespread acceptance that it is assumed there are no viable alternatives.

There are numerous examples: capitalism, fossil fuels, hospitals, schools. You can think of more, no doubt.

We can’t easily imagine a world without every person owning money. Or without burning things to create energy. Or without buildings people go to when they’re sick. Or without places where children of the same age are congregated to learn the same things.

But, we know logically that these are all creations of an industrial revolution that occurred 300 years ago. So, what’s to say they’ll exist in another 300?

Stabilisation also shapes our organisations in ways we rarely question:

• The Annual Budget Cycle – Despite overwhelming evidence that 12-month cycles create perverse incentives (use-it-or-lose-it spending, deferred maintenance), we struggle to imagine financial governance without them. Yet some forward-thinking organisations like IBM have moved to “Beyond Budgetting”: rolling 18-month or 24-month budgets with quarterly adjustments.

• The 5-Day, 40-Hour Work Week – We've normalised a work pattern designed for factory efficiency in the 1920s. Many companies (e.g., Unilever) and governments (in the UK) have seen productivity increases from 4-day weeks, yet most organisations can't imagine departing from this "stabilised" norm.

• Physical Headquarters – Pre-pandemic, questioning whether organisations needed centralised physical headquarters would have seemed radical. Now, companies like Atlassian have permanently adopted a “Team Anywhere” distributed model very successfully.

• Hierarchical Management – Despite the emergence of holacracy, sociocracy, and other self-managing systems, the vast majority of organizations cannot imagine functioning without traditional command-and-control hierarchies.

Like Star Trek’s writers of the 1970s who assumed people will still smoke in the 23rd century, our organisations often plan for futures that replicate the present rather than imagining truly transformative possibilities.

Question: What "stabilised" practices are holding your organisation back?

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Landing a jumbo jet on a postage stamp

I have many Apple stories, but this one is easily my favourite.

On the first day that Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, he asked for all of the company’s products to be brought into a meeting room. His staff filled a large table with dozens of products across multiple confusing product lines. Jobs’s response?

He said, “From now on we only make computers”. He then drew a simple 2 x 2 matrix on a flipchart: Consumer/Professional on one axis, Desktop/Portable on the other. "That's it," he said. "Four products. Focus."

That matrix—communicated in seconds—became the strategic foundation for Apple's legendary turnaround.

The ability to distill complex organisational direction into remarkably few words isn't just a communication skill—it's strategic discipline of the highest order.

Consider these masterclasses in strategic brevity:

• Atlassian (yes, them again!) capture their entire purpose in three words: "Unleash team potential." Every decision can be evaluated against this crystallised focus.

• Doctors Without Borders conveys their entire operational strategy in five words: "Medical aid where it's needed most." Again, the what and why, with the key criterion for decision-making baked in.

• Southwest Airlines' former CEO Herb Kelleher famously claimed he could write their entire strategy on a napkin: "Be the low-cost airline." These five words guided thousands of decisions across decades.

The power of extreme brevity isn't about taglines on t-shirts. It's about creating strategic gravity that aligns decision-making throughout your organisation without constant management oversight.

One of my CEO clients this week expressed his gratitude that we’d taken a big step to achieving this by saying, “Thank you. I feel we’ve landed a jumbo jet on a postage stamp”.

The highest compliment.

Question: What would your organisation's strategy look like if you had to fit it on a postage stamp?

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Everyone is special

One of my clients is a Catholic order of nuns that operates a large national network of hospitals and aged care services. As part of their strategy process, I asked them, “Who are you here for?”

Their answer was, “Everyone. All people are God’s children and therefore we don’t exclude anyone”.

Now, on the surface that makes sense, but I dug a little deeper. Of course their hospital emergency departments see every case that walks (or can’t walk) in. But, I asked, “Are there those who need your services more than others?”

That led to a much deeper conversation on the nature of vulnerability — and mercy — and ended up with them identifying three priority groups:

1. Women in precarious situations, often related to family violence;

2. Older people who live alone, and have no family or supports;

3. Families from cultural backgrounds that speak little English.

The logic was this: these groups have little voice and therefore experience disproportionate powerlessness.

From a ‘mission’ perspective, these are the people God wants the nuns to serve. From a pragmatic perspective, these are the people whom the government wants to serve: if untreated and unsupported, they will have burdensome and costly future health needs.

But even this deep conversation led to something more fundamental, which was about exclusivity. One executive member asked, “Does this mean we should turn away people who are NOT those groups?”

Her ‘zero-sum game’ approach failed to appreciate that these ‘priority groups’ are not literally that. Rather, this identification gives them spotlights to shine upon certain groups, which then modifies the way in which they attract patients & residents, design services, and deliver care.

The final ‘a-ha’ moment came when another executive said this: “Isn’t it true that, if these women, families and older people are served well, then that type of targeted care benefits everyone who comes through our door?”.

Precisely.

Question: How do you prioritise without eliminating?

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If today’s newsletter transported your brain beyond the stabilised norms of your organisation, don't keep it to yourself.

Click that heart button. It requires fewer atoms to be reassembled than a full comment, but we appreciate those too. Unlike Star Trek's transporter pad, no need to keep your extremities within the designated field. Let your thoughts roam free in the comments below and see you next Friday!

Andrew