Uncomfortable

A faster horse

You know how Peter Drucker said, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast?”

Well, he didn’t.

But it remains one of my favourite apocryphal quotes — and one of the best is Henry Ford supposedly saying, "If I asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said, 'A faster horse'".

Ford’s words do capture a fundamental truth though: what we say we want often differs dramatically from what we actually choose when given options.

It's like my friend Janice who, when hosting a dinner party many years ago, asked us all for honest feedback. Several of us exchanged looks — until someone finally told her the salmon was dry. She burst into tears and that was the end of the evening. What Janice wanted wasn't feedback but validation.

I see this difference between an expressed preference and an actual preference frequently in organisations. One CEO talked about "innovation leadership" but when I observed their leadership meetings, they spent 80% of time discussing compliance and reduction of variation. Their revealed preference? It was safety, not innovation.

But as a consultant, my job is turning expressed preferences into actual preferences.

Another client told me they wanted "greater focus." I pushed: "Why?" They said, "So we deliver only high-impact services."

I challenged them: "Which high-impact services will you double or triple? What are you prepared to stop doing completely? And, by what criteria?"

I persisted through the uncomfortable silence that enveloped the room as executives eyeballed each other across the table. The truth was tough – the "low impact" areas had powerful defenders.

To their credit, they didn't back down. They created three tiers — expand, retain and ditch — with a clear pathway for each. Then they restructured to make it happen.

Question: What painful choices are you avoiding that would transform your stated preferences into your actual ones?

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You don’t need better answers

But you do need better questions. Seriously.

There’s beauty in asking well-crafted, well-aimed questions, and here are ten of the best when developing strategy, or a strategic approach to a specific issue:

1. What’s our direction of travel?

2. How are we different in 2030? (And, yes, the present tense is deliberate!)

3. What big bets are we making?

4. What does success look like?

5. What are some counter intuitive areas of focus?

6. What will change? What stays the same?

7. What do we want our best customers to say about us?

8. What do we want to do competitively well vs uniquely well?

9. What are we truly excited about?

10. How could we be wrong?

11. What is it we’re pretending not to know?

It’s not the mere asking of these questions that’s powerful — it’s the collective dialogue that ensues. A reflective, future-focussed discussion that gathers insights from multiple people, led by someone with the skill to identify common threads, sort out differences that matter, and land conceptual agreements is pure gold.

My test of how seriously an organisation takes its strategic thinking is the degree of alignment on the answers to questions such as these. I don’t ever demand consensus, but I do rate highly an answer that says, “Yes, we’ve talked about that, Andrew, and most of us would agree that _____”.

And, of course, I’ve given you a bonus question — I’m sure you have more cut-through questions to add (and please do, in the comments below).

Question: What are the most beautiful strategic questions you can ask in your business?

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VBJ

I had lunch with my dear friend and consulting colleague, Deb Pascoe, this week and she introduced me to her self-invented acronym, VBJ:

• Vent

• Brag

• Judge

These are all 'forbidden', or at least discouraged, in most organisational contexts. But, they're quite normal human desires — we all want to release emotion, feel good about ourselves, and make comparative assessments of situations and people.

The problem comes when these natural impulses have nowhere healthy to go. I saw one executive team almost implode because their "no politics" policy drove genuine concerns underground, only to resurface as passive-aggressive barbs and whispers.

Intelligent leaders will create safe spaces for VBJ. One client told me about "Friction Friday”: a structured session where team members could vent constructively, share wins without apology, and offer candid observations about their projects. Psychological safety was the norm there.

As Deb shared VBJ with me, I realised that I often make this part of strategy development conversations. I like asking:

• What pisses you off?

• What are you proud of?

• What do you hate?

Handled well, these discussions surface real issues (not conceal them), people find powerful points of connection (not dissent), and energy is redirected to constructive topics (not suppressed).

Question: Where can you and your team safely vent, brag and judge without it becoming destructive to your culture?

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I've shared my stated preference for honest feedback, but my actual preference is for you to hit that heart button or leave a comment.

Seriously, unlike Janice, I promise not to burst into tears regardless of what you vent or judge. And, please feel free to brag about anything you’ve noticed about your own brilliance!

Until next Friday, stay well,

Andrew