Open Strategy for a Complex Time - Iben Stjerne and Morten Elvangpdf
Open Strategy for a Complex Time - Iben Stjerne and Morten Elvangpdf
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  1. OPENSTRATEGY.WORKSUNPERFECTOpen Strategy for a Complex TimeMorten Elvang With contribution from Iben StjerneOPENSTRATEGY.WORKS JUST ENOUGHThe ‘front’ pageO NOFFSTRATEGYOFFVersion 10-Sep-2024 –Can be freely shared –updates at www.openstrategy.works/open-books
  2. The ‘back’ pageUNPERFECT: Open Strategy for a Complex TimeHow do you absorb and prosper from the unexpected?Under the influence of the unknow unknowns that define complexity, situations can seem random and chaotic. Positions of today are challenged, and assumptions about the future shift at breakneck speed as demands continue to evolve and increase. Defying the normal logic and operating system clock-cycles of the typical larger organization. While complexity appears random, it is not. You cannot make it go away or control it. But you can learn to navigate it better to bolster resilience and increase the impact you deliver.At the helm is your strategy in the role it was always meant for. To bring steer to your company. To help prosper from the constant waves of change.Our aspiration must be to stay on strategy with room to absorb the unexpected.2Iben StjerneOur purpose is to promote open strategy and the role it begs in the modern adaptive organization.Morten ElvangOPENSTRATEGY.WORKS
  3. NEW BOOK!LOOKING FOR INSPIRATION?Book our new workshop ➔www.thinkingtwice.works/inspiration
  4. OPENSTRATEGY.WORKSIncreasing turbulence demands new organizational forms.Their common denominator is openness.
  5. OPENSTRATEGY.WORKSAre you happy with your strategy process?Would you be willing to consider something new?
  6. OPENSTRATEGY.WORKSOur quest and question (Foreword I/III)How do you absorb and prosper from the unexpected? Any organization needs distributed authority to deal with the urgency of emerging situations. Whether endorsed or as a black market for common sense. However, distributed decision making cannot meaningfully take place without coordination sooner or later. If you are one company preserving cohesiveness is essential for delivering impact and bolstering resilience. Our quest is to understand strategy and the role it plays in that coordination. As a human conversation based on information of actual position and direction against perception. And especially be alert to tensions and emerging events that might undermine present assumptions. As part of a dance with complexity be best positioned to act on any new insights as they emerge.Given endless ambition and limited capacity everything sooner and later becomes a question of opportunity cost. Forcing either unhealthy risk taking, or deliberate choice to rebalance based on what you know. Strategy is in the crux of the organization's dynamic choice architecture. Understanding the role of strategy in landing at the minimum needed coordination to keep large inter-dependent organizations integral on their chosen trajectories. Reconciliation of actual local choice against global strategy rests on inclusion, transparency and adaptability. The key attributes of open strategy. Open strategy is naturally a form of strategy laying out the tactics for delivering impact with resilience. The dilemma of any coordination activity is how to add and make better, not worse. 6
  7. OPENSTRATEGY.WORKSStrategy is changing (Foreword II/III)There is a shift in strategy to put emergence over deliberation: Do we know what we are doing? Where does it look like we are going? Is this who we want to be and where we want to go? The shift in approach is triggered by contemporary forces in combination. Increased pace of change. Increasing moral and ethical demands. A need to digitize work –amplified by AI. A wish for more productivity. Awish for more meaningful and human work. With strategy being the centerpiece in any organization's choice architecture, this shift will have significant implications for how we shape and govern work. For decades we have been talking about the strategy execution gap. This gap between perception and reality can have internal and external reasons and it can be based on known or unknown elements. Unforeseen aspects of our strategy can lead to disproportionate and unintended consequences. Addressing this gap is like operating under high complexity. Therefore, we can take inspiration from complex approaches to navigate the increasingly complex contemporary business environment. By its nature, corporate strategy applies primarily at an enterprise level.Larger organizations have a natural (and delusive) productivity gap that most improvement or change initiatives tap into. Typical elements are too many initiatives in flight, lack of transparency, frustration and a feeling that too little gets done. Potentially spiced up with power, politics, dysfunction and toxicity. In such situations almost any activity that brings clarity and focus can produce short-term benefits. The classical examples being stricter prioritization or directly trimming the number of initiatives in flight. As it has been said, the modern organization is more likely to suffer from indigestion than starvation. Sometimes even offering interest in what people do can make a significant difference, as Hawthorne experienced it in his famous productivity experiments with light conditions. Approaches and prescribed cures vary, often extensions or reconfigurations of elements which are already in place. Be cautious. You cannot fully control what emerges. You cannot really know future value. You do not really know what happens tomorrow. You rarelysucceed with replicating best practice or the ever tempting ‘calls to order’ (like ‘rolling back from agile’).
  8. OPENSTRATEGY.WORKSGet on strategy; stay on strategy! (Foreword III/III)Many leaders are wondering about similar questions, unsure of the answers. How do we navigate under increasing uncertainty? Whenthe span of potential outcomes is widening, how can you cope?. How to bolster resilience without compromising on impact? How do we preserve strength and flexibility simultaneously? How do we prepare the organization for the superpowers gen AI will give people? These questions are not ours. They belong to the editor, Niels Lunde, of Denmark's leading business paper, Børsen(in Danish, our translation, May 3rd, 2024). Not knowing what will come next, it becomes crucial to be prepared and ready to act as and when needed. Traditionally companies have aspired to align strategy and execution for driving strategic value. Today, alignment is even more crucial, in the additionalrole of enabling swift and coordinated pivots in response to emerging events. Alignment offers a shared perspective and sets the stage for effective action—a phenomenon we call the alignment paradox: you align to realign. This is not a basic introduction to strategy. We do not repeat well-known challenges of strategy execution. Instead, we offer ideas to reconfigure your approach. We believeyou must dance with complexity and turn strategy into a conversation. Our goal is to provide just enough insight to get you started, trusting you to find your path. When you feel ready, the path may not be as long as you firstimagine!Our simple advice can be boiled down to: Get on strategy; stay on strategy!Welcome to Open Strategy for a Complex Time. Copenhagen, Spring 2024(This PDF/PowerPoint format is meant to be read as a text. It is draft and prototype. Our idea is a light book with eye-catchingpictures and ear-worming text phrases. Our experience is that this is difficult material to sell and explain. We experiment with just enough text to be useful and not kill you with unhelpful explanation. Written by Morten Elvang with contributions from Iben Stjerne. We collaborate as www.openstrategy.worksto promote open strategy and the role it begs in the modern adaptive organization. This work is a curation of thoughts buildingon the thoughts and work of many other people. On the link www.openstrategy.worksyou find references to more detailed texts with attributions and references. Any feedback welcome to mortenelvang@gmail.com.)8
  9. OPENSTRATEGY.WORKSIt is said, that the best way to predict the future is to create it. Sadly, most strategies have a hard time even catching up with reality.At the 2024 Strategy Execution Forum in Amsterdam, we asked all speakers about what shapes the current evolution of strategy and strategy execution. The majority answered the increasing pace of change. That change on change arrives at an increasing speed. That the world is getting increasingly complex and difficult to predict. Even if this is just one example, it has never been more evident that the cascading or chevron-based approach to strategy is challenged. Paradoxically no one really believes in the cascading approach to strategy and yet many keep sticking to it. Deliberation typically does not deliver on the timing and clarity needed for aligned and impactful execution. Facing constant changing environments people are often left guessing and responding as they best can. When asked, people in the ‘high-middle’ often mention ‘leading up’ among their biggest challenges. The feeling of not being heard by the higher-ups in the organization. Leaders too are wondering how to adjust the approach to bolster resilience and deliver with impact. What happens to strategy and strategy execution when complexity becomes the dominating force?
  10. OPENSTRATEGY.WORKSMeet the ‘Flight Checks’ and Open StrategyOur idea for you is to introduce three ‘Flight checks’ to keep your organization on strategy. They build on a long tradition of open strategy infused with the latest thinking on how to best navigate complexity. Most importantly this approach offers a hook for how to reconfigure yourself to unleashing the powers of generative AI for driving internal efficiency as well as meeting the increasing demands from external stakeholders to become more people and planet friendly. Our mantra is: manage at the speed you can afford to lose. This (potential future book) is the story of what the open strategy approach is, how it works, and how you can get started. Get on strategy! Stay on strategy!By taking a view from a complex perspective on the fundamental strategy and strategy execution (portfolio) questions we land on three flight checks called Clarify intent, Build fitness and Align contributions. They extend on the characteristics of inclusion, transparency and adaptability of Open Strategy. And support the aspiration of the modern organization to operate with resilience to deliver with impact. Sustainably maximizing value over time.
  11. OPENSTRATEGY.WORKS11In the midst of chaos,there is also opportunity.(Sun Tzu)
  12. CONTENT
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