Was strategy ever alive?

I was going entitle today’s drivel ‘is strategy dead?’ But as that’s the kind of headline you would find in so called management magazines. More importantly, I’m not convinced strategy is a thing anyway. It may be in the corridors of real power where they have shag pile carpet and real PAs, but down the line between these heady heights and the trenches was strategy ever real.

Aren’t most strategies we talk about in cuff linked shirts in meetings with white boards far from our customer’s experience really about setting plans, establishing policies and sharing our perception of reality?

I think we spend too much time putting activities into a strategic perspective and even worse, use strategy development as a reason not to do something. “Let’s wait until we know where the strategy wants to go before we do this.”

Strategy is great in public sector, when you want some money to do something you ensure the project description ticks as many strategic intents as possible. Firstly, this broadens the number of potential funding sources. Secondly, it ensures that the sponsors of each of these strategies will not block your project as it may be the only one that delivers something resembling whatever it was they committed to delivering.

Wouldn’t we use our time better by systematically:

• breaking through barriers to our success with small focused initiatives that take us in a general sense of direction;
• scanning our environment, qualifying what we see and sharing it with those around us that add to the view;
• understanding our clients (did you know Intel has over 30 anthropologists working for them?);
• defining the rules of the game rather than following our competitors;
• innovating a little everyday.

The future of the office

Please indulge me; I want to combine two thoughts and ask for some input.

Firstly, let’s look at this story from the BBC (http://bit.ly/adss1pl). In summary, Mike Faith couldn’t find any headsets for is California based business. While on the journey to source them he has ended up being one of the leading suppliers in the US through his site headsets.com. On the face of it a fairly typical tale of a US entrepreneur that Tony Robbins would point to the happy ending.

Mike’s advice is “look for those things in your life or business that annoy you, where you can’t get the satisfaction that you want; if you can’t find what you want in the market place, and you try hard, it’s probably likely there’s a business opportunity there.”

See, all very law of attraction.

Now let’s consider what I simultaneously love and hate, the office. Now I’m a pretty social guy, always up for a work night out, love to engage people in the lift and around the coffee machine in how their day is going and pretty effective at dropping by people’s desks to get quick decisions to move things forward. I’d go mad at home all day; stir crazy could have been coined just to describe me working at home.

However, I hate the commute, and resent having to be so far from my home all day. I hate lugging a laptop or tapping away at emails on my PDA. Let’s face it; very few of us get to live close to our office production lines do we?

I like the idea of local working hubs that I first saw floated 15 years ago. Open plan offices with break out areas, meeting rooms and a canteen. A space with my own desk where I can dress for the office and virtually be there while being virtually at home. Where I could cycle to in 10 minutes. Where I could have random conversations in the lift or waiting for some warm brown liquid to be released into a paper cup.

But who would pay for it. I have no idea what real estate costs, but let’s say my company pays £500 sq metre for my desk in London, with overheads, why would they pay for a desk for me where only a couple of my colleagues work? What about travelling in for meetings, who pays for that? Could we conference effectively from our laptops?

Is there a solution here, or am I just in need of a summer holiday?So let’s put some crowd sourcing into place, what do you think the solution is?

Away day time of the year

Certain times of the year are big for ‘off sites.’ Those meetings where you are invited to a nice hotel or small conference centre in the middle of nowhere and told to wear business casual, but not jeans. Wearing jeans can be the highlight of these events. What are they going to do, send me home to change or give me lines to write in detention?

Mainly held around the end/beginning of financial years; we go to review how and what we did and to plan to do different things to get an even better outcome. For some reason there is a resurgence of off sites in July. Maybe it’s a pat on the back as the summer holidays approach, or simply because we are half way through the year and its a good time to check progress.

Cynics love to hate away days. Optimists hate to love away days, but they do.

I’m actually a fan of micro off sites. Take a small group of managers that can influence their own destinies and mix the day with some downtime and light touch objective setting they can really help to make progress.

So having said all that, why do we groan at the prospect. I know I do, my friends do, and some of my colleagues do. Certainly the couple on the train as I write this do. In fact they are discussing tips on faking enthusiasm for the event. The truth is they are necessary. From time to time we must stop what we are doing, pop our heads out of the trench and take a look around at where our colleagues are at. After all, you don’t want to find yourself the only person jeans and in the wrong trench.

Why is social media so difficult? #2

Further to my previous blog, I have been chatting with a colleague that works at a charity. Their business is about engaging one group of people to help another.

Social media is the perfect tool. It enables everyone in the organisation to transparently capture a broad network outside the organisation. But that applies to any P2P business; especially professional services. Doesn’t it make sense that every person in the business has a social media contact list that anyone in the business can leverage?
Yet still many executives wear their absence from social media as a badge of pride.

The information available through my network puts the power of production in my hands. Karl Marx would be spinning in his grave.

I have used my online community to find a client’s son a job in a mine in Australia, find accommodation for overseas friends of friends visiting London, find lodgers, raise a £1,000 in sponsorship, introduce clients to other clients, source more than one lawyer, share complex process maps globally, find clients, source corporate video content, introduce a friend’s start up to VC, arrange social events, keep in touch with MBA classmates in live in Jakarta, Sacramento, Kiev, Lima, La Paz, Accra and East Grinstead and find work.

Wouldn’t I be a fool not to maintain those links?

Wouldn’t anyone be a fool not to maintain a link to every person that has touched their life positively, not matter how diverse the relationship?