We will never answer all the questions
“Let’s crowdsource all the questions... so that we know what our strategy process has to answer…!” was an enthusiastically made and enthusiastically met suggestion at a recent meeting. This triggered a moment that I’m sure many consultants and facilitators will recognise – “Taxi, please! Can I just go home to my duvet?” Which, luckily by now, I’ve learned to breathe through…
Why the panic?
Because there’s a mental model here that is not serving the organisation’s mission or its people. Let’s call it the “strategy fantasy.” It goes something like this:
Every day at work we are making decisions – big ones (Invest? Don’t invest? Hire? Don’t hire?) and small ones (Coffee now or after that email? 10 minute yoga break or 10 minute sofa retreat? Send an email copying 8 people or reach out by phone?).
All of these decisions, big and small, are answered, or set in suspended animation, based on a number interconnected variables: purpose, mission, values, workplan, personal objectives, how we’re feeling that day, the air temperature, what we had for breakfast… I could go on.
It is – let’s face it – very easy to get bound up in a feeling that you can’t make good decisions at work because everything you try and pull on is related to something else – and each “something else” surfaces more questions.
So, it’s highly tempting to proceed like this:
“We trying to change the tyres on the car whilst it’s racing around the track. No wonder everything’s a muddle. Let’s pause, answer all our questions, so everyone is on the same page, and then the world will be de-muddled and everything will progress smoothly…”
To which I say (not being the type of consultant who sits on the fence), “No, no, no..!”
That idea is a delusion, a seduction, a fantasy. There is no time when we are “all going to be on the same page.” Let’s face it – history is made up of people having access to very similar pages but coming to very different conclusions (religious texts, Das Kapital, political manifestos, you get the picture).
Let me try an alternative mental model:
“It’s not the car and the race track we should be problematising. It’s the ongoing, persistent, never-ending changes in our environment and in the needs of our stakeholders that we should be normalising.”
So, let’s live in a state of questioning, and answering what we can, well enough for us to be able to take a couple of steps forwards. Let’s see not knowing as a healthy thirst for wisdom, rather than a reason for paralysis. And let’s always be in conversation about our growth, our learning and our shared futures. Strategy is not a process that happens once every few years, and it’s not about a beautifully typeset deck of PowerPoint slides. It’s about observation, it’s about humility, it’s about adaptation and it’s about patience.
Phew, I’ve depanicked myself!
If you want to know more, look out for our first Doubt Club report: The Power of Doubt: Questions for more Purposeful and Equitable Organisations. Coming at the end of June!
