Avoiding Strategic Amnesia
Have you ever seen a new leader come into an organization and declare a "new strategy" that sounds a lot like the old strategy? Sure. It happens. While it takes a futurist mindset to design an effective, mission-driven strategy, we should not overlook the role of history in understanding and crafting a new way forward. Knowing where a team has been will help you avoid the mistakes of the past and craft a truly innovative future that borrows the best parts of the organization's history.
One thing I love about the poverty alleviation work done by the Chalmers Center, is that they start their process by looking around at who is already active in the community and learning from them. Designing strategy is a lot like that. Strategy is not jumping into a newly discovered swimming hole that no one has ever explored (at least not often). Strategy design is more like wading into a river that has a history that precedes you and a future that lies beyond you. You have to get curious about what lies "up stream" in order to understand where you are and where you're going.
My mentor, Jeff Wood, likes to put it this way, "Strategy never starts with a blank piece of paper." There are (almost always) existing clues and lessons from which to learn. We should do our homework and become historians of the organization's success and failures. Here are a few ideas about how to quickly understand an organization's strategic history:
Get curious and proceed humbly. It's time to ask a lot of questions and listen.
Find the [unofficial] staff historian. There's always a veteran out there who knows where the organization has been and would love to tell you all about it!
Facilitate a team retrospective timeline exercise. This is a process to find the highs and lows of the team and document the lessons learned.
Don't just look at the organizational strategy documents, look at the older versions of those documents. Often this can tell you how the ideas have evolved over time.
If you have time, ask loyal customers what their experience has been with the organization.
“Strategy never starts with a blank piece of paper.” -Jeff Wood
As you design your new strategy, you can now take lessons from the past and build on them or avoid previous pitfalls. I find that understanding strategic history also helps veteran staff members connect with the new strategy. It helps staff see how their previous work is informing the new strategy and creates immediate buy-in.
What other ideas can you share about the role of history in strategy design. Share your ideas!