The podcast explores the shortcomings of traditional strategies, the importance of aligning strategy with execution, and the role of scenario planning. They discuss personal reflections on planning and the need for strategic conversations as a key step in implementing the strategy pattern.
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insights INSIGHT
Strategy as an Exercise
"Doing strategy" often becomes the end goal, creating detailed plans as an exercise.
These plans turn into threats, divorced from the operating system needed for execution.
insights INSIGHT
Comfort in Planning
Traditional strategy persists because having a plan feels good and reduces uncertainty.
It's easier to argue about the plan (recipe) than to face the unknown (taste the food).
insights INSIGHT
The Illusion of Control
Believing you understand a complex, unknowable domain is dangerous.
Traditional planning creates unpreparedness for inevitable deviations.
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It's January! New beginnings? Ambitious plans? Giant commitments to change? They’re on everyone’s mind. Companies included—since now’s the time when glossy PowerPoint decks are so eagerly rolled out. And those PowerPoints? They’re always brimming with promise for the year ahead.
But there's a glaring disconnect between those slides (all 73 of them) and eventual success we often don’t address. Because how frequently do those meticulously crafted plans pan out? Does the new agenda account for the day-to-day running of the company? Is the plan flexible enough to handle economic curveballs? (We remember 2020, right?)
The reality is that “traditional strategy” often resembles New Year's resolutions; they’re imbued with good intentions but ultimately destined for disappointment.
In this episode of "At Work with The Ready," (new year, new podcast name!) co-hosts Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin explore our deep-rooted conditioning toward conventional planning methods (despite their shortcomings), share what a more complexity conscious approach to strategy looks like, and give you moves to start busting up the annual cycles of frustration, stagnancy, and finger-pointing.
At Work with The Ready