Digital Strategy

What’s the Point? Getting Strategy Right

Alistair Russell · April 19, 2023 · Leave a Comment

Prompted by reading and reflecting on a recent article “Getting strategy wrong and how to do it right instead” published in McKinsey Quarterly, we concluded that the best place to start is with the “what’s the point” question.

Real, open, informed discussions amongst senior leaders are essential if you are going to get strategy right. In all our experience, the fundamental, “do not pass go” questions flow from this perspective including:

how will the strategy be used?
what will people do differently as a result of the strategy?
what effect will that different behaviour have?
what benefits should flow from the use of this strategy
who will recognise those benefits?
what differences in what things will key stakeholders notice?
how will those effects be measured?

We find these “what’s the point” questions useful at all levels of our strategic work. Both in defining what we do with, or on behalf of, our clients, what is produced and how it is produced all provide the foundation for getting strategy right.

Whether it’s working across the organisational leadership team interrogating organisational strategy and what it might mean for digital systems, data and technology. Testing for coherence and relative priority of strategic goals and objectives. Or working to review an application portfolio to inform strategic decisions to say invest, migrate or retire key systems. Or developing the set of enterprise architectural principles that technology and organisational leaders will use to test prospective solutions for both business and technical “fit”. All of these strategic activities depend for their success on a clear articulation of what they are for – their point.

Rip it up and start again?

Alistair Russell · July 15, 2020 · Leave a Comment

Every now and again a song lyric becomes the summary of an idea for me. Over the last couple of weeks a key theme of sessions with clients has been to what extent should their pre-pandemic strategy, approach or play-book be ditched and an entirely new approach be set out. Or, with acknowledgement and respect to the great Edwyn Collins and his erstwhile colleagues in the band Orange Juice, should we “Rip it up and start again?” And in line with our last insight post its proved a useful, powerful question.

The two key foundations for this challenge to us all to “rip it up” are:

the enduring benefit of what we might call “zero-basing”; taking yourself, your team and your organisation back to first principles; re-assessing the needs of your customers, clients and colleagues and making sure you can make the case for what you deliver, how you deliver it etc. as if you were starting from scratch, with no legacy, no technical or organisational debt and then deciding on and committing to the strategy on that basis; not because that was what it was at your last board meeting when it was reviewed.
the importance of ‘managing the show’; a learning point for me in early years working and advising senior executives was that developing the best answer, make the business case for the most logical and rational strategy was never enough; to be successful you have to communicate actively with your stakeholders; you will not be successful without also having the best communication strategy; you have to manage the impression that you have the best strategy and build confidence and trust in your approach.

We need to manage the show and the analysis.

We see it as imperative you consider if the time is right to “rip it up”. To take the opportunity of this changed business and society context to signal to your colleagues and/or customers that the strategy you started the year with is not the one that you will be persisting with. To reinforce the adaptability and agility of your team and your organisation by coming forward at pace with a new strategy. A new strategy that clearly builds on all the fundamentals that you know about how and why your organisation is valuable and incorporates the learning from last three months. A strategy that re-focuses yourself, your team and your organisation forward and is presented as something that is more dynamic than before, and will be under more frequent review.

Drawing on insight from corporate comms colleagues, a few thoughts:

choose to give yourself enough time to do this work, managing the show as well as the analysis takes time, especially when you are looking to get better at it;

get clear on the outcomes, in terms of what you want key stakeholders to think and feel.

work really hard at simplicity, the alignment of audience, message and your method of communication is key.

Powerful Questions

Alistair Russell · June 16, 2020 · Leave a Comment

We spoke with a number of established clients in developing Laing Russell’s positioning, seeking to understand what was the source of our value. A common theme that got us thinking was that whilst knowing stuff is important, clients speak in terms of the value is based on asking really good questions.

Aligned with our encouragement for all of us to engage in reflective practice, we wondered what makes a good question in our context? In the spirit of sharing our insight and encouraging a discussion, some thoughts follow. Let us know what you think.

The key themes from our reflection were that good, powerful and productive questions are:

specific to context, good questions and their impact are socially constructed, they work best when they are relevant, based on human connection, have meaning and are significant. The nature of consulting engagements is that the context is significant, the harder bit is using all one’s skills and experience to build connection and asking questions that are and feel specific, we work hard to avoid generic, consulting playbook questions.
Indicate a direction, one way to think of consulting is as a catalytic process, applying a new force to the complicated set of systems that are an enterprise. Good questions, point in a direction and guide either divergent or convergent thinking for the client.
- divergent questions would be… how might you?….what could you…?
- convergent questions would be…what are the priorities here?…why? which specific issue(s) should you address first?
Balance depth and degree of challenge, deep, existential questions are mostly unproductive. Good questions encourage deeper consideration than a client would do on their own, the client should feel what we call a learning force. A force that builds on the human connection to promote new thinking. Noting we should not push or pull the client in directions that are unhelpful. The qualities of balance are embedded in :
- asking open questions that promote new thinking whilst remaining relevant to the context;
- holding the level of intellect required to engage successfully in any debate to the intellectual common denominator within the client;
- engender excitement through the realisation of possibilities.

In our experience, the foundation is the relationship. Powerful questions that challenge the client fundamentally require that human connection or trusted relationship. This trust is evidenced by client seeing you as integrated, yet distinct, part of their enterprise’s network.

To complete the loop, on reflection, our success in building enduring relationships with clients is dependent on our ability to ask really good questions – it’s certainly part of the secret sauce that we apply. The other part is working with the client to deliver answers, at pace.