Moments of Impact: How to Design Strategic Conversations That Accelerate Change

Holding the book back: the reality that this skill lends itself more to the apprenticeship model; I'd imagine it would seem painfully abstract in the absence of certain shared contexts. That—and its overuse of hyphens to punctuate run-on sentences.

Key Concepts

Interactive strategic problem-solving sessions as engaging participants not just analytically but creatively and emotionally.

Strategic conversations need to overcome the inertia of the dominant meeting culture and posture... all factors, including environment, can invite participants to revert to their "default settings."

The importance of starting with a baseline, conventional wisdom scenario and "gradually expand the managers' field of vision" from there by "holding up a mirror to their perspectives, turning and twisting it from multiple angles." Doing this achieved a "bending and expanding of the managers' mental models one step at a time" rather than breaking or replacing them, where their default line-of-defense (denial or invalidation) can lead to conflict. Pierre Wack coined the method "The Gentle Art of Re-perceiving."

In defining the purpose of a session, you should know what kind of outcome you expect without overspecifying the content of that outcome. The key is to pose a clear problem-solving challenge that both grounds the conversation and expands the groups thinking... ending with a concrete landing point: specific new ideas to explore or hypotheses to test.

Alignment as a more important outcome than defined next steps. (Alignment will generally lead to action, though a list of defined next steps will never drive action without consensus... no matter how "action oriented" they are.)

Groups with moderate levels of familiarity are the most productive. Three types of diversity for participants: organizational, social, and psychological. Composition should be aligned to the type of conversation; for instance, fewer curveball throwers and more accountable owners for a 'Shaping Choices' versus a 'Building Understanding' session.

Conflict triggers which lead to a threat response in participants as detrimental to a productive session. Importance of building a "common platform" to mitigate unproductive forms of conflict; 8 supporting characteristics in total:

1. Shared purpose or objectives

2. Group identity and community

3. Common understanding of challenges

4. A sense of urgency

5. A shared language system

6. A shared base of information to draw upon

7. The capacity to discuss tough issues

8. Common frames through which to see the issues

Instead, leverage tactics to orchestrate effective conflict (a "controlled burn"). These tactics can be combined and serve to disarm and prevent escalation. Recognize whether a conversation requires pressing into conflict or containing it.

1. Take a longer time perspective on the issues

2. Take an outside-in perspective

3. Turn the challenge into a game or simulation

4. Focus the discussion on key assumptions, not outcomes

5. Have people walk in the shoes of others

6. Make a group grapple with tough trade-offs

7. Agree on neutral criteria for making choices

8. Set and maintain clear boundaries or ground rules

It is critical to frame the issues appropriately. Avoid four common pitfalls: (1) overly broad, (2) overly familiar, (3) too many frames, or (4) biased or overly prescriptive framing. Seek to understand the participants' framing coming into the session, then create frame(s) that stretch—not oppose—participants' mind-sets to become more sticky. Limit to at most 3 during a session. Frames can take many different forms beyond visual frameworks, including questions, metaphors, visual cues, and stories.

Important, too, is to create an output frame to bridge the session itself with its required outcomes. Per MIT's Michael Schrage, "The whole purpose of a strategic conversation is not just to have a good conversation about strategy. It's about getting to a framework for the alignment of behaviors that help you get to the outcomes that you need" [pg. 98]. A "frame of few words" (simple and sticky) can help do just that.

Strategic conversations should be a shared, felt (read: rational and emotional) experience with a narrative arc. Think of crafting an agenda less like an air traffic controller juggling competing interests and more like a screenwriter. The Doblin Five-E model tracks the experience across its lifecycle: entice (how participants learn about the session in advance), enter (how they arrive at the venue and room), engage (how they experience the session), exit (how they leave the venue and room), and extend (all related post-session communications and interactions, formal and informal).

Strategic thinking is a learned skill. Key facets of its practice will often include:

Notable Quotes

Technical challenges involve applying well-honed skills to well-defined problems—such as building a bridge or organizing a production line. Technical challenges may be complex, but they can still be resolved within well-understood boundaries. In these situations, more traditional, hierarchical approaches to leadership work well. If you're having heart surgery, you want the most experienced surgeon calling the shots—not a consensus-building exercise.

Adaptive challenges by contrast, are messy, open-ended, and ill defined. In many cases, it's hard to say what the right question is—let alone the answer. Many of the most important strategic challenges that organizations wrestle with today are adaptive challenges [sic].

[pg. 10]

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Meanwhile, the idea of a corporate grand strategy as a source of sustainable competitive advantage is also losing ground. The oft-cited examples of coherent, durable, and successful corporate strategies are so familiar—Southwest Airlines, Apple, Enterprise Rent-a-Car—precisely because they're so rare. [pg. 11]

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I have found that getting to that management "Aha!" is the real challenge... It does not simply leap at you when you've presented all the alternatives, no matter how eloquent your expression or how beautifully drawn your charts. It happens when your message reaches the microcosms [mental models] of decision makers, obliges them to question their assumptions about how their business world works, and leads them to change and reorganize their inner models of reality.

Pierre Wack for Harvard Business Review [pg. 21]

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In our era, two things are certain. First, we still hire and reward people mainly for their ability to exploit known ideas (in other words, to tackle technical challenges). Second VUCA World [Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity] is serving up an increasing number of adaptive challenges, which call for more exploratory approaches—and more people who know how to lead them. [pg. 53]

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When you listen deeply to participants, you'll make design choices that reflect their perspectives and resonate with them. When participants enter your session, each person will feel heard, even if he or she doesn't agree with all of your choices. When people feel heard, their stress levels fall. When people are less stressed, they're more open to listening to others. By developing and showing genuine empathy, you're more likely to create an environment in which participants show empathy toward one another. [pg. 78]

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[The problem is] nobody really cares about these strategies. Leaders must move beyond incorporating solid strategic thinking and effective communication in order to succeed: strategies must be felt as personally meaningful and compelling by the members of the organization who must adopt new behaviors in order to execute them. And thinking won't get you there.

Professor Jeanne Liedtka, Virginia Darden School of Business, Strategy as Experienced [pg. 137-138]

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"We've misinterpreted this whole competing-on-speed thing in business today," says Peter Johnson, the longtime head of strategy for pharmaceutical maker Eli Lilly and Company. "The fact is, when things are happening very fast, it's even more important that we stop and take the time to think deeply." When you're taking sharp curves at a hundred miles per hour, mistakes are far more likely to be fatal. [pg. 147]

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Nothing is more difficult to handle, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage, than to put oneself at the head of introducing new orders. For the introducer has all those who benefit from the old orders as enemies, and he has lukewarm defenders in all those who might benefit from the new orders. The lukewarmness arises partly from fear of adversaries... and partly from the incredulity of men.

Machiavelli, The Prince [pg. 156]