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Why don’t we have a strategy?

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Re: Why don’t we have a strategy?

#11

Post by oersted »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #2

> The problem isn't that people can't think strategically. The problem is that real life has a way of making your strategy obsolete. As Mike Tyson said: Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. Having a team that communicates effectively and and is agile (in the normal sense of the word) and executes effectively is more important than strategy.

It's not an excuse not to have a plan. Strategy is dynamic and iterative.

When you get punched in the mouth, you just adjust your plan based on new evidence, you don't throw it out the window.

Besides, business and engineering are not like fights and battles. Sudden shocks are rare and split-second decisions are not often called for. In most cases new evidence comes gradually, there is time to validate it, digest it and re-tune expectations and strategy.

Furthermore, always acting on the main immediate priority/bottleneck rarely leads to optimal speed. In computer science, this is called a greedy algorithm. They are indeed simpler to implement and tune (and to execute by teams), but rarely optimal. Real speed requires making predictions and adjusting them as more information becomes available, this is what planning is.

Re: Why don’t we have a strategy?

#12

Post by quirkot »

An important point to add, I think, is that strategy is a set of plans for a future that is different than the present. And that is hard. Many people struggle with it, especially beyond the task level. That's why so much of "strategy" is hand waving nonsense, because it is so difficult

Re: Why don’t we have a strategy?

#14

Post by dchuk »

The overwhelming majority of “strategies” are just rigid sequences of time bound outputs/shit you want to build, that always end up being wrong and needing to change because of new information coming in.

Strategy needs to be:

- We’ve identified this deep problem in the world that needs to be fixed

- We want to bring the Vision to life where that problem is gone (a big bold future state of the world).

- We believe bringing this sequence (roadmap) of intermediate states of the world to life will get us to that vision.

- These are the things we WONT do along the way. (Guiding policy)

A roadmap unrolls your strategy into that sequence. A good roadmap item clearly lays out where you’re trying to go without committing you to doing it in any particular way. Most roadmaps are really a feature release plan. A roadmap should contain Futures, not Features.

All of the above is uncomfortable at first and takes a lot of practice to get used to, so many just end up committing to a timeline of things to build that doesn’t really add up to an actual strategy.

Re: Why don’t we have a strategy?

#15

Post by ra120271 »

I do a lot of vision and strategy work whether implicitly or explicitly. Why do we need to get somewhere and how do we get from here to there?

I believe it's really hard to get where you you want to go if everyone is looking down at the next step or two and not to the horizon. That said, a strategy that does not deal with the journey and the challenges of the journey is just a vision without an ability to realise it.

My experiences is that strategies that are not part of a delivery enablement capability are planned journeys without anyone to make it.

I find it's one of the hardest things I do in my work life and it is one of the hardest things to do right with any level of consistency.

Fortunately I do love a challenge.

Re: Why don’t we have a strategy?

#16

Post by ddek »

zmgsabst wrote: post #4
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #2

> The problem isn't that people can't think strategically. The problem is that real life has a way of making your strategy obsolete. As Mike Tyson said: Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. Having a team that communicates effectively and and is agile (in the normal sense of the word) and executes effectively is more important than strategy.

> Having a team that communicates effectively and and is agile (in the normal sense of the word) and executes effectively is more important than strategy. Hard disagree: Those things are important, but I’ve seen teams with those qualities spin or fail to produce impact because they don’t have a strategy. You need an objective and you need a plan to get there — “objectives and key results”. Communication and agility a…

I'd argue that having follow a doctrine of agility, communication and cooperation is in itself part of a strategy. It only solves part of the equation, though. Your overall strategy is incoherent if you pair these traits with a long-distance ivory tower goal setting. If you had a process to quickly identify and refine smaller (or sub) objectives you'd use the agility to its potential. Add in some mechanisms to minimise the artifacts of fast-paced agile engineering (e.g. tech debt, bloat), and you have a complete strategy.

Re: Why don’t we have a strategy?

#17

Post by olivierduval »

Strategy is about

- vision: what will be the market in the next few years ? What products will be needed ? Who will be the competitor & how will they be positionned ? And what about subcontractor ? And chain of value ? And added value ?

- execution preparation: what will be required in the next few years to complete to vision ? Maybe it's partnership, reorg, new products, integration, buy competitor... There may be some key milestone, like becoming first on a high visibility market before becoming first-to-third in a high value mid-market... Or becoming a reference for business before attacking the comsumer market... or becoming a reference supplier/subcontractor before producing with its own trademark...

Then the tactic is how to execute the strategy. There you'll need roadmap, ressource allocation and such... but you already know where you want to be in the next few years and roughly the differents milestones to get there before starting to move

Re: Why don’t we have a strategy?

#19

Post by 5350-uiop-1130 »

dchuk wrote: post #14

The overwhelming majority of “strategies” are just rigid sequences of time bound outputs/shit you want to build, that always end up being wrong and needing to change because of new information coming in. Strategy needs to be: - We’ve identified this deep problem in the world that needs to be fixed - We want to bring the Vision to life where that problem is gone (a big bold future state of the world). - We believe bri…

i agree, but think timelines are a practical necessity of business. this is why we get so much half-baked/unfinished stuff being released.

and this is where the trade-offs happen that dilute or misdirect an otherwise sound roadmap/strategy. some exec needs shit done so he can present to his boss and get his nice bonus, then jump ship before they realise its a clusterf*ck.

Re: Why don’t we have a strategy?

#20

Post by orlp »

Any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure.

— Melvin E. Conway

The exact same thing applies to any (effective realization of) a company strategy. Conway's law applies both during strategic planning and execution.

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