Your Choice: Front Windshield or Rear-View Mirror?
Peter Drucker said it best, “Plans are nothing until they degenerate into work.” Stated differently, plan the work and work the plan. Dwight Eisenhower asserted “Plans are nothing; planning is everything.” Pursuant to these core principles, Strategic Futures performs strategic planning assignments to further creative collaboration among participants who will be active and accountable in actually implementing the plan. As consultants, we probe, provoke and challenge to see new possibilities using opportunity-centered visioning and strategic thinking. Our approach to strategic planning is compatible with Enterprise Risk Management but there are several key distinctions.
Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) is a risk-based approach to managing an enterprise, whose ancestry reaches back several decades to include Statistical Process Control (SPC), quality circles, Total Quality Management (TQM), and ISO standards. ERM adherents, like their TQM brethren before them, often make sweeping, potentially dangerous claims that ERM is your “silver bullet” – it’s all you need to manage successfully. (Manage, perhaps although not necessarily lead). A few decades ago, this school of thought preached similarly that “TQM is all you need.” During the TQM heyday, Motorola was contemplating deeply its TQM navel; Motorola was educating other companies as to its TQM theology, when the digital revolution passed it by like a speeding train. Whoops! Drinking the kool-aid rather than thinking ahead, Motorola had some serious catching up to do.
Successful organizations align and balance strategy, systems and structure around their mission and customers. ERM is an excellent tool and an essential “system” in the triad of strategy, systems and structure. However, systems alone do not a thriving organization make. Systems are not strategy although they may masquerade as such.
It’s no surprise that incessant focus on risk cultivates a deeply risk-averse culture and puts it on steroids, painting creativity and change into a narrow corner. Why is that? A risk-averse culture requires complete certainty in all things, much the way government bureaucracies operate — slowly and uncompetitively. Staff get the message that rewards and recognition are based solely on the degree to which risks were mitigated. They behave accordingly. Creative visioning and bold strategic thinking become heretical in extreme cases. Ask yourself: How would Steve Jobs fare in a zealous ERM culture?
Don’t get me wrong: ERM and related approaches are valuable tools when used as part of a balanced portfolio rather than as a silver bullet. Risk-based and risk-averse thinking has its place and time, used best when balanced with a creative, opportunity-driven strategic thinking process. Unleash the strategic thinking process first and don’t hobble it unduly. Thereafter, develop and apply your ERM templates interactively to make strategic choices and establish accountable dashboards.
Strategic planning and ERM are not mutually exclusive; they should complement one another. You wouldn’t drive without a front windshield, nor without your rear-view mirror. You need both to navigate successfully particularly when traffic is thick, fast, and erratic, as it is in these turbulent times.
An Extraordinary Man — True Leadership
Christopher Dowswell had an eternal glow about him, abundant energy that transcended his age and health, endless enhusiasm and total dedication to his life’s work which was eradicating hunger and poverty through agricultural development throughout the world, particularly Africa. He was chief of staff to the late Dr. Norman Borlaug, father of the Green Revolution and much, much more. I am a lucky man for knowing him for the past several years. I only wish I could have known him longer. What a privilege that would have been. Yet, in perspective, most people go through their years on this planet and never enjoy the privilege of meeting and knowing someone like Chris. Today, I am grateful for knowing him in the same instant that I am saddened by his passing.
I met Chris in his capacity as a top executive at Sasakawa Africa Association when I was engaged to provide matrix management assistance. Just minutes after meeting him in Nairobi, I knew that I had met a friend for life. He connected with people on an immediate and deep level. Some executives are more task-focused. Other executives are more people-focused. Chris was both task-focused and people-focused and he was a virtuoso in both areas. I have worked with powerful executives around the globe. One shared characteric of successful executives? They all look directly into your eyes, without fail. However, with Chris it was different. Chris looked into your eyes and you could see his inquiring mind at work: Who are you, really? How can I leverage your talents so that you can join me as a force for positive change? It was so very powerful. It was unique. It was all about his mission, not his ego.
I would return from Africa and comment to my friends about the after-hours conversations we would have. The sparkling and sophisticated conversations about world affairs were a cut above the conversations I enjoyed in New York or Washington. Why? Chris brought the energy. He brought the sparkle. He was truly a man of the world. He made it all special, instant by instant. What’s more, he had assembled a unique group of people who were up to the task and added to the energy he brought. And the task was always grand, never trivial, never small bore.
Chris had enormous gravitas. He was a force for good. I don’t know how many Christopher Dowswells populate this globe of ours, but it’s plain that there aren’t enough of them. Chris was what genuine leadership is all about. May we all be inspired by him and may each of us become ever more powerful in improving the lives of others wherever we may be, whatever our walk of life. There’s no replacing Chris Dowswell, but those of us who knew him encumber a unique debt: we owe it to him to do our best to try.
Matrix Management Check-Ups and Tune-Ups
Matrix organizations benefit from occasional check-ups and tune-ups. Top leadership in most organizations is consumed by attention to strategy, systems, and major transactions of one kind of another. How much time and attention is devoted to ensuring that the organization — its structure and functioning — is working optimally, or even as intended? Oftentimes, structure is the neglected stepchild in the strategy-systems-structure triad. What’s working well? What’s not working so well? Where are there deficiencies in horizontal integration? Where are there disconnects between vertical leaders and matrixed staff? The list of check-up questions won’t be recited here but suffice it to say that a fraction of the attention invested in strategy, systems and major transactions will deliver bountiful benefits. Check-ups lead to tune-ups and tune-ups can and should lead to performance breakthroughs that matter.
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