Strategic clarity and alignment

Anecdote provides a test on strategic clarity that most organisations would probably fail.

The difficulty with strategic planning is that experts scramble to focus planning efforts around their pet subjects. Department heads want to include as much freedom as possible, making strategic planning an exercise in dilution. Finally, forces tend to mobilise against the poor executive who wants to set a new direction for the future.Too often, the outcome is more of the same, with a slightly different flavour.

A lack of clarity and strong alignment is not necessarily a recipe for disaster. In Planet Google, Randall Stross describes Google as a loose federation of strong individuals and autonomous teams, rather than the focussed and effective organisation that we perceive from the outside. There is only one Google, but there are many organisations consisting of strong-willed individuals almost beyond the control of their management.

With our focus on clarity and alignment, we think too much in military terms. Organisations are rather operating systems that can be used in many ways by individuals. Some use them much better than others - they initiate projects, programs, communities of practice and systems that enable them to get things done, disseminate information or exchange knowledge. The longer an individual is in an organisation, the better he learns to play the game, but the more difficult it becomes to change.

If you're an executive director, you're not without means to steer your organisation. Here are a few tools:

• Talk about values. E.g. Google has lean management, but it has a strong culture or openness, develops wonderful free tools to help users (such as blogger) and has a credible mission to organise all knowledge on the web. Beware however - the slightest inconsistency in your behaviour against your values will be examined with a magnifying glass and result in damage beyond repair.
• Allocate resources. As an executive, you can steer resources of the organisation (hiring people, allocating budgets). But going too fast might easily result in enormous wastage.
• Recognition can be a currency to steer behaviour, but it's almost impossible to use in a non-patronizing way.
• Gentle discouragement may be more productive. There are only so many hours in a day, and for casual ideas, a lack of attention or airtime may suffice. 

If you're a subject matter expert, you're stronger than you think. You can get away with a lot as long as you  can demonstrate that your intentions are for the best.