Involve stakeholders, document opinions, and communicate.
Companies can manage strategy’s wickedness not by being more systematic but by using social-planning processes. They should organize brainstorming sessions to identify the various aspects of a wicked problem; hold retreats to encourage executives and stakeholders to share their perspectives; run focus groups to better understand stakeholders’ viewpoints; involve stakeholders in developing future scenarios; and organize design charrettes to develop and gain acceptance for possible strategies. The aim should be to create a shared understanding of the problem and foster a joint commitment to possible ways of resolving it. Not everyone will agree on what the problem is, but stakeholders should be able to understand one another’s positions well enough to discuss different interpretations of the problem and work together to tackle it.
Companies must go beyond obtaining facts and opinions from stakeholders; they should involve them in finding ways to manage the problem. Getting a variety of opinions helps companies develop novel perspectives. It also strengthens collective intelligence, which counteracts groupthink and cognitive bias and enables groups to tackle problems more effectively than individuals, as Tom Atlee, the founder and codirector of the Co-Intelligence Institute, and Howard Bloom, a visiting scholar at New York University, have pointed out. Involving more stakeholders makes the planning process more complex, but it also expands the potential for creativity. Buy-in is an important result; companies should look not only for countermeasures but also for stakeholders to get on board with some of them.
Companies believe that shareholders and customers are important stakeholders, but employees are even more crucial. Their tacit knowledge and commitment often help enterprises develop innovative strategies. Merrill Lynch Credit Corporation, for example, places a great deal of emphasis on semistructured social processes, frequently organizing social events and encouraging employees to interact with one another. Everyone lunches in the company cafeteria, which allows employees to mix with senior executives routinely. A company intranet supports virtual social interactions such as blog-based discussions.
It may seem trivial, but documenting stakeholders’ assumptions, ideas, and concerns on an ongoing basis is important. It helps enterprises understand stakeholders’ hidden assumptions and gauge the effectiveness of the actions they have taken. Documents also help executives communicate ideas, which is essential if plans are to become reality.
All planning processes are, at their core, vehicles for communication with employees at all levels and between business units. This is particularly true of processes that tackle wicked issues. Smart companies emphasize such communication. At John Deere, corporate planners say that the quality of senior executives’ communications with divisions is the most important indicator of the effectiveness of strategy planning. Whirlpool believes that even the “janitor on the third shift” should be familiar with the company’s strategic goals. So assembly lines at Whirlpool shut down on a regular basis to enable managers and workers to discuss the progress of plans. At Shell a global electronic network, organized into forums with moderators, allows hundreds of managers and planners to discuss planning issues. At Merrill Lynch Credit Corporation, the corporate planners’ three most important rules for effective planning are simple: “One, communicate! Two, communicate! And three, communicate!”
The documentation process is a good way to generate new ideas. It needn’t be confined to recording decisions already reached; some companies have been creative in using the process to communicate the nature of the problems they face. In 2002 SAE International, an organization that sets standards and provides training in the automobile, aerospace, and commercial vehicle industries, was looking for new strategies. It commissioned a case study on its situation and then invited 30 senior executives with reputations for creative thinking to discuss the case with its top managers. SAE recorded the ideas that emerged during the session and has implemented several of them. Without the case study that captured the organization’s dilemma, the brainstorming might not have been productive.
Define the corporate identity.
While a company dealing with a wicked problem has to experiment with many strategies, it must stay true to a sense of purpose. Mission statements are the foundations of strategy, but in a fast-changing world, companies change their “concept of business,” “scope of activities,” or “statement of purpose” more often than they used to. A company’s identity, which serves as a touchstone against which it can evaluate its choices, is often a more enduring statement of strategic intent.
An organization’s identity, like that of an individual, comprises the following:
Companies can manage strategy’s wickedness not by being more systematic but by using social-planning processes. They should organize brainstorming sessions to identify the various aspects of a wicked problem; hold retreats to encourage executives and stakeholders to share their perspectives; run focus groups to better understand stakeholders’ viewpoints; involve stakeholders in developing future scenarios; and organize design charrettes to develop and gain acceptance for possible strategies. The aim should be to create a shared understanding of the problem and foster a joint commitment to possible ways of resolving it. Not everyone will agree on what the problem is, but stakeholders should be able to understand one another’s positions well enough to discuss different interpretations of the problem and work together to tackle it.
Companies must go beyond obtaining facts and opinions from stakeholders; they should involve them in finding ways to manage the problem. Getting a variety of opinions helps companies develop novel perspectives. It also strengthens collective intelligence, which counteracts groupthink and cognitive bias and enables groups to tackle problems more effectively than individuals, as Tom Atlee, the founder and codirector of the Co-Intelligence Institute, and Howard Bloom, a visiting scholar at New York University, have pointed out. Involving more stakeholders makes the planning process more complex, but it also expands the potential for creativity. Buy-in is an important result; companies should look not only for countermeasures but also for stakeholders to get on board with some of them.
Companies believe that shareholders and customers are important stakeholders, but employees are even more crucial. Their tacit knowledge and commitment often help enterprises develop innovative strategies. Merrill Lynch Credit Corporation, for example, places a great deal of emphasis on semistructured social processes, frequently organizing social events and encouraging employees to interact with one another. Everyone lunches in the company cafeteria, which allows employees to mix with senior executives routinely. A company intranet supports virtual social interactions such as blog-based discussions.
It may seem trivial, but documenting stakeholders’ assumptions, ideas, and concerns on an ongoing basis is important. It helps enterprises understand stakeholders’ hidden assumptions and gauge the effectiveness of the actions they have taken. Documents also help executives communicate ideas, which is essential if plans are to become reality.
All planning processes are, at their core, vehicles for communication with employees at all levels and between business units. This is particularly true of processes that tackle wicked issues. Smart companies emphasize such communication. At John Deere, corporate planners say that the quality of senior executives’ communications with divisions is the most important indicator of the effectiveness of strategy planning. Whirlpool believes that even the “janitor on the third shift” should be familiar with the company’s strategic goals. So assembly lines at Whirlpool shut down on a regular basis to enable managers and workers to discuss the progress of plans. At Shell a global electronic network, organized into forums with moderators, allows hundreds of managers and planners to discuss planning issues. At Merrill Lynch Credit Corporation, the corporate planners’ three most important rules for effective planning are simple: “One, communicate! Two, communicate! And three, communicate!”
The documentation process is a good way to generate new ideas. It needn’t be confined to recording decisions already reached; some companies have been creative in using the process to communicate the nature of the problems they face. In 2002 SAE International, an organization that sets standards and provides training in the automobile, aerospace, and commercial vehicle industries, was looking for new strategies. It commissioned a case study on its situation and then invited 30 senior executives with reputations for creative thinking to discuss the case with its top managers. SAE recorded the ideas that emerged during the session and has implemented several of them. Without the case study that captured the organization’s dilemma, the brainstorming might not have been productive.
Define the corporate identity.
While a company dealing with a wicked problem has to experiment with many strategies, it must stay true to a sense of purpose. Mission statements are the foundations of strategy, but in a fast-changing world, companies change their “concept of business,” “scope of activities,” or “statement of purpose” more often than they used to. A company’s identity, which serves as a touchstone against which it can evaluate its choices, is often a more enduring statement of strategic intent.
An organization’s identity, like that of an individual, comprises the following: