Read the evidence first
Before grading, lay out where leaders’ time, the money, the hiring and the hard decisions actually went. We tend to look for evidence that confirms what we already believe.
Innovation NavigatorStrategic Game
Inside-Out Strategic Perspective
from the strategy in the deck→to the strategy in the calendar, the budget and the decisions
The Goal
Compare the strategy the team states with the strategy its calendar, budget, hires and decisions reveal, grade each gap on evidence, and decide which side is right and moves.
Ideal For
Leadership teams after an offsite or before a planning cycle, board pre-reads, mid-year reviews, leadership transitions, and any team whose strategy keeps being restated without changing what happens.
The Shift
From the strategy in the deck to the strategy in the calendar, the budget and the decisions.
The Science
What people intend and what they do often differ, and changes in what people intend tend to produce much smaller changes in what they do. We tend to look for evidence that confirms what we already believe, so the evidence is laid out before anyone grades, and reading the facts as an outsider would tends to temper a team’s optimism about its own plans. Teams name problems when it’s safe to, so the audit grades the system, not people.
Inside-Out Strategy, step by step
- Say the safety lineWe audit the system, not people. The most senior person reads their own calendar row first.
- Declare the stated strategyOne sentence for each of five dimensions (Where to play, How to win, Our bet, Our discipline, Our taboo), in the words people actually use. No stated position? That row is Blank.
- Inspect the evidenceFrom the evidence pack (four weeks of leaders’ meetings, last quarter’s spend against plan, two quarters of hires and promotions, ten escalated decisions), write what each dimension actually looks like.
- Grade every rowAligned, Drift, Gap or Blank, each with the one piece of evidence that decides it.
- Decide which side is rightFor every row that isn’t aligned: does the deck move, does reality move, or both?
- Commit“By [date], [owner] will [first move] to close the [dimension] gap,” and book the next audit, usually a quarter out.
The techniques, and why they work
Grade every row on evidence
Aligned, Drift, Gap or Blank, each with one piece of evidence; a stranger’s reading of the facts is the test. Reading the facts as an outsider would tends to temper a team’s optimism about its own plans.
Decide which side is right
For every gap, decide whether the deck moves, reality moves, or both, and commit to the first move with an owner, a date and the next audit. Realized strategy is partly emergent, and sometimes it is the better one.
Selected research
- Mintzberg, H., & Waters, J. A. (1985). Of strategies, deliberate and emergent. Strategic Management Journal, 6(3), 257–272.
- Webb, T. L., & Sheeran, P. (2006). Does changing behavioral intentions engender behavior change? A meta-analysis of the experimental evidence. Psychological Bulletin, 132(2), 249–268.
- Nickerson, R. S. (1998). Confirmation bias: A ubiquitous phenomenon in many guises. Review of General Psychology, 2(2), 175–220.
- Kahneman, D., & Lovallo, D. (1993). Timid choices and bold forecasts: A cognitive perspective on risk taking. Management Science, 39(1), 17–31.
- Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383.
- Lafley, A. G., & Martin, R. L. (2013). Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works. Harvard Business Review Press. (Practitioner source.)
From the research
The thinking behind this lab, published in full: