Change & Resilience
A key strategic concept
Friends,
I hope that all is well with you and yours, and that this e-mail finds you on a boat with shoddy connection, in the tropics, three months after I sent it.
Now accepting keynotes for 24Q2-24Q3
Every year, I create three main presentation decks. For 2024, they are:
What to Do When You Don’t Know What to Do: How to turn uncertainty into a competitive advantage. (Based on my new book by the same name.)
Regression Toward the Meme: Why modern leadership falls into old traps - and how to avoid them.
The Efficiency Illusion: How to uncover the hidden costs of digital commerce and create profitable growth.
If you want to book me for your event, corporate speaking slot, or workshop, merely send me an email. To make sure I am available, however, please do so at your earliest convenience; my availability is limited and the schedule is filling up fast.
All presentations are adapted to fit the event. Entirely customized presentations, including topic, are available upon request at an additional cost. More information may be found here.
A couple of updates reflections before we go-go
It is interesting, is it not, that for all of their outwards bravado, some gentlemen verily doth protest too much. As far as I can tell, their constant attempts to remind the world of their supposed masculinity merely demonstrate brittleness created by insecurity; as if they were petrified that the façade will come crumbling down if they forget to continuously hold it up.
Perhaps it is my age, but I genuinely struggle not to yawn at their incessant antics. If you still feel the need to be perceived as one of the boys, it is high time you grew up.
Not to worry, I will not go into the whole modern masculinity debate here; I have no desire to jump into the crowded cesspool that it has become. I will merely point out that blaming women for your own inadequacies as a man does not strike me as, shall we say, the most clever strategy ever devised. Nor particularly manly.
Kindness is the antibiotic that cures most social maladies. I shall leave it at that.
Moving on.
2024.2.a
Resilience - Of Paramount Importance
Part I: A conceptual introduction
Over the years that this newsletter has existed, I have repeatedly referred to the concept of resilience. However, I have yet to give it the proper attention that it deserves.
The timing matters. The present world is one of immense uncertainty, blistering technological innovation, and surging market demand for novel goods, services, and solutions. For companies acting within this new reality, understanding what resilience is and how to create it can be, without so much as a word of hyperbole, the difference between survival and demise. Resilience is also closely linked to risk, which we recently had reason to discuss.
So.
Let us first establish the starting point with a factual statement: change is not a contrast, but a constant. It is the fundamental state of the world. Everywhere around us, all the time at once, there are contextual shifts, reactions, revisions, and variation. We respond to these changes, adapt our behavior, and immediately enable others to respond accordingly. We drive change; change drives us. Both in theory and in practice.
However, despite the seemingly obvious nature of the assertion, most of the conventional models and frameworks that we use in strategy assume change to be non-existent, or at least a non-factor. Few plans, for example, carefully define everything that needs to be done in order achieve a particular objective and then add the caveat “unless something changes”. Something always changes.
Rather insidiously, though, what one might call critical change tends to occur at the boundaries; it is there that our strategies are constantly tested. This means that executives, managers and others higher up the hierarchy habitually fail to see it - partly because they are removed from the proverbial fray, but also because the adaptive behavior of their employees hides the difficulties that have been handled and the dilemmas that have been resolved.
(In technical terms, this is called Woods’ fluency law, and we will find reason to come back to both it and its creator in the weeks ahead. For the time being, it is sufficient to recognize that it proves that strategies, contrary to popular business book page wisdom, more often work because of the human factor than despite it.)
The predicaments that follow for organizations are manifold, but chief among them is that, as far as those not directly involved in the execution can tell, the strategy appears to be working. Managers are thus far less likely to approve requests for assistance, additional resources, and so on, even though it may be sorely needed. The implications for commercial organizations are significant. The consequences for emergency services, trauma units, and first responders, are potentially catastrophic.
The conventional strategic solution to the conundrum is one of robustness; we focus on one thing (the essence of strategy is sacrifice, etc.), attempt to master it, and enhance our capacity to withstand change to a point where its perpetual existence does not even matter. It is comforting, but no more than wishful thinking - history tells us unequivocally that it does not work. Disruption of our businesses, not by some imaginative startup but by the market itself, is not a question of if, but when.
The adaptive approach, meanwhile, is one that is increasingly being deployed by the foremost risk experts in the world: we build resilience. As it happens, that is also what strategists should do. And so, it will be the topical theme of the next few weeks.
Along the way, should I do my job properly, you will not only learn the ins and outs, but also be able to see how pretty much everything that I have written about up until this point fits together.
I am genuinely excited about it.
Until next time, have the loveliest of weekends.
Onwards and ever upwards,
JP
This newsletter continues below with additional content exclusive to premium subscribers. To unlock it, twice as much content, an e-book, and more, simply click the button below. If you would rather try the free version first, click here instead.