A slide pack featuring five strategic pillars has become a trope in the enterprise. It should be called out for what it is - bad practice that does harm. Here's why.
Hi Daniel, I'm not sure that I agree with this post.
"Strategic Pillars" group related concepts together. They may or may not be the same thing as categories.
You say: "The assumption is that the pillars provide adequate specificity for people to be aligned in a direction." I'm not sure on this. The strategic pillars provide a high level direction. They are not meant to provide specificity. Alignment is complex. In the sense that you and I can be highly aligned on the need for good strategy, also aligned on what makes for good strategy but quite unaligned on how to achieve a good strategy. Direction and alignment are not the same thing.
However, I do completely agree that having high level pillars, themes or concepts is not strategy. I don't think it does harm but it is important to differentiate between a high level direction or strategic pillar and the actual job of doing strategy.
Where I think you are trying to go with this post is an illustration of strategy through a network of causal loops. So I agree with where you are going with this post but I think i disagree with your starting position. In the sense that it is not the strategic pillars that is the problem, but it is what goes around them.
That's true - strategic pillars in theory could be treated as themes and it stops there.
In practice, in my experience it rarely does and there's little awareness of the problems doing so introduces, so rarely anyone monitoring to detect and prevent this issue.
Its a good call out that I could make this distinction - making a note of this for the next edit.
In my experience you can flatten and summarise goals as almost effectively as you use 'pillars' and by doing so acknowledge that there is a network of means that will support these ends.
I’m interested in your experience of what “rarely stops there”? I’m a bit of a strategy nerd and am sceptical of most activities that get labelled as strategy. I tend towards the “strategy as coherent set of choices” doctrine and the major thing missing with pillars or themes is that they don’t clearly spell out these choices.
One could specify a theme or pillar around working with value-aligned customers. This theme clearly makes a choice (don’t work with customers who don’t share your values) and it invokes a set of related actions (which gets us towards strategy). It is categorical but I don’t see that as bad.
Like many things is the problem in the use of the metaphor, not the metaphor itself?
The same interpretation of strategy here :) A central theme of my publication is around persistent models that aid strategy deployment.
What I have observed is siloes forming around the theme, and essential contributions to progress may be delayed.
The themes get imported as projects or programmes etc..
There is wasted effort debating under which pillar something lives etc.
Of course this issue goes hand in hand with strategy not being as continuous as it should with learning to validate or invalidate hypotheses that underpin the selected choices. So it can be hard to unpick which issue is driving which behavior.
The conclusion relating to the effects of categorical pillars is from talking to people to understand their rationale.
Worth a longer chat. Valid questions I could support better maybe with more anecdotal examples from my career.
Hi Daniel, I'm not sure that I agree with this post.
"Strategic Pillars" group related concepts together. They may or may not be the same thing as categories.
You say: "The assumption is that the pillars provide adequate specificity for people to be aligned in a direction." I'm not sure on this. The strategic pillars provide a high level direction. They are not meant to provide specificity. Alignment is complex. In the sense that you and I can be highly aligned on the need for good strategy, also aligned on what makes for good strategy but quite unaligned on how to achieve a good strategy. Direction and alignment are not the same thing.
However, I do completely agree that having high level pillars, themes or concepts is not strategy. I don't think it does harm but it is important to differentiate between a high level direction or strategic pillar and the actual job of doing strategy.
Where I think you are trying to go with this post is an illustration of strategy through a network of causal loops. So I agree with where you are going with this post but I think i disagree with your starting position. In the sense that it is not the strategic pillars that is the problem, but it is what goes around them.
That's true - strategic pillars in theory could be treated as themes and it stops there.
In practice, in my experience it rarely does and there's little awareness of the problems doing so introduces, so rarely anyone monitoring to detect and prevent this issue.
Its a good call out that I could make this distinction - making a note of this for the next edit.
In my experience you can flatten and summarise goals as almost effectively as you use 'pillars' and by doing so acknowledge that there is a network of means that will support these ends.
I’m interested in your experience of what “rarely stops there”? I’m a bit of a strategy nerd and am sceptical of most activities that get labelled as strategy. I tend towards the “strategy as coherent set of choices” doctrine and the major thing missing with pillars or themes is that they don’t clearly spell out these choices.
One could specify a theme or pillar around working with value-aligned customers. This theme clearly makes a choice (don’t work with customers who don’t share your values) and it invokes a set of related actions (which gets us towards strategy). It is categorical but I don’t see that as bad.
Like many things is the problem in the use of the metaphor, not the metaphor itself?
The same interpretation of strategy here :) A central theme of my publication is around persistent models that aid strategy deployment.
What I have observed is siloes forming around the theme, and essential contributions to progress may be delayed.
The themes get imported as projects or programmes etc..
There is wasted effort debating under which pillar something lives etc.
Of course this issue goes hand in hand with strategy not being as continuous as it should with learning to validate or invalidate hypotheses that underpin the selected choices. So it can be hard to unpick which issue is driving which behavior.
The conclusion relating to the effects of categorical pillars is from talking to people to understand their rationale.
Worth a longer chat. Valid questions I could support better maybe with more anecdotal examples from my career.