Who're you looking at?

I am a huge fan of the COVID-19 induced shift towards remote working.

Two of the main benefits for me have been:

Less time wasted commuting and travelling to meetings.
The ability to meet with anyone with equal ease regardless of physical location.

However, I also understand that remote working might not suit everyone.

Some people have complained of 'Zoom fatigue'. Others struggle with unsuitable home-based workspaces and inadequate child care arrangements. Still others simply miss the buzz and camaraderie of being in a physical office.

I argued in How do you solve a problem like remote working? that the opportunity we now face is not that everyone can work remotely. Not is it that we'll eventually be able to get everyone back into the office. Rather, it is to recognise that different people have different preferences. Different people are better suited to different environments. Some people are more productive when remote, others are more productive in the office. Once we recognise that, we can take steps to accommodate a broader, more flexible range of working styles and arrangements. And we will benefit from the diversity that affords.

We have a lot of experience with in-office work. As a result, the pros and cons are quite well understood.

But we understand remote work less well. We simply have less experience of it. And to best secure the benefits described above, we need to understand the pros and cons of remote working better.

I've heard many explanations of why some people struggle with remote working. One person told me it was because we couldn't smell and feel over video conference. I am not sure if they were mean smelling and touching a shared physical space, or each other (!) but either way, I am not convinced by that as an explanation.

I've also heard it said that some people find it stressful that they themselves appear on the screen when video conferencing. I am not sure why that should be stressful, but you can, in any event, disable that in most video conferencing systems.

A more likely explanation is that we miss out on some of the non-verbal cues when video conferencing.

I confess that at first, I dismissed this as an explanation. After all, I can see participants facial expressions and body language quite clearly.

But then I realised there is one element of body language I cannot see on a group video conference. I can's see who the other participants are looking at. I can see if they are looking at the camera or not. But I can't necessarily see if they are looking at the screen or not (the screen and camera may be physically separated). More importantly, I can't see which of the faces on the screen they are looking at.

Who people are looking at is very important. It shows where their intention is. It can show if you're paying attention to the speaker or ignoring them. People tend to look (physically) to the person with the greatest perceived authority. But we lose those cues in a group video conference.

On the positive side, this can help to break down traditional authority. To create a more egalitarian environment where people are valued more for their contribution than for their position. Meeting facilitators have been trying to achieve this for at least as long as I have been in the workplace! In that sense, remote working could be an even greater step forward than I had previously appreciated.

On the other hand, perhaps it is exactly that loss of positional power which has many people feeling uncomfortable with remote work in the first place!

What do you think? Please let me know in the comments.

Why should you do business strategy?

I think people ask this question because business strategy appears to be a discretionary activity. It appears to be something you can choose to do or not to do.

Most people recognise that a manufacturing business has to buy raw materials, turn them into finished products, and sell them to customers. If you stop doing those things, then your business has stopped. There are similar activities that would seem to be essential to other types of businesses, such as wholesale, retail or service businesses.

But strategy seems more discretionary*. If you stop doing strategy your business will continue to function. For a short time at least. Without strategy, your business may become less relevant over time. But it will take a while before the full effect is felt. And by then the damage is done. Your business is on the back foot. In a weakened state. Trying to catch up with a market where the competitors are stronger and better placed.

*Other functions like marketing or branding may suffer a similar challenge.

So when organisations are under pressure, it is often activities like strategy that are the first to suffer.

When COVID-19 struck, organisations had their hands full. Setting their teams up working from home. Rebuilding their supply and distribution chains. They were focused on surviving the immediate present. There was little time left to think about what they would need to do to succeed in a decreasingly certain future.

Crises force organisations to become reactive. But strategy is a fundamentally proactive process.

It's ironic that at the exact times when the status quo is most disrupted and the future is least certain, when strategy is most needed, that most organisations are least able and likely think strategically.

And so it is at times like this that it is even more important than ever to have a clear answer to the question: Why should you do business strategy?

I think there are two equally important answers to this question:

1. Strategy is about how to succeed in the future

Experience teaches us about how we succeeded in the past. But we know that the future will be different from the past. We may not know exactly what will change. We may not know how big the change will be. We may not know how quickly it will change. But we do know it will be different. Ironically, experience confirms this.

If we had a crystal ball - if we could see the future clearly - we would have less need for strategy. But we can't. Strategy helps us fill that gap.

Strategy is not about forecasting or predicting the future. That would be a fool's errand. But it does present toolsets and processes that can help us to imagine, anticipate and prepare for not just one future, but a range of possible futures.

These tools include things like macroscanning, game theory and scenario analysis.

See for example:

Wayne Gretzky, the legendary Canadian ice-hockey player once explained his success on the ice:

"I skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it has been."

Wayne Gretsky probably only needed to anticipate the next few seconds of play to achieve this. How far ahead should we look when doing business strategy?

That depends on three things:

How fast can we move?
How long do we need to be there (before we move again)?
How fast-changing and uncertain is the environment?

1. How fast can we move?

It takes about 20 minutes to stop an oil tanker travelling at normal speed. So an oil tanker captain has to be able to anticipate at least 20 minutes into the future. (Fortunately, they've gotten pretty good at that, for the most part.)

If it is going to take you 6 months to develop and launch a new product, you need to be able to anticipate demand and market conditions at least 6 months into the future. Similarly, if it is going to take you 2 years to bring a new factory on line, you need to be able to anticipate demand and market conditions at least 2 years into the future.

2. How long do we need to be there?

If it costs you lot of money and resources to get into a position, then you need to be able to stay there for long enough to earn a return on that investment before you have to move to the next position.

Note that the distance you need to look into the future is the sum of both 1 and 2. That is you need to see far enough ahead to allow for the time it will take you to get there plus the time you need to stay there.

3. How fast-changing and uncertain is the environment?

As the Oracle in The Matrix Revolutions says: "No one can see beyond a choice they don't understand."

Some environments are inherently more complex and fast-changing than others. Sometimes it is in the nature of one industry to be more complex and fast-changing than another. Other times it can be a point of crisis (like COVID-19) which introduces complexity and change across many industries for a period of time.

The tools that strategy gives us will help us to a point. But eventually, in complex and fast-changing environments our ability to anticipate into the distant future becomes more clouded.

Then we have to deal with less granular understanding. This requires us to pursue strategies with higher degrees of inherent optionality. Alternatively, we focus less far into the future and restrict ourselves to smaller but more regular moves. Such organisations invest heavily in methodologies like Agile to shorten delivery cycle times and costs. (See also Agility needs a strategy.)

I conclude this section with a quote from William Gibson:

"The future is already here - it's just not very evenly distributed."

The clues lie all around us if we just look at them in the right way.

2. Strategy is about making choices

At any point in time, there is an almost unlimited number of things an organisation could do. And some organisations seem intent on trying to do them all, and often all at the same time!

Sometimes this is because different people can't agree amongst themselves which ones they should and shouldn't do. This creates a problem of alignment - or misalignment. Other times it's because organisations somehow think they can grow faster by trying to be all things to all people (customers). This creates a problem of focus.

But, as Michael Porter points out (in several different ways):

"Strategy is about making choices, trade-offs; it's about deliberately choosing to be different."

"Strategy 101 is about choices: You can't be all things to all people."

"The company without a strategy is willing to try anything."

"The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do."

So strategy provides frameworks for helping organisations to make decisions in a holistic manner; to achieve both alignment and focus in an organisation's efforts.

I like to say that you don't really have a strategy until you've used it to say "no" to an idea which, on a standalone basis, makes good business sense.

As several commentators have noted, COVID-19 didn't fundamentally change things. Instead, what it did was to accelerate existing trends. Changes which many people had anticipated would happen over the next 3-5 years were compressed into the last 4 months. COVID-19 merely sped things up. It removed obstacles holding back trends which had been building for some time. It forced people to confront challenges they had previously been putting off.

As a result, those organisations which had been alive to and preparing for those trends are coping with the crisis much better than those that had not. Their strategic thinking over recent years has been vindicated and rewarded.

But the fact that what we might have anticipated over the next 3-5 years has now already happened does not mean we will enter a period of stability. Instead, some of the things that we might have anticipated over the next 5-10 years are now more likely to happen over the next 3-5 years.

So the need to think strategically - to anticipate and prepare for the future; to align decision making and execution around a clearly articulated plan - is as great as ever. Those organisations able to shift some of their attention from survival to strategy sooner will win markets from those who are not.

Which will you be?

How do you solve a problem like remote working?

The great experiment

A collateral consequence of COVID-19 has been the biggest experiment in remote working in human history.

The responses have been interesting. Some people have struggled with remote working and can't wait for things to return to 'normal'. That is, to return to their offices or other places of work. Others have thrived and are openly hoping they never have to.

Remote working before COVID-19

But the reality is less either/or than that.

The movement towards flexible working has been growing for some time. For example, in the UK in 2018, of the employed population:

7.2% reported working mainly from home.
30% reported having worked from home sometimes.

(Source: Office for National Statistics.)

And many people working from an office or from home spent varying amounts of time travelling to and visiting client or supplier sites.

The COVID-19 remote working experience

COVID-19 has brought this growing trend into sharp relief. Many more people have been forced to work from home. And at the same time, those trips to other sites have largely been suspended.

Many have struggled to make this transition. There are a number of reasons for this.

The transition was sudden and unplanned. People struggled to acquire, set up and learn to use the technology required for remote work.
Many processes are unsuitable for remote work. In general, organisations which had invested in digitising processes found the transition easier.
Parents with young children struggled to make the transition to remote working on top of the already difficult transition to remote schooling.
Not all homes are suitable for remote work. Conducting your video calls from a well-appointed study is one thing. Doing so from a kitchen table where your children are also trying to do their homework is quite another.
The change comes on top of a number of other stresses. For example, people may be concerned about the health of their friends and family. On top of their work lives, their social lives have also been disrupted.
Newly remote workers have complained of 'Zoom* fatigue'. That is, the sense that a day spent in video-conference meetings feels more tiring than a day in physical meetings. There are many theories about what could cause this. Some of them relate to the other issues described above rather than to the nature of the meetings themselves.

(* I have used Zoom throughout this post as a shorthand for all video-conference and other remote working solutions. I've done so based on its current popularity. The same could be said of Microsoft Teams, Skype, Google Hangouts, Slack, and a host of other similar solutions.)

Some of these struggles will be temporary. Children will return to school. Other stresses will subside. People will get used to the technology. Processes will improve.

And we know from the long-term remote workers that things like Zoom fatigue are neither permanent nor unavoidable.

We're not all the same after all

An important lesson we have learned from this process is that we are not all the same. Of course, we've always known this. But we've never experienced it as far as remote working is concerned at this scale.

We don't all respond the same way to the challenges and opportunities of remote work. If we adjust for the other impacts of COVID-19 we must conclude that whilst some people perform better in an office environment, others perform better in a more remote environment.

Those that perform better in a remote environment feel more productive, less stressed and more engaged.

But in the past, we've been too focussed on assuming everyone should have the same kind of office environment. We've not made allowances for these differences.

It is tempting to make simplistic assumptions. Such as that remote work suits introverts while in-office work suits extroverts. There may be some truth to that. But humans are complex. Some extroverts seem to be able to satisfy their need for social interaction over Zoom. Other introverts find Zoom to be a poor substitute for physical proximity. More research will be required.

Either way, more choice must be a good thing. Historically, the world has been stacked in favour of those better suited to in-office work. Those who perform better in remote working situations have been forced to:

Endure the personal cost of working in an in-office environment in which they were less productive,
or
Restrict themselves to the smaller number of careers and employers where remote work has been more widely accepted.

The COVID-19 remote work experiment opens up the possibility of a better world for work. One in which more people can offer their best regardless of their predisposition for in-office or remote working.

The best of both worlds

To exploit this choice we need to stop thinking of office work 'as it was' versus remote work 'as it was'. We need to build new work practices which combine and improve on the best of both.

For example, we've been able to roll out video conferencing to people working from their homes. We need to provide the same facilities for people returning to their offices at their desks. This may increase the bandwidth demands for office buildings. However, failing to do so will reinforce the historical artificial separations between in-office and remote workers.

The advantages of office environments are well understood. For example:

Serendipitous conversations around the proverbial water cooler.
Quick conversations as you pass each other in the corridor.
Greater awareness of peoples' dispositions. When it's OK to interrupt them and when it's better to wait.
The creation of social bonds with people even when you're not formally meeting with them.
Those shared cups of coffee or drinks after work.
Increased non-verbal communications through body language.
The role of the commute as a buffer zone between work and home life.

However, there are equally many benefits of remote working. For example:

Fewer interruptions.
Better work-life-balance as a result of less time spent commuting.
Less time and money wasted by travelling between meetings.
The ability to hire the best person for the job; not just the best person for the job who just happens to live near your office or is willing to relocate.
Greater opportunities for people with certain types of disabilities.
A reduced environmental footprint.

We should not simply trade off one set of advantages against the other. We should look for new and innovative practices which deliver different combinations of both. And we should think of remote and in-office work as existing on a continuum, rather than as alternatives.

A chance to fix some long-standing problems

In my experience, most organisation recognise that they have a 'toxic' meeting culture. That typically translates to some or all of:

Too many meetings.
Poorly structured or absent agendas.
Inadequate preparation.
Too many and/or the wrong attendees.
Poorly chaired meetings.
Meetings dominated by the most senior and/or loudest voices rather than those best able to contribute.
No clear outcomes.

'Board effectiveness reviews' have improved the meetings at the tops of some organisations. But these improvements have not permeated most organisations.

Simply moving existing bad meeting practices onto Zoom was doomed to failure. We need new approaches. Some interesting ideas have been put forward:

Silent meetings
Holacracy tactical and governance meetings
Tools like Lucid Meetings

We need to explore, adopt and adapt these to the new, more flexible organisations we create.

Reframing the question

Instead of asking

Should we return to the office or stay at home once restrictions are lifted?

we should rather be asking

What have we learned about our operations and working practices during this crisis?
How do we move forward in more effective and resilient ways?

The answers to these questions may be different for each organisation. But they will have far-reaching consequences.

I've heard many people say "I wouldn't want to be in commercial real estate right now". Will future organisations still want as many flagship head-offices in prestigious locations? Will those that do still want them to house as many of their workers?

We can start to imagine a world in which:

more people work from home some or all of the time;
those who want or need to go to an office work from shared regional hubs closer to where they live;
hot-desking becomes more prevalent as location becomes more fluid;
businesses with high-street presences revitalise those by letting them double up as remote work locations. (I understand banks are looking at this as an option for the flagging branch networks.)

Transportation and hospitality will likewise be impacted if business travel declines. This could be because there is less need for business travel and because the current pandemic has made people more afraid to do so. And a range of other businesses, such as inner-city sandwich shops, will be impacted.

But for most organisations, the opportunities for change will far outweigh the challenges in terms of:

improved effectiveness,
improved resilience,
reduced costs, and
increased diversity.

Opportunity amidst disaster

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a human tragedy. The cost in human lives and the impact on families and frontline workers have been immense.

But the second-order disruption creates an opportunity to build a better world. For how we work as well as in other spheres of life. Let's seize that opportunity with both hands.

Should business strategists have foreseen COVID-19?

The answer is: Yes.

But the aim of this article is not to lament what we should have done. Nor is it to crow about what we did do. Instead, it is to consider what we should do going forward.

One of the roles of strategy is to help businesses to be successful into the future. And we must do so for whatever the future brings. When something like COVID-19 comes along, we can't simply excuse ourselves for not having prepared for that future.

Now, I am not suggesting that any business strategist should have predicted exactly what happened.

For example:

that a virus would emerge from Wuhan in late 2019/early 2020,
that it would evolve into a pandemic and shut large parts of the world down,
that it would overburden most countries healthcare systems, and
that government would respond by locking their populations and economies down.

What could we have foreseen?

But there are many aspects of COVID-19 which were easy to foresee. These include, for example:

a pandemic,
a global economic downturn,
the failure of stretched and global supply chains, and
remote working.

These are things we've talked about in the past at length. We've even experienced these before. Perhaps not in our own lifetimes. And of course, each time they happen they're different.

We've had pandemics in the past. (You can click on the chart to the right to see it in more detail.) This 2015 Ted Talk by Bill Gates is one of many warnings of what future pandemics might be like. And we've long been aware of emerging strains on our health care systems posed by things like:

population ageing and
antibiotic-resistant diseases.

Likewise, we've had global economic downturns in the past. Arguable, as recently as 2008. Some argue that this one will be deeper and longer than any we've encountered to date. But even so. that possibility is not hard to imagine.

We've been worried about the impact of globalisation. Be that on the distribution of wealth or on the environment. We've also worried about possible disruptions to stretched global supply chains. Even if that concern was more fueled by concerns over a trade war between the US and China than by concerns of a pandemic.

And we've been debating the pros and cons of flexible and remote working for years. Until now, the status quo has conspired against them. However, in London, for example, the Olympics (see here), as well as numerous train strikes, have offered regular glimpses of the need for greater flexibility.

Our job as strategists is not to be experts in all of these fields. But we should be aware enough of the possibilities to help our organisations to understand and prepare for the specific consequences they might bring.

What should we do?

There are three steps to be prepared:

Be aware.

The first step is to be aware. If we're not watching those Ted Talks, studying that macro-analysis or reading those risk reports then we won't know what's out there.
Consider the impacts.

Then we need to consider the impacts these things might have on our businesses. Each business is unique. And the so the impacts on each business will be different.

Consider, for example, how different the impacts of COVID-19 have been on hotels, airlines, restaurants and the highstreet, contrasted against the impacts on firms like Amazon, Ocado and Zoom.
Integrate this analysis into our planning and execution processes.

If our planning processes amount to simple extrapolations of last year's budget into next year's budget. COVID-19 highlights the significant uncertainties we face. And this underpins the importance of integrating scenario-based analysis and planning. (See: Scenario Planning for Business Strategy).

Once the planning is complete, the results need to be built into your execution processes. Early warning systems need to be put in place. Responses need to be rehearsed. Capacity for rapid change needs to be built.

What are the challenges?

Typical short-comings I have encountered in trying to achieve this include:

Fatalism: Decision-makers conclude they can't predict or avoid crises. They call them 'black swans' and place them outside the bounds of normal logic. As a result, they can't or don't know how to prepare for them. Ultimately, they conclude that they're better off just ignoring the possibility.

It's true that you might not be able to guarantee that the Titanic would be unsinkable. But you could make sure she carried enough life-boats.
Theorism: Decision-makers engage in the analysis. But this fails to progress beyond being an "interesting exercise". Once it is complete, everyone goes back to their desks and carries on as before.

The only thing worse than facing a crisis with your head buried in the sand is facing it with your eyes wide open and in the full knowledge that you failed to prepare.
Optimism Bias: This is the expectations that whilst bad things do happen, they won't happen to me. The best time to repair your roof is when the sun is shining. But that's also the time when the need to do so seems less pressing.

When times are good, we fail to prepare for when they are not. And by the time they are not, it is often too late. Running cash reserves and building redundancy into your processes and supply chain seems like an unnecessary waste during the boom years.

We don't know how and when the COVID-19 crisis will end. So far, most businesses have been very reactive. Just trying to survive. But sooner or later* businesses need to start looking forward and preparing to succeed in the future. Whatever that may be.

*I would strongly suggest sooner.

10 tips for how to do business strategy when you're remote

Photo by www.ccPixs.com

When you start talking about strategy, many people immediately think of strategy offsites. Indeed, the strategy offsite is one of the cornerstones of many strategy processes. I've written about them before at 14 tips for running a strategy day that works. (You should consider everything in this post as being in addition to the tips in that post.)

But what do you do when you can't get everyone together? How do you do strategy when you're remote?

Here are some handy suggestions for remote strategy workshops and other ways of doing strategy remotely.

1. Use video, not just audio

Audio is fine for shorter and more transactional meetings. But for longer meetings and more complex, nuanced subjects, use video.

Video adds:

Non-verbal communications from body language and facial expressions.
Clearer cues as to who would like to speak and when they are finished. This helps to reduce people talking over each other. This is a common problem in audio-only conferences.
More engagement.

2. Get familiar with your meeting software

There are lots of choices. The current darling is Zoom. But there are also:

Skype and Teams (both from Microsoft),
Hangouts (from Google),
Bluejeans, and a host of others.

Decide which one you're going to use and make sure you're familiar with the procedures for:

inviting people to your meetings, and
running your meetings

Anticipate that not everyone will be familiar with whatever solution you've chosen. Issue clear instructions. As the convenor, understand your ability to do things like:

muting participants when they are not meant to be speaking,
taking (back control) of screen sharing privileges, etc.

3. Adapt your hosting style

There are many techniques for controlling a meeting when you're physically present. The easiest and most well known of these is simply for the presenter to stand up whilst everyone else is sitting down. You can use sound cues, like a bell, to signal the end of breakout conversations in larger groups.

These techniques don't work in online meetings.

The technology may provide some alternative aids:

Allowing the facilitator to mute other participants while one is speaking.
Allowing participants to type questions using the conference tool chat facility, etc.

But you will also need to change your style of meeting chairing. Be clear upfront about how you will handle questions and participation. Offer clear breaks where you clearly welcome and actively manage comments and questions.

4. Adapt your presentation materials

A virtual meeting still needs quality inputs. These could include analysis, plans or progress updates.

In a physical environment, you might have a speaker talking to some visual aids. The audience can see both the speaker and the visual aids at the same time.

In most virtual environments, can see either the speaker or the visual aids at any one time.

So, it is important that the visual aids or even more engaging than normal. And that the speaker uses tone of voice, inflection and timing even more dynamically.

You can make visual aids more engaging using animation and videos. Animation helps to ensure that slides are not too packed with information and overwhelming. They also help to pace the delivery more effectively.

Powerpoint is probably the most common tool for visual aids. It has a number of features for animation built into it. But perhaps this is the time to switch to something even more engaging, like Prezi. See also: Five presentation apps to replace PowerPoint.

5. Get interactive

In a physical workshop, you might use a flip-chart or whiteboard to keep things interactive. You can use these to record key ideas and next steps, etc. But you won't have ready access to these in a remote environment.

Fortunately, though, presentation materials no longer need to be passive.

For example, you can build feedback loops directly into your presentations using tools like Poll Everywhere or ParticiPoll. There are many more alternatives if Powerpoint integration does not matter to you.

These allow you to

present a question to your audience
display the results live in your presentation (all without leaving Powerpoint)
download the results after the meeting for further analysis.

You can use interactive presentation materials in conjunction with collaboration tools (see below).

6. Adapt your workshop process

Zoom allows you to break your meeting out into working groups. This is very similar to having breakout rooms in a physical meeting. The working groups can then have separate meetings with a meeting. These smaller groups can be more engaging and ensure everyone has a chance to contribute. This is particularly important as your overall group gets larger. The results can then be collated before everyone rejoins the main meeting in plenary.

You can do this without special the functionality in Zoom, though. This may be more complex. You may have to ask your participants to dial in and out of a number of different meetings.

All of this requires more preparation (see below). Are you clear on:

who will be in which groups,
how you will get them there, and
how you will get them back.

It might make sense to ensure you have a well-briefed facilitator in each breakout room.

7. Consider shorter sessions

Getting everyone physically together in the same place can be expensive. So it makes sense to pack in a full day of activities when you do. Sometimes it makes sense to pack in a few days of activities.

It also makes it tempting to include other topics not directly related to your strategy process.

But when you're meeting remotely, this cost impact is different.

Do you really need a whole day? Or would you be better off splitting the meeting into different sections and running those on different days?

Holding people's attention for an extended period of time is even more difficult in an online environment than it is when you're physically present. Its harder to eliminate distractions when everyone is in their own remote environment.

Perhaps that creates an opportunity for shorter sessions, allowing people to do additional work and reflect on progress in between them. In fact, you might find that most of the real work happens outside of your meetings. The meetings then serve as punctuation marks. They ensure everyone is working at the same pace and on the same page.

We recommend remote strategy sessions of about 2 hours.

If your audience is in different time-zones, consider:

What times of day they are all available at the same time.
What times of day are most productive for your participants.

8. Make use of remote working tools

There is seemingly no end of remote working tools. You can use them:

within a remote workshop (synchronously), or
outside of the workshop setting (either synchronously or asynchronously) for preparation and processing of outputs.

If using them within a workshop, I advise:

Consider having one person to facilitate the workshop and another person to operate the tool. It can be difficult to do both at the same time.
Ensure the tool operator is very familiar with the tool.
Consider whether you invite your participants to work with the tool themselves, or just watch the tool operator capturing the conversation. This may depend on how technical adept your participants are.

We can divide these tools into three categories:

document-based
whiteboard-based
purpose-build collaborative strategy tools.

Document-based collaboration tools

Google Docs paved the way with live multi-user document editing.

Microsoft Word followed suit with similar capabilities. However, you can only use them in conjunction with Microsoft Sharepoint. Powerpoint has similar features.

General-purpose collaboration whiteboards

Collaboration 'whiteboards' like Miro try to reproduce a more free-flowing whiteboard/post-it note session style online.

They're very flexible. But like document-based tools, they require you to come up with your own meeting process and output structure.

Purpose-built collaborative strategy tools

Then there are purpose-built collaborative strategy tools like StratNavApp.com. StratNavApp.com brings strategy development and execution best practice online. And its collaboration features make it ideal for remote work. Its post-it note style interface makes it simple and engaging to use.

(Disclosure: The author is the founder of StratNavApp.com.)

9. Increase preparation

Doing strategy remotely requires more preparation from the facilitator.

We generally have less experience of doing it.
We have to allow for all the additional complexities as outlined above.

But we should also demand more preparation from participants. It's even more important that participants should have pre-read and digested all materials before the meeting. Offer them an opportunity to ask clarifying questions about any pre-reading. It is much more difficult to discern if your participants are confused about the materials when you're working remotely. So try and sort out any confusion before the meeting starts.

10. Use a skilled facilitator

It's important enough to use a skilled facilitator for traditional face-to-face meetings. It's even more important when you're working remotely.

I suspect that doing strategy remotely is relatively new for all of us. I did some research on the web and found that very little has been written on the subject. I'd love to hear your experiences, suggestions and questions in the comments or by social media. And if you need some help, please don't hesitate to contact me.

Tactical versus strategic responses to Coronavirus

Photo by Polina Tankilevitch from Pexels

How we respond to Coronavirus/COVID-19 is vital. People are dying. It does not get more vital than that.

But most of our responses:

treatments,
quarantines and
lockdowns

are tactical.

Most of the advice to businesses is also tactical. See for example: Seven key actions business can take to mitigate the effects of COVID-19

They respond to the threat as it is now.

But what are the more strategic responses to Coronavirus? And is this the right time to be considering them?

To understand the strategic implications, we need to understand:

How might Coronavirus be indicative of a change in the nature of pandemics and the way they:

spread?
impact our world?

How is society changing? And what impact does that have on the questions above?

The nature of pandemics

I've seen several people argue that futurists failed to predict the pandemic. That this proves that that trying to understand the future is pointless. But this is not true.

Pandemics are not new. We are all familiar with:

The plague
The Spanish 'flu
Ebola
SARS and MERS, etc.

Bill Gates talks very coherently about the dangers of epidemics in this 2015 Ted Talk. In fact, the narrative around epidemics is so well established that it has even penetrated popular culture. The 2011 film Contagion is probably the best-known example of this.

What we should be asking is:

Are they becoming more or less frequent?
More or less severe?
Are we getting better at detecting and neutralising them?
Are we more or less susceptible to their impact?

These are the things we need to understand to respond strategically.

The infographic to the right (History of Pandemics) might provide some clues to the answer to those questions.

(You can click on the infographic to zoom in.)

Within a changing society

Urbanisation brings more people into closer proximity with each other. Increases in travel diversify that contact more rapidly. Population ageing means we have larger numbers of vulnerable people.

Technology makes it easier to detect and track outbreaks.

What will be the long-term impacts on society, communities and business?

Might we see a slowing or even reversal of urbanisation?

Strategic responses

Armed with the answers to these questions:

How can we make our organisations and supply changes more resilient?
How can we better protect not just our workers, but also our customers and suppliers?
Do we need to fundamentally assess our business models? For example, a conference organiser may be wholly reliant on bringing large numbers of people from many locations into a confined space. Should they consider diversifying into less fragile lines of business?
What are the other macro-trends that will make these things more or less difficult to do?

Supply Chain Management

Supply chain management is the first strategic issue which comes to mind for most when thinking about pandemics. Perhaps more so than ever because the Coronavirus originated in China, which supplies so many of our manufacturing inputs.

And so organisations should be asking:

Do we understand our whole supply chain?
Have we included both suppliers of components and suppliers of computer systems and other capabilities?
Do we have/need duplicate suppliers at every link in that chain?
Are those duplications resilient? Or if one is impacted is the other likely to be impacted in the same way?
Do we have good sense and respond systems? This will enable us to detect problems early and take appropriate actions quickly.

Remote working

One of the topics that have received quite a lot of publicity is remote working.

One of the many tactical responses to Coronavirus has been to send more workers to work from home.

This provides a good model for considering our tactical and strategic responses.

Tactically, we should ask how we can work remotely more effectively. See for example: Effective remote working tips for your business and Switching To Remote Work: 6 Things You MUST Get Right.

Strategically, many have begun to ask whether this will lead to a longer-term sustained increase in remote work. Once we've experienced the benefits of remote work, will we go back to the way things were before? Or, as Seth Godin writes, is this an opportunity for a more fundamental shift in the way we communicate?

Or perhaps once the crisis is over more powerful forces will push things back to how they were.

Some employees pay a premium to live closer to work. Will they pressure their colleagues to resume their arduous commutes?
Employers are heavily invested in office real estate. Will the continue to cram ever more people into ever smaller spaces?
Event organisers make their money by gathering large numbers of people together. Can they afford to stop?
People forced into remote work without adequate preparation may deliver poor results. Will this cause a backlash against remote work?
Is this outburst of enthusiasm for remote work a cry for help from the introverts among us? Will we revert to what some refer to as "the tyranny of the extroverts"?

If things don't revert to how they were before:

Can the providers of remote working technology keep up with the demand?
What will happen to all those people who support commuters? We will need to redeploy the train drivers, the staff canteen workers, and office cleaners.

B2B Marketing

B2B marketing has traditionally relied on tradeshows, conferences and site visits. These have all but dried up.

B2B companies are now turning to digital marketing in an attempt to compensate for this loss. But they are finding that they are far behind their B2C counterparts in this knowledge and capability.

Will they catch up? Will this be a boon for digital marketing agencies? What will be the long-term impact on the tradeshow and conference market be? Or will they struggle on for a while, reverting to business as usual as soon as they can?

Polution

Another topic which has received a lot of attention is the impact on pollution from economic shutdowns in China and Italy.

For example, this article in Forbes speculates that the shutdown in China saved more lives from pollution than it did from the virus.

Will this force a more fundamental rethink? Will it increase pressure for more environmentally friendly industry?

Economics versus humanity

I have seen a significant change in how people talk about economics versus humanity. In the past, people have tended towards polarised views. Either:

It's all about maximising shareholder value.
OR
We should put people first.

The current crisis has taught us that these are not alternatives. We don't get to choose one or the other. They are intertwined.

Government policy is forced to find a balance between wildly diverse priorities such as:

the capacity for critical care within hospitals,
the capacity for people to self-isolate,
a wide range of side effects from isolation, including:

businesses forced to shut down and possible going bankrupt
job losses
the longer-term physical and mental health consequences of being cooped up at home for long periods of time

who bears all of the costs of the above, who gets compensation, how, and what are the longer-term economic implications of and on all of the above.

Our understanding of these issues has become suddenly more holistic. As has our understanding of how intractable some of the answers are in our increasingly complex and interconnected world. Critically, we are becoming increasingly aware that too much intervention too soon can be as bad as too little intervention too late.

This is throwing the social contract between government, private enterprise and individuals into stark relief. And it is changing the way people are talking about it. What will be the long-term impacts?

Preparing for the next crisis

In a period of crisis it is right that the focus is on the tactical response. But, sooner or later, we will also have to move beyond the tactical analysis into the strategic analysis. It is important that we prepare to do so. Otherwise, we risk being no better prepared if and when the next crisis arises.

I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below or on social media.

What is strategy development and execution?

People argue about which is more important: strategy or execution. This is a false dichotomy. Both are important. In fact, each is worthless without the other.

In strategy, development and execution are opposite sides of the same coin.

Defining strategy development and strategy execution

Strategy development is the process of deciding and agreeing what an organisation will do, when, for whom, how, and why.

Strategy execution is the process of allocating resources, changing and aligning the organisation to deliver that strategy.

The problem with strategy development without execution

The problem with strategy development without execution is fairly obvious. Without execution, your strategy will never be more than an aspiration. Nothing will change.

Unfortunately, this is exactly what happens with many strategies. The leadership develops a new strategy and announces it to the rest of the organisation and then... not much happens.

A popular remedy for this problem is to try and involve more people in developing the strategy in the first place. Whilst this can help, it is usually not enough. Sometimes, it can make matter worse. People, be they staff, customers, suppliers or others, can be great sources of insight. But someone still has to process that insight. Strategy is about making choices and tradeoffs. It should not be an attempt to give everyone what they want.

Instead, strategy execution requires rigour and discipline:

Communicate clearly and unequivocally. It should include not only what the strategy is, but why it is that. It is important to distinguish between when you are asking people for their input, and when you are communicating a new strategy.
Establish accountabilities, track and report against carefully thought out milestones, scorecards and KPIs.
Allocate resources. More often than not, this means re-allocating from what is now relatively less important to what is now relatively more important. Change structures and reporting lines accordingly. Terminate or redirect programmes which no longer fit.

All of this can be very uncomfortable. Strategy involves change. Many people resist change - especially where it challenges their existing power base.

The problem with strategy execution without development

The problem with strategy execution without development is more subtle.

If you haven't developed a strategy, what will you execute? Unfortunately, this does not seem to stop many organisations. The result is 'busy work'. People pursue their pet projects just because they can. Or they deploy resources to do things just because they worry that those resources will be taken away from them if they're not seen to use them.

Even more subtle is the problem of strategies which are not executable.

Some so-called strategies are little more than grand slogans, woolly ambitions or jargon-packed corporate double-speak.

When asked to execute them, staff don't know what they're actually supposed to do. What should change?

And so they play it safe. They carry on doing what they were doing before. Or they use the opportunity to pursue their pet projects.

If they are smart they will rebadge their existing work or pet projects as being central to the execution of the strategy. And because no-one can say for sure what the strategy dictates instead, it can be hard to contradict them.

To overcome these problems:

Make sure that your strategy articulates clear choices. It is as important to say what the strategy is not as to say what it is. You haven't really done strategy until you've decided not to do something.
Avoid unqualified comparative statements. As a general rule, avoid words like "best", "leading" and "world-class".

For example, a company might say it wants to be "the worlds best widget manufacturer". That is a fine ambition. But what does it mean? What, specifically, constitutes best? How will this be achieved?
Describe as vividly as you can how the organisation will be different after executing the strategy than it was before.

Focus on tangibles - changes to processes, resources, products and services - rather than intangibles. Focus on what you will do differently, rather than on what you will become by doing it. (What you will become is also important. But you won't become it unless you do something. So focus on that.)

For example, a company might say its strategy is "to become the most trusted widget manufacturer". Again, that is a fine ambition. But what will the company do to achieve that?
Avoid sitting on the fence or delegating your strategy.

For example, a company might say its strategy is to be customer-centric or to listen to its customers and what they need. Those are both noble ambitions, but they are not strategy. Strategy describes the choices you make after having listened to your customers, understood their needs, and decided what you will and won't do about them.

The same goes for equivalent statements like "putting staff at the heart of our business".

Strategy development and execution are equally important parts of a holistic process. It is as important to develop strategies that are executable as it is to ensure that what is executed is the strategy.

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