By Janus Boye
Morten Elvang presenting to one of our Toronto groups on how the context for strategy is changing
What does it take to build and lead organisations where people want to work?
Morten Elvang is an expert on strategy execution and has toured many of our peer groups in the past months talking about strategy execution and getting big things done.
In a recent members' call, he told us more about how work is changing and its implications for all enterprises. It was an interactive session, where we talked about the need for more openness, strategy in a steering role, flexible organisations and more.
Morten started asking the participants how they see work changing, so let’s see what they answered.
What is going on at work and how can we deal with it?
Morten used Menti in the beginning of the call to ask participants how they see what is going on at work right now. This is what came out of it.
AI, change, crisis and politics came out as popular keywords. As Morten said, these are the feelings and thoughts of people in a hectic work-life where the pace is only picking up.
In finding out what to do about it, strategy has a major role to play. This is Morten’s refreshing take:
“The increasing rate of change begs an open and emergent approach.”
In brief: Open meaning not just the usual top-down strategy approach, and emergent referring to strategy being an interactive process. Almost like a project plan that constantly requires adjustment, or an ongoing conversation on strategy. More on that later.
Like a good chef, Morten had already prepared a slide (see below) using ingredients from the participants in the call. His three main points were:
Endless hours for preparation and meetings
Work that could be avoided or digitised
New demands piling up
An AI generated dramatic illustration with a King Komg like creature tearing through a burning workplace
Sounds familiar? We then turned to the element of surprise, another seemingly constant these days.
What do surprises look like?
As you know, not all change is planned. Morten showed a slide with three kinds of surprises.
The three kind of surprises we encounter at work. The green rabbit is from the work by Christian Vandsø Andersen (read more on his book Magic at Work)
Talking about surprises, Morten mentioned that while a sudden shift (similar to an unforecasted sudden weather change) is generally hard to ignore and tricky to prepare for. Bubbles can be comfortable to ignore and last longer than they should.
Strokes of serendipity are unexpected opportunities that can be easily ignored due to busyness, but once recognized, they become actionable options.
So, what can you do about it?
Conversations to stay on strategy
“Embracing change and strategic thinking is essential for success and resilience” sounds like something a management consultant would say. Morten didn’t say it with those words, but first reminded us how new insight emerges on top of what we know. He emphasised that once an idea is known, it becomes an option to explore, and the ability to handle surprises.
“Strategy is not a long planning document; it is a set of interrelated and powerful choices that positions the organisation to win.” — Roger Martin (one of the best thinkers on strategy according to Morten Elvang)
As mentioned earlier, Morten firmly believes in engaging in strategic conversations with colleagues to adapt to changing circumstances. Based on his recent tour of peer group meetings, he shared three good questions to get you talking about strategy:
What’s the real job of strategy? Strategy is the key to liberation and building an adaptable organisation! Strategy should answer two key questions: where do we want to play, and how do we plan to win? And finally, he had this memorable one-liner: “To evaluate a strategy, ask if it solves the biggest problem“
What is our LEGO at work? Or, what’s the templates and reusable elements that enable us to get things done? Manage this at a speed you can afford to lose! This is also one of the takeaways from the recent book How big things gets done by Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner.
What about surprises? Absorbing and prospering from surprises is the key to impact and resilience. For more on this, Morten recommended the book Dreams and Details by Jim Hagemann Snabe and Mikkel Trolle.
In his slides (PDF), you’ll find more on this, including a case study (Walmart vs. Amazon). Morten said that we need to deal with surprises as they happen and used a small illustration on how implied strategy is your best bet. In other words: It’s not just the strategy printed on the wall that matters. What is likely more important is the suggested but not directly expressed strategy!
You’ll probably find that engaging colleagues in discussing strategy will reveal varying levels of both understanding and agreement. Morten shared numbers saying that less than one in ten colleagues know their strategy, and less than one in five companies has a “useful” strategy.
Have a good conversation on strategy!
Learn more about how strategy is changing and how it impacts work
Morten Elvang brought this slide to the Boye Aarhus 16 conference
Morten has shared generously with our community, not just in his recent tour of group meetings, but also at HE Connect 24 in Leeds and since 2016 at our annual international conference in Aarhus. Back in 2016, he came with game-changing beliefs and also shared the notable slide on Prison 3.0 and the concept of the black market of common sense.
You can meet Morten in person at the Boye Aarhus 24 conference in November. You can also dive into these two blogs posts featuring more of his thinking:
Why open strategy matters (2023)
Finally, you can also download the slides (PDF) or lean back and enjoy the entire recording below.