Strategy vs clarity

Strategy vs clarity is not a real thing, let’s just get that out there, but I think looking at these concepts next to each other reveals some interesting things.

What we know–from looking at business success and failure over the short and long term and from scientific research–is that singular strategy tends to fail in times of uncertainty and instability. And on the flip side, we know that investing in strategieS (plural) tends to allow a business to succeed through instability and uncertainty.

The problem with strategies plural is that once you zoom in from the company-wide view to look at how strategies turn into action, you see the individuals inside the company—the people responsible for executing strategy. And very often, in the case of multi-strategy investments, these people are lost. At best they’re confused about what it is they’re supposed to be doing and at worst they’re disengaged because they see their efforts as futile.

Over the last 20+ years I’ve been inside many different types, sizes, and industries of companies. And this struggle for clarity–what is my role? what is the company doing? why are we doing this?–is a loud and recurring theme I’ve seen, and I think most companies are over-optimizing toward either strategy or clarity.

Over-optimizing for strategy looks like rewarding your leaders for setting vision and defining plans that become part of those multi-investment strategies that the company needs in order to succeed. Success as an individual becomes influencing up and out, paired often with an assumption that leaders below a certain point in the hierarchy will shift gears from this kind of work over into translation work: helping their teams translate what’s happening around them into action for their specific area. Unfortunately for everyone, the only clarity that tends to make it down the hierarchy is that influencing up and out is what success looks like.

On the other end, over-optimizing for clarity isn’t any better. This looks like sharing out all the information there is, being an open company that allows people to see and find almost anything that came from inside the company. The assumption here being that people will be proactive or engaged and they’ll find what they need in order to be effective. Unfortunately when everyone is left to create their own clarity, what emerges is the opposite. In my experience, this looks like a company full of people who are either in holy war fighting for their own version of clarity, or people who have given up. Now over-optimizing for clarity might work at a tiny company but from my experience, and also from the rudimentary basics of dynamic equilibrium, it fails at scale.

Now I am speaking in broad strokes, and I’m over-generalizing. Like I said, strategy vs clarity is not a real thing. But again, it reveals something interesting. I think on both sides this is ultimately a failure of leadership.

Look, it feels good to treat people like smart, motivated adults. I get the desire to be open and transparent, and to give people an unfiltered world that can empower them to do brilliant things that may have never even occurred to leadership. But companies are groups of people, and groups of people need unifying strategies in order to direct their efforts into a shared direction.

And then on the flip side, it feels good to get caught up in strategy. I get the desire to pour your enthusiasm into planning, envisioning, feeling powerful and like you’re part of something bigger than yourself. The thing is, everyone wants to feel that way. Companies aren’t strategies, they’re people, and people want clarity.

I think it’s a leader’s job, at every level, to do two things simultaneously. 1. be part of shaping the local strategy for your area while contributing to the big picture strategies for the company, and 2. to translate between strategies, strategy, and action. This is very difficult, and I’m guessing very few of us emerge into the work world knowing how to do it, but I do think there’s a trick to making it easier.

People want to feel like they are part of a larger plan and that their efforts make a difference. In times of chaos, instability, and rapid change–in other words, times that demand strategies plural–organizations will struggle to succeed if they can’t translate from strategies to strategy to action. The trick to balancing clarity and strategy, the trick that makes leadership through change easier, is to remember to think about people. Thanks for listening.