Caught in false security
Posted: Wed Dec 18, 2024 4:50 am
The multi-year plan is the main pillar of the strategy for many organizations. But multi-year plans are static and that is a pitfall in an increasingly complex world, which demands flexibility. Working with a narrative strategy is a good way to provide direction for the long term, as well as to steer on impact in the short term. While maintaining flexibility.
Multi-year plans are essentially predetermined, cemented paths. With a multi-year plan, you assume that you have a grip on reality. And that you can extrapolate a path based on that and on the basis of available data and knowledge.
The reality is – and will be – much more complex. There are many more factors that influence the future than you can foresee at that one moment when you determine the multi-year plan. All kinds of cross-connections and contradictions ensure that a small change can have an impact on things that you cannot yet foresee.
A static multi-year plan assumes that the market will look – largely – the same in three or five years as it does now. This makes the chance of error high: one wrong estimate can cause your plan to deviate more and more from the changing reality over time.
The result is that it becomes difficult to implement the japan telegram data necessary changes. Or that available resources have to be divided among many more initiatives than initially thought. You are then trapped in a reactive way of working. You trade flexibility and speed for (apparent) short-term certainty and at the same time you do not look far enough into the future to make sustainable transformation possible.
Zoom Out, Zoom In
In a narrative strategy, the distant future plays a much more prominent role, while there is a translation into concrete action perspectives for the present. A narrative strategy ensures that two seemingly competing objectives can reinforce each other. Preparing for the future, but also achieving results in the short term.
It is this dichotomy that led John Hagel and John Seely Brown (both co-chairman of Deloitte Center for the Edge) to develop the “Zoom Out/Zoom In strategy” (Deloitte 2018). This methodology is based on the practices of successful technology companies and focuses on two points in time:
What will my industry look like in ten to twenty years and what is needed to be successful in this future? (Zoom Out)
What steps should we as an organization take in the next six to twelve months to initiate the development towards that distant future as quickly as possible? (Zoom In)
Zoom Out Zoom In.
Multi-year plans are essentially predetermined, cemented paths. With a multi-year plan, you assume that you have a grip on reality. And that you can extrapolate a path based on that and on the basis of available data and knowledge.
The reality is – and will be – much more complex. There are many more factors that influence the future than you can foresee at that one moment when you determine the multi-year plan. All kinds of cross-connections and contradictions ensure that a small change can have an impact on things that you cannot yet foresee.
A static multi-year plan assumes that the market will look – largely – the same in three or five years as it does now. This makes the chance of error high: one wrong estimate can cause your plan to deviate more and more from the changing reality over time.
The result is that it becomes difficult to implement the japan telegram data necessary changes. Or that available resources have to be divided among many more initiatives than initially thought. You are then trapped in a reactive way of working. You trade flexibility and speed for (apparent) short-term certainty and at the same time you do not look far enough into the future to make sustainable transformation possible.
Zoom Out, Zoom In
In a narrative strategy, the distant future plays a much more prominent role, while there is a translation into concrete action perspectives for the present. A narrative strategy ensures that two seemingly competing objectives can reinforce each other. Preparing for the future, but also achieving results in the short term.
It is this dichotomy that led John Hagel and John Seely Brown (both co-chairman of Deloitte Center for the Edge) to develop the “Zoom Out/Zoom In strategy” (Deloitte 2018). This methodology is based on the practices of successful technology companies and focuses on two points in time:
What will my industry look like in ten to twenty years and what is needed to be successful in this future? (Zoom Out)
What steps should we as an organization take in the next six to twelve months to initiate the development towards that distant future as quickly as possible? (Zoom In)
Zoom Out Zoom In.