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Are you ready for the future? It’s here.

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Are we ready for the future? Maybe we better be. Our Third Thursday series continues to be a source of great conversation and food for thought long after. Last week (after a light-hearted word cloud exercise on the promised inventions of the future that still aren’t here!), we welcomed futurist Rebecca Ryan to the discussion. We often find ourselves in conversations with people or groups that have worked with Rebecca or heard her and are hoping that Strategic Doing would be a tool to use in conjunction with her Strategic Foresight approach. The two are very complementary – Rebecca’s work focuses on helping groups closely study signals in the environment that are clues to what might be coming, so that they can align their efforts to a future they want – to take the initiative to shape the future rather then just letting it happen. As that alignment work helps their desired future come into better focus, Strategic Doing can provide an ongoing framework for implementation. The “hinge point” that draws these together is the framing question – the appreciative query that helps groups see what is possible and move toward it. Rebecca (a former professional basketball player) encouraged us to ask bigger, better questions – while acknowledging that the past year has been tremendously difficult, it’s time to “tie our shoes and get back on the court.” In other words, whether we’re ready for the future or not, it’s ready for us.

As is often the case, we’ve turned part of the conversation into a podcast episode with the Agile Strategy Lab. Take a listen. There was much more to our time together, and we’ll be creating a second episode in the coming weeks.

Ecosystem development: what’s the magic ingredient?

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Do you know the magic ingredient for healthy ecosystem development?

As Strategic Doing efforts grow, they leave the realm of individual projects and the work begins to take on the shape of a ecosystem – an interconnected set of people, organizations, policies, sometimes even buildings – all aiming at a transformed organization, community or region. The Strategic Doing approach still serves as the operating system for transformation, but things begin to look a bit different. For starters – where are the edges of that ecosystem? Those boundaries seem very blurry, and might extend far away geographically.

Like the biological systems on which the concept is based, ecosystems need all kinds of assets for health. In nature, those might be sunlight, water sources, soil nutrients, and a balance of species all along the food chain. What will your ecosystem need? Some needs may be obvious, others will not emerge until you’ve been working together for a while. But to return to the nature example, there’s one critical component missing: oxygen. Unless you work on space exploration with NASA, it probably escaped your notice.

Is there an equivalent for our ecosystem work? Yes, and it can be equally invisible. Yet, when ecosystem efforts fail, its absence is probably a key factor. It’s “culture” – that set of beliefs, attitudes, and customs that distinguish an organization or a community/region. Some organizational or regional cultures set us up for success, while others make for hard sledding. Fortunately, Strategic Doing is a set of skills and ways of working together that can either accelerate efforts in a welcoming culture – or can begin to re-set culture so that the ecosystem work can make progress.

In this week’s podcast episode, Andy Stoll from the Kauffman Foundation talks about entrepreneurial ecosystem development, the role that culture plays, and the value of Strategic Doing in building strong entrepreneurial ecosystems. AS we begin to look past the pandemic and contemplate re-building ecosystems, a healthy culture of collaboration can help us tackle the task.

Supporting small businesses to move forward

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At last, it’s time for moving forward. 2020 is almost – mercifully – behind us. The challenges of this year will certainly not disappear at the stroke of midnight, but it does provide the opportunity to think about new directions. One of the Strategic Doing maxims is “don’t fix old systems; design what’s next.” That advice has never felt more timely – under the weight of the pandemic, the failure of old systems has revealed a tremendously vulnerable set of communities, institutions, and even nations. So what exactly is next? As we begin to look toward 2021, one imperative is crystal clear: supporting small businesses as we emerge from COVID-world, and nurturing new enterprises moving forward.

The number of businesses lost in the pandemic is staggering, and recovery will not be as simple as unlocking the doors of the shop, restaurant or office. Indeed, there are undoubtedly many more casualties to come before local economies come back to full operation.

The Agile Strategy Lab podcast focused on this topic last week in a conversation with New Mexico State University’s Lauren Goldstein. Lauren’s been involved with a number of groups supporting small businesses and entrepreneurs and has important lessons to share. Of particular note, her perspective is shaped by work in a quite diverse array of settings. Her first Strategic Doing efforts were with ICorps, a national effort funded by the National Science Foundatiom. ICorps targets university-developed innovation, helping teams that may include faculty and graduate students to move toward commercialization. While important, those kinds of ventures aren’t the bread-and-butter of small business startups in most communities. Here too, Lauren’s work provided insight –  she used the discipline in places very different from the university settings, including rural and Native American communities. As we get ready for 2021, we’re eager to explore the use of Strategic Doing to spur entrepreneurship in all kinds of places.

The role of vision in Strategic Doing

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What is the role of “vision” in Strategic Doing? If you’ve read the book, or been to one of our trainings, you might be surprised that we’re even writing a post about this – we try to make the case that vision statements, at least, usually consume an inordinate amount of time for a group to construct, with little to no tangible payoff (and there’s at least one person out there that agrees with us). We stand by that statement – even though we have regular conversations with groups who are having a hard time shedding this habit. It’s a barrier that many Strategic Do-ers confront when they begin to work with a group. Old habits die hard – even when they’ve shown limited utility over a long period. In fact, they often camouflage the fact that there isn’t really much “doing” happening at all – the vision statement seems like a tangible deliverable from a group.

If you’re one of those people – or someone who’s passionate about vision as a building block of strategy – this week’s episode on the Agile Strategy Lab podcast is for you. John Morley (pictured at left) made a guest appearance at one of our first Third Thursdays. Here he makes the case for vision in a group’s strategic work. As you’ll hear from the conversation I have with John, there are some caveats, or at least some refinements to the proposition that vision is important. As is so often the case in Strategic Doing, the real answer to the question “What is the role of vision?” is “it depends.” John is well-positioned to explore the idea, from the vantage point of someone who’s worked in many different contexts – across continents, sectors, and developmental stages of organizations.

As you’ll hear, one critical caveat is that effective visions come out of conversations in which there is trust – and about that idea there should be no debate. Trust is the bedrock of Strategic Doing, and it’s the reason the very first rule of the discipline is to “create a safe space for open, focused conversation.”

Give the conversation a listen – and pass it along to colleagues who might be stuck in the visioning stage of their work.

Podcasts for Economic and Community Developers

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A few weeks ago, I spent some time with Dennis Fraise of Develop This!, a podcast for economic and community developers.

In this first podcast, I start by providing some background on the development of the Agile Strategy Lab at Purdue.

The Lab is the place at Purdue where people learn the skills to address complex challenges through collaboration. Collaboration is more than just a word. We’ve learned that collaboration is a complex process that requires a portfolio of ten skills that leaders can learn and practice. As they master these skills, they improve their productivity.

Next I briefly explore the history of strategic planning and why it is inadequate to today’s challenges. Designed for hierarchical organizations, strategic planning protocols do not work well when we are in situations where no one can ell anyone else what to do. Execution falls apart.

We developed Strategic Doing to address the challenges of doing complex work within open, loosely connected networks. The podcast gives you a background of how Strategic Doing emerged.

I explain how Oklahoma City, rural communities across Kentucky, and the Charleston Digital Corridor in Charleston, SC each played pivotal roles in the development of this new approach to strategy for open networks.

In addition to giving you background on Strategic Doing, I explain how to integrate this new discipline into strategic planning and to develop strategic action plans.

Finally, we explore the issue of culture in communities and how to build the trusted networks you need to move an economy forward.

To learn more about Strategic Doing training, check out a training session near you. Visit the web site of the Strategic Doing Institute here.

 “I’ve been investigating how organizations’ working environments influence a group’s ability to achieve their goals for two decades. In my consulting and research I’ve seen organizations where employees can excel and contribute at their very highest levels – and others in which fear rules the workplace. This book provides insight into the practices and behaviors that help build high-performing groups. Readable and practical guidance for every organization and team.”

Amy C. Edmondson, Harvard Business School; Author, The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth

In this second podcast, we explore the background to our new book, Strategic Doing: Ten Skills for Agile Leadership. Strategy emerges from conversations. Designing and guiding these conversations requires ten skills spread across a cognitively diverse team.

You can learn more about the book, a #1 New Release in 6 Amazon categories, here.

“Don’t even bother reading all those other books on leadership and strategy. I know because I’ve written a number of them. Strategic Doing is THE source to understand how leadership and strategy are changing in this age of speed and complexity. What makes this book more important are the ten practical skills that you and your colleagues can learn to become masterful at leading in a disruptive age.”

Jay Conger, Chaired Professor of Leadership Studies at Claremont McKenna College and author of The High Potentials Advantage