Conversando sobre estratégia

Há dias sublinhei aqui esta frase:

"Organizations exist largely in the mind, and their existence takes the form of cognitive maps. Thus, what ties an organization together is what ties thoughts together."
Karl Weick in "Making Sense of the Organization"

Nesta onda de preocupação com a comunicação e com a partilha, com a comunhão das interpretações, dentro de uma organização encontrei este manifesto dos irmãos Heath, onde se pode ler:

"A strategy comes to life through its ability to influence thousands of decisions, both big and small, made by employees throughout an organization. A strategy is, at its core, a guide to behavior. A good strategy drives actions that differentiate the company and produce financial success. A bad strategy drives actions that lead to a less competitive, less differentiated position.

A lot of strategies, though, are simply inert. Whether they are good or bad is impossible to determine, because they do not drive action. They may exist in pristine form in a PowerPoint document, or in a “strategic planning” binder, or in speeches made by top executives.
But if they don’t manifest themselves in action, they are inert, irrelevant. They’re academic."

Os autores chamam a atenção para 3 práticas a seguir, para comunicar uma estratégia:

"1. Be concrete. The beauty of concrete language—language about people and actions and things that can be discovered via the senses—is that everyone understands it in a similar way." Por isso é que a Electrolux nomeou os seus retratos-tipo de clientes-alvo como Monica, Maria, Catarina ou Ana.

"2. Say something unexpected. If a strategy is common sense, leaders shouldn’t have to spend much time or energy communicating it. If, on the other hand, there are elements of the strategy that aren’t common sense—that aren’t happening naturally and intuitively—then it’s important to focus on those elements. And, in communicating “uncommon sense,” don’t hedge. Don’t make uncommon sense sound like common sense. BP said “No dry holes,” not “minimize our risk of unsuccessful explorations.” The two statements have similar intent, but the first is
likely to stick and the second is not." Ou, como Guy Kawasaki defende, um mantra é melhor do que uma missão. Aqui, no "mission statement generator", Dilbert cozinha missões estéreis, ôcas e cinismo-friendly.

"3. Tell stories. A good story is a substitute for, not garnish for, an abstract strategy statement. Remember, you can reconstruct the moral from the story, but you can’t reconstruct the story from the moral... If there are no stories that symbolize a strategy well, that is a warning flag about the strategy—it may not be sufficiently clear or actionable to manifest itself in the actions of specific individuals. Otherwise, there’d be stories." Os contos da caserna são o teste último, até que ponto as chefias estão à altura dos desafios da estratégia?