Estratégia, mapas errados e self-fulfilling prophecies

Devo estar a abusar da benevolência da editora, no entanto, o conteúdo da mensagem é tão importante que não resisto a transcrever mais uma selecção de textos do livro de Karl Weick "Making Sense of the Organization", desta vez sobre o conceito de estratégia:

“I can best show what I think strategy is by describing an incident that happened during military maneuvers in Switzerland. The young lieutenant of a small Hungarian detachment in the Alps sent a reconnaissance unit into the icy wilderness. It began to snow immediately, snowed for two days, and the unit did not return. The lieutenant suffered, fearing that he had dispatched his own people to death. But the third day the unit came back. Where had they been? How had they made their way? Yes, they said, we considered ourselves lost and waited for the end. And then one of us found a map in his pocket. That calmed us down. We pitched camp, lasted out the snowstorm, and then with the map we discovered our bearings. And here we are. The lieutenant borrowed this remarkable map and had a good look at it. He discovered to his astonishment that it was not a map of the Alps, but a map of the Pyrenees.”

(…)

“Strategic plans are a lot like maps. They animate people and they orient people. Once people begin to act, they generate tangible outcomes in some context, and this helps them discover what is occurring, what needs to be explained, and what should be done next. Managers keep forgetting that it is what they do, not what they plan that explains their success. They keep giving credit to the wrong thing – namely, the plan – and having made this error, they then spend more time planning and less time acting. They are astonished when more planning improves nothing.”

(…)

“First, the troops found a specific map that was relevant to their problem.”

(…)

“Second, the troops had a purpose – that is, they wanted to go back to their base camp – and it was in the context of this purpose that the map took on meaning as a means to get them back. These conditions, however, do not negate the basic theme that meaning lies in the path of the action.”

(…)

“When I described the incident of using a map of the Pyrenees to find a way out of the Alps to Bob Engel, the executive vice president and treasurer of Morgan Guaranty, he said, “Now, that story would have been really neat if the leader out with the lost troops had known it was the wrong map and still been able to lead them back.”
What is interesting about Engel’s twist to the story is that he has described the basic situation that most leaders face. Followers are often lost and even the leader is not sure where to go. All the leader knows is that the plan or the map he has in front of him is not sufficient by itself to get them out. What he has to do, when faced with this situation, is instill some confidence in people, get them moving in some general direction, and be sure they look closely at what actually happens, so that they learn where they were and get some better idea of where they are and where they want to be.
If you get people moving, thinking clearly, and watching closely, events often become more meaningful."

(…)

“The generic process involved is that meaning is produced because the leader treats a vague map or plan as if it had some meaning, even though he knows full well that the real meaning will come only when people respond to the map and do something. The secret of leading with a bad map is to create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Having predicted that the group will find its way out, the leader creates the combination of optimism and action that allows people to turn their confusion into meaning and find their way home.”

Daí a importância da comunicação, da comunhão de interpretações, do exemplo.