Category: Purpose

Eisenhower is often quoted as saying “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything”. I do not disagree, but as a motto, it is a little confusing and could do with some clarification. Is planning enough? A plan is really just steps to take in order to put an idea into action. Many organisations have planned and put ideas into action to find that the plan failed because it didn’t follow a set of principles.

“But we planned everything”

I mentioned in a previous post about creating a principled organisation that M&S was taking some criticism for the well-intentioned LGBT sandwich, with many members of the public pointing out that they also opened stores over the last 4 years in Saudi Arabia. It seems that they attempted to show they held certain values whilst also pursuing a strategy that was not coherent with that set of values. They are not the only organisation to fall foul of this. Burger King also did a similar thing when attempting to use Mental Health Awareness week to show they cared for their customer’s mental health which caused many criticisms. Least of all the criticisms was surrounding the way they pay their staff and whether that would be coherent with a caring for people’s mental health.

So how do we create plans that are in line with the values we want ourselves or our organisations to portray?

Forgoing the planning stage

A friend of mine was telling a brief story of his work life over the previous 15 years. It involved him working and living across various countries and creating various communities. At the end of the story he said:

The older I get, the more I learn, the more I realise I know nothing about anything, that plans are great, but rarely come true, and keeping space for the unexpected usually yields far better outcomes.

Now I’m not seriously suggesting we don’t go through the planning stage as planning encompasses all the stages of achieving goals, turning ideas into action and making events happen. What I do think is missing is that most of us don’t test our plans as we have nothing to test them against. If M&S had a set of values in place they could use those to create some guiding principles to create strategies from. The principles will keep those strategies in-line with the organisation values and offer something to test ideas against before they become plans.

What is the difference between a strategy and a plan

Put simply a strategy is the why and plans are the how. So if we are clear about why we are doing something and we can test that against some guiding principles to keep the strategy in line with our values. When we come to ideas of how to achieve our strategy we can again test each idea against the strategy and the guiding principles and reject the ideas that do not fit.

This all illustrates how important it is for every organisation to have a set of values and some simple guiding principles set out clearly and in as simple terms as possible. The reason for them to be clear and set out in simple terms is two-fold.

1. It is much easier to live up to your values and follow your guiding principles when there is as little ambiguity as possible;
2. Communicating your values and principles to your customers will help you to build a lasting customer relationship.

So perhaps that Eisenhower quote can be amended to:

Plans are worthless, but values and principles are everything

Talk to us today to discuss how we can help you discover your values and the guiding principles for your business.

By many estimates over half of the S&P 500 companies will no longer exist in a decades time at least according to the research carried out by Innosight. There are a number of reasons why this is happening as seen in the Inc. article linked to above. But one thing stands out to me in the article. The lack of simple guiding principles.

Getting caught up in present-day obligations

In a survey of executives from 91 companies with revenue greater than $1 billion across more than 20 industries, Innosight asked: “What is your organization’s biggest obstacle to transform in response to market change and disruption?” Forty percent of survey respondents blamed “day-to-day decisions” that essentially pay the bill, but  undermine our stated strategy to change.” It was by far the most prevalent response. The next most popular answer, at 24 percent, was “lack of a coherent vision for the future.”

Inc.com

The biggest obstacle to transformation for organisations was aligning the day-to-day decisions to the change strategy they have put in place. This is a very common problem across organisations of all sizes in that strategies are undermined by habitual thinking and taking the easy path. It is often the case that we do not notice that this is happening because we have not set out the new strategy in a way that is clear enough for all parts of the business to work into their operation.

What is needed is a set of guiding principles to aid everyone within the organisation with making decisions that fit the values that are set out by the new strategy.

How do we create such a set of guiding principles?

I would put forward the use of Lego Serious Play or a programme of facilitated meetings based on liberating structures to explore the values of the organisation so that the guiding principles emerge from within the organisation. This way everything the organisation does and every decision they make can be aligned with the values by following the guiding principles.

Many organisations get this wrong including large organisations and some of them suffer because of it. As an example, we can look at how organisations use moments in the cultural zeitgeist to appear to have the same values and stand for the same things as the public. Look at M&S’s recent support of LGBTQ+ rights through the launch of the LGBT sandwich (A BLT with added Guacamole). This, on the face of it, seems like a good thing, and there is an argument that it is helpful to normalise the celebration of non-binary lifestyles. But, how does this fit with M&S opening stores in Saudi Arabia since 2014? Those values look to be lip service when the organisation is also making a decision to open stores in a country with a terrible record on LGBT rights.

With a solid set of simple guiding principles, decisions can be taken that align with the organisation’s values and purpose. This can help them avoid conflicts between their values and their functional operations. Allowing the organisation to adapt to change while still knowing what they stand for and being able to communicate that to their customers.

Talk to us today to discuss how we can help you discover the guiding principles for your business.

Unlocking your knowledge means being able to access knowledge that you may not have previously been aware of. Some people may refer to this as connecting the dots or discovering patterns. How can we purposefully unlock our knowledge? Can we rely on a methodology for this?

Knowledge emerges from play

One of the most common things to hear from participants in a Lego Serious Play workshop is “I had no idea I knew this”. This phrase often occurs when the participant has already felt anxious about not knowing what to build or where to start. The interesting part to this is that once the participant begins to build they let the idea or knowledge emerge. The method of LSP is designed to help this deeply held knowledge to surface and to some it can feel like alchemy.

Many moments of great insight and inspiration can feel like the idea or the knowledge popped in to your head from somewhere else. Paul McCartney is said to have dreamed the song Yesterday and the Oasis songwriter, Noel Gallagher has said that the “good ones just fall out of the sky” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-cBct4EKRs). The truth of this is that it is always within us that we create ideas and can uncover deep knowledge.

Plato wrote about the idea that knowledge comes from within in the dialogue that Socrates has with Meno. In the dialogue there is a passage where Socrates uncovers deep understanding from a slave or servant boy of Meno. The boy was not previously aware of what emerges but discovers it through the questions Socrates asks.

Soc. What do you say of him, Meno? Were not all these answers given out of his own head?

Men. Yes, they were all his own.

Soc. And yet, as we were just now saying, he did not know?

Men. True.

Soc. But still he had in him those notions of his-had he not?

Men. Yes.

Soc. Then he who does not know may still have true notions of that which he does not know?

Men. He has.

Soc. And at present these notions have just been stirred up in him, as in a dream; but if he were frequently asked the same questions, in different forms, he would know as well as any one at last?

Men. I dare say.

Soc. Without any one teaching him he will recover his knowledge for himself, if he is only asked questions?

Men. Yes.

Soc. And this spontaneous recovery of knowledge in him is recollection?

Men. True.

Soc. And this knowledge which he now has must he not either have acquired or always possessed?

Men. Yes.

Soc. But if he always possessed this knowledge he would always have known; or if he has acquired the knowledge he could not have acquired it in this life, unless he has been taught geometry; for he may be made to do the same with all geometry and every other branch of knowledge. Now, has any one ever taught him all this? You must know about him, if, as you say, he was born and bred in your house.

Men. And I am certain that no one ever did teach him.

Soc. And yet he has the knowledge?

Men. The fact, Socrates, is undeniable.

Through the Socratic Method the boy was able to uncover the knowledge that he was not aware that he knew. Within LSP we do the same by using the bricks but we add the teaching found in Seymour Papert’s Constructionism. Papert is quoted as saying:

What we learn in the process of building things that we care about sinks much deeper into the subsoil of our mind than what anyone can tell us.

This alludes to the power of concrete thinking, thinking by using the hands to create a representation of the knowledge and ideas over purely abstract thought. Thus concrete thinking allows us to find paths to knowledge and ideas that we may not easily find through other means.

This is how LSP can help you unlock your knowledge.

Talk to us today to discuss your needs and we can design some bespoke workshops for you.