No straight lines in strategy

During a recent run along Portugal's coastal cliffs, I literally stumbled across an observation about strategy and business: the beauty lies in the chaos, not the neat, straight lines we often crave or draw. Our sanitized, linear plans ignore the messy reality of human emotions and unpredictable detours, leading to skepticism and resistance. Embracing the unpredictable and designing strategies for real life can transform our approach, fostering strategies that are not dismantled by real life, but thrive on it.

I had a small but profound epiphany during a recent trip to Portugal, enjoying the holy trinity of holiday bliss: sea, salt, and sun. As an early bird, I relished the extra hour from the time zone difference. I decided to make the most of it, laced up my running shoes, and let myself get lost along the coastal cliffs. There's nothing quite like the freedom of getting lost, especially on holiday when time stretches luxuriously like afternoon shadows, without the constraints of schedules and to-do lists. My run was one of beautiful inefficiency. I ran with a rough sense of orientation, but let go of any fixed route, hitting deadends, circling back, and bushwhacking sideways but never forward. I paused for breathtaking sea views, wind in my hair, and freckles sprouting in real-time. After what felt like an hour of chaotic zig-zagging through Martian landscapes, I found myself back at the start, utterly exhausted. Imagine my surprise when my running watch displayed a neat, almost linear circle. Zooming in and out didn't change the fact: my chaotic run was reduced to a tidy line.

Visionary imagination - yes, please; but self-delusional sales stories that ignore reality - no, thanks.

It dawned on me that this oversimplification mirrors our approach to strategy and business. We crave neat, ridicously straight lines in strategic plans, processes and project plans and hockey sticks, ignoring the messy reality of life. These models present a sanitized version of reality to persuade people, suggesting minimal risk and certain outcomes if we all just follow the plan. It’s illustrated wishful thinking hiding behind a pseudo-scientific geometry. The problem though: While we think this is smart storytelling focusing on the good parts, the promises of the future; everybody knows that’s not how reality works. Visionary imagination - yes, please; but self-delusional sales stories that ignore reality - no, thanks. No wonder straight-line presentations are met with resistance, cynicism, and disbelief and rarely lead to any serious action. After all the failed transformations, innovations and change programs, neat stories and ridiculously straight project plans don’t cut it anymore.

Obviously it’s impossible to anticipate every single detour, every dead-end, every emotional valley. That’s what so-called adaptive strategies are for. Plans that are able to cater to things that happen along the way. However, what I’ve seen happening during the past years, with the rise agile-framework dogmatism is that people following more of a “let’s just not have a vision at all, but “incrementally optimize” our way out of what happens” approach. Sorry, but this is not agility, this is not going with the flow, and this is also not being opportunistic or having an experimental mindset. This is simply being lazy and limiting ourselves to react to external circumstances until our organization is irrelevant, stagnating or dead. In the meantime, you will create mediocre results while burning through people, money and nerves. Yes, the future is uncertain and hard to plan for. But I believe that whereas most plans, strategies, visions are useless, it’s not the planning, the strategizing, the conspiring that is. We just need to care for better ones, ones that are made for real life, that are designed for the unpredictability of everyday, that think ahead more carefully, that sense our way into the future as it will unfold, that cater to the quirkiness and faultiness of humans and their moods.

Five things that have helped me in developing more realistic strategies and plans that got people on board for transformations and assisted us in actually following through with them:

01 Count in and plan for contingencies and detours.

It's pretty straightforward and hard to believe this isn't the norm in our business. Most strategies outline the best-case scenario with no Plan B. This naive approach makes re-strategizing a nightmare every time something goes wrong because you start at the beginning. My rule of thumb? Everything takes about twice as long as you think. This doesn't mean stretching the plan indefinitely for everything. Instead, it’s time to ditch those straight lines, the linear thinking and embrace strategic loops. Some loops will need revisiting, and that's okay.

Emotion is fuel for progress. Without energy, no movement. Simple physics.

02 Not only visualize the process, connect it to the energetic curve.

Most strategies and plans only outline what needs to be done along the way. They assume a constant stream of energy, motivation and availability of other humanly resources. This ignores the fact that mostly we still work with humans - who tend to have moods, emotions, and very limited reserves of energy. The key is to understand that it’s not about ignoring these feelings and emotions but actually use them as fuel for progress. Where there is no energy, there can be no movement. Simple physics.
So, what I do is to match the required tasks, activities of a strategy with the energetic waves that are to be anticipated during these phases. Thanks to my extensive experience with various transformations with clients as well as colleagues, I can anticipate phases of enthusiasm, exhaustion, and resistance. I can estimate when to expect the high’s and low’s that any transformation entails. If you lack this experience, get somebody on board who has it, or start with standard literature on emotional change frameworks and try to map them on your strategic process by using empathy and drawing from experiences made in other areas of your life. You’d be surprised, how far you get by just feeling your way into and imagining what your strategy means for the people involved in it. How will they react? What makes them mad? Where is potential for fear? For excitement? For exhaustion? Where will it speed us up, where will it slow us down?

03 Design for regenerative phases

Recognizing that energy isn't infinite, it's crucial to design processes with regenerative phases. Our hustle culture wrongly suggests that downtime is wasted, but neglecting it will burn out everyone and derail your strategic goals. Instead, actively design for downtime and phases where nothing new is happening to stabilize transformation success. Giving people time to make sense of their experience, proces new learnings and let new habits form unconsciously lays the foundation for sustainable progress and a stable business for the future. While many recite the saying that “strategy is a marathon, not a sprint”, true masters of transformation build in rest and reflection phases into their strategies.

04 Design for asynchronicity and different adoption speeds.

Once you've accounted for different moods and emotional states in your strategy, the next pro move is to cater to varying adoption speeds and design for asynchronicity. People have different attitudes towards uncertainty, change, and newness; some are excited and eager, while others are hesitant due to fear and risk aversion. It's crucial to engage both types and leverage all emotions, not just the positive ones.
Having some laggards in strategy adoption can actually be beneficial. Their initial reluctance can act as a reserve of energy to tap into. While they may not be enthusiastic at first, their eventual buy-in can release new waves of optimism, helping to reinvigorate others who are experiencing first frustrations down the road. By tuning and accounting for all speeds and energy reserves, you can manage the overall energy flow that is needed to get to the beautiful end.

05 Sell your plan by honestly revealing its downsides

If you’re the person selling the strategy, you tend to feel that you need to win over as many people as possible. This often leads to focusing solely on positive arguments—the wins and benefits—while ignoring objections and counterarguments. However, this sanitized, one-sided portrayal can make people skeptical. We all know that the best things come with a price, so pretending there are no downsides is a sleazy move that breeds mistrust. A much better way to communicate is to outline all arguments, both pros and cons. By explicitly addressing risks and potential losses, you build trust in your reasoning and show empathy, demonstrating that you’ve considered the concerns of others. By openly acknowledging doubts, fears, and objections, you don't amplify them; instead, you strip them of their power.