Socrates & the fox. Clem Sunter
good results if tactics are accompanied by a set of measurable outcomes to which people can aspire.
7 Above all, strategy is about understanding what you do and don’t control, and what is certain and uncertain about the future – and knowing when to change direction to avert unintended, and possibly tragic, consequences.
Principle 1 has already been explained. You have to aim the gun before you fire. Principle 2 is based on a quote by Lee Kwan Yew – the prime minister of Singapore between 1959 and 1990 – that those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and his insistence that he preferred to learn from history than through trial and error. Context is very important. In one session we facilitated, a comment was made that most countries learn only from their own mistakes and not from the mistakes made by other countries. So true when we look at history repeating itself around the world. Hence, in the questions we put, we want companies to learn not only from their own experience but from the experience of others as well. A pinch of trial and error can then be added as an extra ingredient!
Principle 3 is based on the fact that we all have specific competencies and limited resources and therefore our playing field has to be clearly defined as to what activities lie inside (and are core) and what lie outside (and are non-core). Principle 4 says that we are all human and even the best-perceived strategy at the time can fail and therefore should be constantly road-tested by reviewing the environment and where it can go.
Principle 5 is so often broken because companies will simply not back new strategies with the level of resources required to make them succeed. The initiative is seen as ‘nice to have’ as opposed to being a crucial link in the company’s evolution. On the flip side of no tactic rescuing bad strategy, think of going on holiday with the destination as strategy and getting there as a tactic. If the destination is bad, getting there quickly will only make the experience worse. Principle 6 explains why we all have budgets, goals, targets, objectives, key performance indicators and scorecards in business, because nothing gets done without measurement of progress.
Principle 7 is last but by no means least. It is a fact that people in power prefer to feel that they are in complete control, but our principle demands acknowledgement that they’re not. They feel that they have exceptional foresight, but our principle asserts that the future is inherently uncertain and unpredictable. Worse still, many CEOs and politicians will simply not change their minds because they see it as a loss of face. Even when it is obvious that they should reconsider, they don’t. Call it emotional unintelligence or myopia due to their personal make-up. Unpleasant facts will not be countenanced. This is in marked contrast to the philosophy put forward by the fox to Socrates when he said, “You have to accept change, and change with it.”
Stubbornness, moreover, can lead to unintended consequences, where the law of tragic choices kicks in. This law says that you should take the least tragic choice to limit the amount of pain involved and perhaps open up other opportunities. What you can’t do is nothing because no decent option immediately presents itself. Think of the choices Socrates had – tragic to say the least. But as the fox so rightly said: “Each path will contain its own string of events and consequences.” Victory can be snatched from the jaws of defeat. If you live on the edge, you will always make mistakes. Learn to retrieve the situation instead of dwelling on failure.
The Ten Questions
These seven principles on strategy underpin our conversation model. We have now developed the model into a series of ten strategic questions through which we steer the participants. As can be seen in the table after the questions, ‘defining the game’ is really the strategic part of the discussion and ‘playing the game’ the tactics and outcomes you wish to achieve.
Defining the Game
1 Context: How has the game in your industry changed, where is it heading and how have you fared as a player?
2 Scope: What is your playing field today, and how do you want to expand (or contract) it in light of the developing context and the resources at your disposal?
3 Players: Who are the players that can most advance or retard your strategy, and how should you handle them in future?
4 Rules: What are the rules of the game that are likely to govern your strategy under all scenarios?
5 Uncertainties: What are the key uncertainties that could have a significant impact on the game and divert your course either positively or negatively?
6 Scenarios: On your gameboard, what are the possible scenarios and where would you position yourself in relation to them now?
Playing the Game
7 SWOT: What are your strengths and weaknesses as a player; and what are the opportunities and threats offered by the game?
8 Options: Within your span of control, what options do you have to improve your current performance and longer-term prospects in the game?
9 Decisions: Which options do you want to turn into decisions right now, and what is the initial action associated with each decision?
10 Outcomes: What is your meaning of winning the game in five years’ time, expressed as a set of measurable outcomes?
The sequence of the questions can be explained in the following framework:
| Question | Frame of Reference |
| 1 | Context |
| 2 | Strategy |
| 3, 4, 5, 6 | Testing the robustness of the strategy |
| 7, 8, 9 | Tactics, decisions, actions |
| 10 | Measurable outcomes |
Straightforward though the questions may seem, they have multiple layers to them because they explore both the game as well as the player’s relationship to the game. There are sub-questions as well. As Socrates said to the fox: “We are all elements of a system in a continual state of interaction and mutual influence, as our minds are with our bodies.” To reflect this philosophy, the course of the strategic conversation continually weaves between internal questions about the organisation and external questions about the environment, the relationship between the two often evolving as the conversation progresses. Moreover, please don’t treat the frame of reference as a list to which strict adherence has to be given. At any stage, an issue may be raised that demands that you revisit an earlier stage of the conversation. Or a bright idea comes up before its time. Brilliance is spontaneous, not ordered! So look at our ten questions as segments of a circle which can be rotated clockwise or anticlockwise as circumstances require.
Those familiar with business strategy will realise that the roots of our model and our thinking lie in scenario planning. What we have done through our ten questions is to integrate scenario planning into the mainstream process of strategic planning and decision-making. It allows top executive teams of companies to test the resilience of their strategies and tactics against alternative scenarios and, should the need arise, come up with other options faster and more effectively than their competitors.
And how successful is the model? Pierre Wack was the recognised master of scenario planning during the 1970s and 1980s. He used to say that the acid test for any successful scenario exercise was not that it captured an unusual future before it happened; rather it was whether the scenario penetrated the mindset of the relevant decision-makers and persuaded them to act ahead of time. We call this the ‘Wack test’. The scenario itself did not have to be entirely accurate in its details, as long as, in retrospect, it modified for the better the course of action taken.
Many scenario exercises are brilliant intellectually, but fail the Wack test because they do not connect to the people who make the decisions. There are, however, three aspects to our conversation model which give the scenarios