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There’s a reason why many of the same faces keep showing up at the final table in the World Poker Tour, and it has nothing to do with luck.

A lot of people assume that poker is a game of chance and luck. And while luck does help, it is far more a game of skill. Each hand can be improved upon by using the community cards, your poker knowledge/skills, and the ability to adapt your play. The same capacities that make one successful at poker can also help unleash a “strategy culture,” elevating organization’s ability to decide, learn, think, and innovate – strategically.

Four Strategic Capacities

1. Strategic Action and Decision-making
2. Strategic Learning and Reflection
3. Strategic Thinking
4. Strategic Innovation and Improvement

1. Strategic Action and Decision-making

In poker you have a limited time to make your move. At each point along the way (pre-flop, on the flop, on the turn, and on the river) you must make decisions and take action – whether to fold, check, bet, raise, call, or go all in!

The same is true when it comes to implementing your strategy; analysis paralysis will not get you very far. The stronger people’s capacity to make strategic decisions day-to-day, the more successful they will be. See HBR’s Stop Making Plans, Start Making Decisions

2. Strategic Learning and Reflection

Just as it’s important to evaluate your play in poker (after a hand, a session, or a tournament), it is equally important to evaluate the success (organizationally) of action taken or a decision made. Questions like:

• How has “X move” positively influenced you, your team, division, strategy or company?
• What desired outcomes were achieved?
• How do you make sense of the impact of your actions AND what would you change moving forward?
• What innovations or improvements would take your play to the next level?

3. Strategic Thinking

In poker, strategic thinking means know the rules of poker and poker strategy (mathematical odds, pot odds, implied odds, reading others, etc.). Organizationally this means understanding strategically how each person (role) impact’s the organization’s success. By understanding the rules of the business/industry you are in, you can choose to A) maximize them for your organization’s advantage, B) play better than your competitors, or C) create new rules.

In “What Poker Taught Me About Business,” Tony Hseih, CEO of Zappos, shared the following:

“In a poker room, I could only choose which table I wanted to sit at. But in business, I realized that I didn’t have to sit at an existing table. I could define my own, or make the one that I was already at even bigger. (Or, just like in a poker room, I could always choose to change tables.)I realized that, whatever the vision was for any business, there was always a bigger vision that could make the table bigger.”

Strategic thinkers don’t just know their industry/market superbly well, they understand how to make new markets and discover Blue Oceans – thereby making the competition irrelevant!

4. Strategic Innovation and Improvement

One of the most important things you can do in poker is “switch gears” – changing your game and style of play to adapt to the emerging circumstances. The same is true when it comes to implementing your strategy. It is not a straight line from point A to point B; it is more of a cyclical pattern of experiments (and learning from those experiments) that catapults you from point A to point Z!

Poker, Strategy, and Experiential Learning Model

In overlaying the above four strategic capacities with the Kolb’s Experiential Learning Model, it was apparent that the lessons I learned from poker could be applied more systematically within a company.

Like poker, strategy isn’t just serendipitous luck. Unleashing a strategy culture requires intent in fine-tuning the very capacities that enable a strategic mindset, from an organization’s ability to take strategic action (regularly), to its willingness to pause and reflect, to learn from what’s working and what could be done differently the next time around. Apply strategic thinking and you’ve also learned to influence the rules of the game (or create new rules), and, most importantly, to use all of this knowledge to continually innovate your company’s way to success.

@TonySilbert

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Strategic planning is all about getting on the same page.   It is about creating shared meaning for coordinated action. However, it’s difficult for organizations to find shared anything when communicating complex ideas, goals, strategies, initiatives, and financials. This complexity often comes in the form of a thick document (called the strategic plan) and it makes a loud thud when placed on a desk or table.

This “credenza-ware” requires that you read, interpret and make sense of the plan. Most people try to figure out: what does this plan mean to me and to my job? And, how in my role, can I help the organization achieve it goals (or at least what I think they meant in the strategic plan)?  When you haven’t been part of creating the strategy, it is easy to misinterpret or not share the same enthusiasm and commitment of the few who did create the plan. You might consider yourself a can-do supporter, but you are most likely not on the same page.

Strategic Intent:

Strategy, in many ways has grown out of military planning – which has reinforced the notion of competition and winners/losers in business.  And while I’m not a big fan of win-lose metaphors, the notion of commander’s intent resonates.

When companies craft their vision, it can quickly denigrate into wordsmithing hell. A great vision captures the essence of the future direction in a short statement that conveys the organization’s strategic intent. Further, it invites others to join – while not dictating “HOW” to achieve this intent.

Strategy on a Page:

One of our most valued tools is the “strategy-on-a-page,” a one-page summary that visually displays the organization’s strategy – including the vision, strategy/goal areas, key initiatives (by goal), and top priorities.  The most important aspects of the business are conveyed simply and succinctly, on a page.

Wireless Company Strategy on a Page

Pharma Company Strategy on a Page

Museum Strategy on a Page

So if you want a “living” strategy – less is more. Focus on strategic intent and getting everyone on the same page – literally!

Here are some other strategy readings you might enjoy:

Strategic Planning:  It’s about creating a movement, not just a plan.

Reframing the Role of the Board in Strategic Planning.

SOARing from SWOT, 4 tips for strategic planning done right!

Check out our upcoming Strategy workshop in London: June 16 – 20

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But they all had one thing in common: they seemed to never meet expectations (if not fail altogether).   There was something missing between that great strategic planning process and the “actioning” processes that were intended to follow (but didn’t).

So what was missing?

First, the people ultimately capable of implementing the best ideas didn’t have a seat at the table.  Strategy then was the domain of the C-Suite and Big 5 Consulting firms.  And yet the best ideas and innovation rarely came from the top; in fact, they most often came from the farthest parts of an organization.

Second, we compromised values when they did not meet our quarterly objectives to be leaner and our drive to “do more with less.”  When Jack Welch first said that the only responsibility of a corporation was to “enhance shareholder value” I guess most people thought that meant, “make a lot of money fast and get rich.”  And they did.  Sometimes.  But we lost our hearts and souls in the process.

We forgot that sometimes it’s good business to do something that is worthwhile, despite the absence of double-digit growth objectives and ever increasing pressures for squeezing out margin.  A lot of people were not happy and we lost entire segments of our economy due to “globalization” and cheap labor offshore.

But then things started to change.  People started looking at the waste involved with shipping raw materials offshore only to ship the finished products back, not to mention the energy and passion lost when we focused on Return on Investment instead of the people that made things work.

Six years ago I attended my first Business Innovation Factory (BIF) summit in this far-away land called “Providence.”  I saw a town not unlike the Seattle of the 1980’s- where the creative arts and innovative thought spoke through the lingering industrial recession of …something…new on the horizon.

Now I am hopeful.

I heard people like Tony Hseih speak of “Return On Community” and investing in people …and the profits that follow.  I Listened to Alex Osterwalder, Dan Roam, and Dave Grey as they tossed out all the traditional approaches and started designing business models that were crazy, purposeful, and passion-driven.  I listened to Dan Pink remind us that people are really not motivated by money as much as they are excited about being relevant and making a difference.

I see corporations and communities starting to make strides in energy, poverty, and environment where government stalls.  I see education changing to excite and empower students to want to learn, instead of just teaching them to pass high-stakes standardized tests.  I see communities embracing paths of self-reliance, transforming public services into career path partnerships and entrepreneurship, and graduates who aren’t just looking for jobs, but creating them – and with the support of growing ecosystems, like the SEEED summit for growing this global social enterprise movement.

This is not your father’s business model… and thank goodness, because if we want a different “what” we need a different “how”:

As for the strategic planning I mentioned earlier – talk about a whole new ball game.  The SWOT analyses (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) I was taught in business school are being replaced with more solution-focused approaches, like SOAR (Strengths, Opportunities, Aspirations and Results).  More significantly, the innovative C-suites are putting more seats at the table in planning discussions – many even opting for more tables in the room, inviting staff and stakeholder input to the strategy.

And it’s working.  More than staying relevant and on top of their game, internal teams are gelling like never before, not just engaged but empowered to design more innovatively as they create and deliver value – for themselves and for the populations and communities they strive to serve.

This is not your father’s business model.  Things are changing.  And I am hopeful.

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It’s fairly common for me to get a call from someone asking me to lead a strategic planning session for a board.  One of the first questions I ask is, “Who will be most impacted by or most impact the success of the strategy?”  The typical response is, “Frontline employees, leadership, and other key stakeholders and partners.” I then invite the person I am speaking with to consider inviting these individuals into the strategic planning process, knowing people commit to what they help create. By engaging people who do the work and additional key stakeholders, the organization will end up with a more robust and achievable strategic plan – one that people are committed to implement.

Another question I get is, “How should we handle the board, and get members to buy into a strategic plan?” Embedded in the question is some sort of distance between the organization and board or the image that the board’s role is just to review and approve the plan. In fact, the strategic planning process is an opportunity to engage the board and the organization, to help bridge the gap between them. By bringing together everyone’s unique strengths, perspectives, and insights, relationships are strengthened and the future becomes clearer. As a result, a more relevant and informed plan is created and executed.

Here is my advice to companies looking to their board for strategic planning:

1. Reframe the role of your board.
   View board members as conveners and as active participants in the process rather than as people responsible for doing it all – or doing nothing but reviewing and approving. Encourage board members to collaborate with a range of stakeholders to discover the best of the organization, to build meaningful relationships at all levels, and to champion people and ideas.
2. Create a stakeholder map.
   Identify the people who will be most impacted by a strategic plan and who could have the most impact in creating one. This will help determine who to involve in the strategic planning process.
3. Engagement is key.
   Once you’ve identified key stakeholders, find meaningful ways to engage them.  Whether through one-on-one interviews, focus groups, small working group sessions, or a strategic planning summit, the more involved people are and the more they contribute their voice and ideas, the more committed they will be in executing the plan.

Organizations that are willing to rethink the role of the board in strategic planning – toward a more inclusive group of leaders, frontline workers, and additional key stakeholders – will inevitably create and bring to life strategic plans that result in overwhelmingly positive results.

– See more at: SOARing from SWOT: 4 lessons in strategic planning done right

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While this is true and important, I would contend that strategic planning, at its best, is about CREATING A MOVEMENT in which people with shared interests and passion move ideas strategically into action.

Recently, I’ve kicked off my strategy summits by showing Derek Sivers’s TED Talk “How to start a movement” to help people reframe strategic planning. I do this to communicate that if we can engage and expand upon people’s shared interests and passions, commitment increases, leading to more meaningful business results and a stronger organization. By focusing on creating a movement, company’s not only create a living plan but also unleash a culture of strategic thinkers, actors, innovators, and learners.

Three key ideas that enable this movement are:

1. Creating Shared Understanding for Coordinated Action:  In order to advance any plan or movement, shared understanding is essential.  From creating a shared vision of the future to developing and agreeing on key goals and priorities, it is critical to achieve not only common ground but also higher ground. This means moving beyond competing agendas to embracing  “both/and” solutions and improbable pairs.  This process is messy and emergent, but critical if people with diverse backgrounds and perspectives are to come together for coordinated action.
2. Maximizing Free Choice: Once you have agreed on a shared vision and key goals/priorities, the next step is to organize and plan. People must consider “what” they will do. They must own a piece of the plan – figure out how to participate in the movement. This is where free choice, interest, and passion, intersect. In The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion, John Hagel describes passion as “a sustained and deep commitment to achieving our full potential and greater capacity for self-expression in a domain that engages us on a personal level.“ He goes on to emphasize that people must integrate passion into their professions. I couldn’t agree more. Bottom-line, where passion and choice thrive so does curiosity, creative solutions, and committed action to bring plans to life.
3. Balancing Planning with Improvisation: We do create plans…they’re just part of a bigger picture, a bigger movement.  We help organizations create a “strategy on a page” or a “strategy roadmap.” Both help groups move from traditional action planning mode (long laundry lists of activities) to a more adaptive mindset. While the ultimate destination might change, a minimal enabling structure (roadmap) gives people both the confidence to move forward into the unknown and the flexibility to improvise along the way.

If companies can create a shared understanding among their people, honor free choice, bridle the passions people bring to the organization, and allow for improvisation, they can not only achieve coordinated action, they can create a movement. And, a movement is unstoppable.

– See more at: SOARing from SWOT – 4 lessons in strategic planning done right

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