Paint Your Strategy… Don’t Plan It.
We should discuss what to do about the wrong way business creates Strategy, but first let’s talk about my paintings.
I mostly paint big canvases because the world is a big canvas.
Like my paintings, the world is abstract/representative, original /derivative, single focused /combinatory, chaotic/orderly, fun/annoying, fatuous and fascinating. Far too complex for the limits of linear thinking.
(I sell my paintings and occasionally win ribbons at juried shows, but Leonardo and Pablo wouldn’t lose sleep over my standing in the hierarchy of grandmasters).
Strategy is traditionally and most often defined as “a plan-to-action-to goal achievement”, neatly analytical and tightly controlled.
It all fits neatly into a prescribed format for meeting performance targets and is better suited for extending the status quo than it is for making change and impact that matters (the job of strategy).
This approach to strategy is wrong headed and isn’t likely to produce a good strategy nor a compelling painting.
When I start a painting, I may have an idea in mind or sometimes just an intuitive feeling, but largely the painting just snickers at my tendency to want to plan and design it.
The painting just does what it wants. It only pays attention to the hundreds of choices I make as I mix the colors and brush on the paint.
To my great surprise, a painting often turns out much better than I ever could have imagined (the gods are kind to me much of the time).
But, of course, at other times, a painting turns to mud, or worse yet, it looks like the unimaginative pictures hung on the walls of cheap business hotel lobbies near the airport.
So, I paint over my would-be masterpiece, experiencing again what doesn’t work.
I have learned that some of my best paintings are several layers thick with trials and failed experiments that somehow emerge into something delightful.
In business, they might refer to this as experimentation, scenario explorations, and prototyping…loose, alive, responsive, open to what wants to be discovered.
Are you seeing the parallels between painting and Strategy making?
Ok, let’s talk Strategy.
I think it is simple.
We earn our privilege to be humans on this planet when we create value and enrich life.
This is what Strategy is charged with doing, but often gets forgotten in the rush to write a plan.
Strategies are choices we make to create value and enrich life for ourselves and for others, sharing this economy and environment.
Critical to doing this well is picking Where and How to play-out our choices (just like I do when I create a painting…WHERE to start and end & the flow of the creative process of HOW to shape the painting).
When we get the Where & How right, we attract people to want what we create.
Final thoughts on Strategy and Painting —
Create the strategy for the big canvas (Zoom-out), read the contradictory realities of the zeitgeist, and pay attention to the application of the detailed choices you make in its creation (Zoom-in).
Hold tightly the good intention of what it means to you to create value/enrich life, but loosely handle the expected outcomes so something surprising can materialize.
Live the process of creating by Where/How Choices, but avoid overly blueprinted, confining plans.
Focus on and build Strategic Processes, not Strategic Plans. Processes show the flow for executing the strategy. To paraphrase a famous quote of one of our greatest generals and President… “Plans are nothing. Planning (process) is everything.” (How I go about painting is the largest determinant of the quality that is produced).
Every good painting communicates a story that changes people, and every good strategy tells a story of where and how you will change the market and “create a customer”, as Peter Drucker called it. So, if you are making a strategic story, make it a compelling one that attracts people to you and shapes the market to your vision of value creation.
Play is essential to all creativity, whether painting or designing a strategy. Play with your materials, challenge your assumptions, let loose, imagine, and let it flow.
Surrender to what wants to emerge. Remember, something larger than our linear analytics shapes our greatest outcomes.
So, if you want a compelling painting, don’t paint by number.
If you want an impactful strategy, don’t follow the conventional ways of making strategy.
Imaginatively, freely, paint your Strategy.
