INSIGHT
‘‘ T
HE Covid pandemic and recent geopolitical events have reminded us how it feels to experience what
strategists call “TUNA conditions”, characterised by turbulence, uncertainty, novelty, and ambiguity. We have faced high-stakes decisions under pressurised circumstances, when the information we needed was unclear, uncertain, or just plain unavailable, emotions ran high, and the human cost of our choices was significant.
At last year’s New Librarianship Symposia, leading professionals spoke not of the “post-pandemic era” but the “Covid-affected world”, recognising that the coronavirus and its impacts are not done with us, however much we might wish to be done with them. As Erica Charters and Kristin Heitman put it:“Epidemics are as much social, political, and economic events as they are biological; the ‘end,’ therefore, is as much a process of social and political negotiation as it is biomedical. Equally important, epidemics end at different times for different groups, both within one society and across regions”. So, what does strategy look like for libraries and information institutions in the Covid-affected world?
The context of the context Scenario planners at Oxford’s Saïd Business School divide an organisation’s context into the transactional environment, which consists of actors and dynamics we can directly influence, and the contextual environment which lies beyond immediate influence – “the context of the context” which we inhabit. When we can’t be confident that the environment we inhabit tomorrow will be like the one we experienced yesterday, strategy must be informed by future- facing exploration. Understanding how contextual uncertainties may play out and redraw the transactional environment helps us to see our situation afresh and avoid being blinkered by our assumptions.
As Richard Rumelt puts it in Good 28 INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL
All strategy is premised on the idea that our choices matter. Therefore strategy is a fundamentally hopeful activity.
Strategic literacy: What does strategy look like? Scripturient
Strategy/Bad Strategy: “Serious strategy work in an already successful organisation may not take place until the wolf is at the door – or even until the wolf’s claws actually scratch on the floor – because good strategy is very hard work”. Thinking about future contexts allows us to conjure Rumelt’s wolves before they arrive, examine them, and consider the effect they would have on our environment.
This kind of imaginative work supports good judgement across the three areas identified by Geoffrey Vickers, a storied civil servant of last century: What is really going on around us? What does it mean for us? And what are we able to do?
A question of systems
Strategy isn’t merely a matter of looking at the seas we might expect to sail through and plotting a course that will work for us. There is value in thinking about the systems we inhabit in terms, not solely of what we wish to do, nor how they benefit certain actors over others, but the overall difference those systems make in the world. A useful acronym here is “POSIWID”, coined by Stafford Beer – “the purpose of a system is what it does”. Appreciating intentional and unintentional systemic impacts is a useful step towards an ecosystemic view of strategy.
Knowing what to stop Knowing what to say “no” to is vital. If we only keep piling things on, our capacity and appetite to deliver is affected. Library and information workers are perhaps especially prone to this, given the profession’s strong service ethic and culture of responsiveness. As Rumelt says: “Strategy does not eliminate scarcity and its consequence – the necessity of choice. Strategy is scarcity’s child and to have a strategy, rather than vague aspirations, is to choose one path and eschew others. There is difficult psychological, political, and organisational work in saying ‘no’ to whole worlds of hopes, dreams, and aspirations.” Change incurs costs, even if we are merely swapping out like-for-like. If we are trying something truly new, an act of
Matt Finch (@drmattfinch) is a writer and consultant who specialises in strategy, foresight, and innovation work with institutions worldwide. See more at
www.mechanicaldolphin.com
contraction or withdrawal may be needed. What otherwise worthwhile endeavour is your library willing to surrender, sacrifice, slow down, or ease off on in order to support the achievement of your highest priorities?
Hope is fundamental “Despite the roar of voices wanting to equate strategy with ambition, leadership ‘vision’, planning, or the economic logic of competition, strategy is none of these. The core of strategy work is always the same: discovering the critical factors in a situation and designing a way of coordinating and focusing actions to deal with those factors.” – Richard Rumelt All strategy is premised on the idea that our choices matter. Therefore strategy is a fundamentally hopeful activity. All too often strategy is done by rote. It occurs in planning cycles of five years, as if the strategic context changed on cue every half-decade. True strategy is such hard work that it’s no wonder we may only really do it when the wolf is at the door. Yet good strategy also involves imagining what might lie ahead of us, and creative problem solving to find the most elegant and effective routes forward. Strategy can also be tremendously rewarding, and even fun: there’s satisfaction in being dealt even the toughest hands and playing them well. It can be scary, because something significant is at stake; but that fear stems precisely from the fact of recognising that our choices still matter.
“Have I dared wrongly, ah well, then life will help me with the punishment. But have I not dared at all, who will help me then?” – Søren Kierkegaard. IP
April-May 2022
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