I like talking strategy - but I hate workshops!
You may well hate workshops – and with good reason. A poorly run strategy day is just as frustrating as a regular board meeting embroiled in endless compliance tasks. But if directors want to get ahead of organisational minutiae – ‘the small, precise, or trivial details of everyday life’- they need to set aside slabs of time to think, reflect and synthesise. Maybe even dream a little. It is counterintuitive but the more competitive, conflicted and unpredictable the day to day operating context, the more important it is to step back and focus on strategic opportunities and challenges as well as potential long term changes to society and customer needs.
It is not about getting the future right; it’s about avoiding being completely wrong
It was the famous physicist Neils Bohr who reportedly quipped ‘Prediction is difficult, particularly about the future.’ Arie de Gues, a Shell Oil executive and one of the founders of the Scenario Planning approach to strategy, commented that the aim of planning was not to get the future right, but to avoid getting it completely wrong. Thinking about the future prepares us for the future, even if all our predictions and projections do eventuate. Being on the wrong side of history can be terminal. Think for example of market leaders Kodak who continued to make analog cameras while consumers piled into digital imaging. Then there were the video rental companies who missed the rise of streaming platforms. Hindsight is perfect but history really is littered with the corpses of companies and charities that missed the bus on the changes going on around them. Kodak was perfectly positioned for success in a world that ceased to exist. Prediction is fraught, but without mechanisms to regularly scan the operating environment, to speculate on what might shift the status quo, boards and management easily become prisoners of the past, overly confident that their current formula will work for them. This even happens at a personal level. Back in the 1990s a senior accountant I knew was made redundant as his profession shifted from paper and adding machines to electronic spreadsheets and computers. This individual believed that computerised accounting would ultimately fail. He told me that when that happened people like him, those schooled in keeping the books with pen and paper, would make a triumphant comeback. As a highly skilled professional he was confident in his views, but history moved forward regardless.
Take control of the strategic agenda
Boards should take a proactive approach to establishing a rolling strategic agenda and not simply wait for management to present them with options. In many organisations, boards do not directly set corporate strategy, but this does not absolve directors of the requirement to think strategically or from setting aside time to brief themselves on long term opportunities and challenges. The board’s value add to executive leadership is that they are NOT in the trenches day to day. They thus view the business from a range of different perspectives. A board willing to challenge itself, and a management team open to being appropriately stretched, is a powerful combination. Energising management to think outside the box can be as simple as asking the leadership team to prepare several future scenarios. For example, to sketch out two plausible futures – one positive and one less so – along with another high impact but less plausible option. Underlying assumptions and analysis should be provided for each of the three. The scene is then set for a productive board and management discussion that may not necessarily shift the organisation’s strategy but will sensitise directors and management to subtle and more profound business changes if they were to emerge. Nobody want to be part of a Kodak scenario…
Establish a productive governance rhythm
These kind of potentially deep conversations are most productive outside of regular board sessions. Every board calendar should include a day or half day set aside exclusively for strategic and long term matters. Independent, well-crafted external facilitation can assist in driving worthwhile outcomes. Establishing and maintaining a thoughtfully constructed board-level strategy agenda will, over time, strengthen the governance team’s contribution to organisational sustainability and resilience.
Philip Pogson FAICD, April 2025
Philip has been a company director, Chair, and business owner for 25 years. He consults and advises on strategy and governance across a range of business sectors and also co-owns and operates a music production and promotion business.