The interview with Chris Daniel was conducted remotely by Piotr Trojanowski, on Aug 31st 2020.
Part I: ON MY STYLE
What is the source of your satisfaction when coaching organisations?
Breaking status-quo.
People do not call me when things are going smoothly for them, but rather when they face an obstacle that they are not sure how to cope with. I augment their knowledge of the field with Wardley Mapping, and they learn how to verbalise their strategy concerns and ideas which they already knew but could not efficiently express. Once that happens, once I see first complicated matters discussed, I feel content and my job is nearly done.
How do you typically start your engagements?
It is usually an introductory call when we together try to identify the area which we will work on. It may be a problematic outsourcing contract, disrupting competition or internal inefficiency. This is a starting point after which we assemble a team that will work on the challenge. Those two steps, in my eyes, decide about 80% of the value the customer gets.
On which aspects do you usually focus on first?
In the world of Wardley Mapping, we call it Landscape. Those are all those things that are around your organisation that influence it but you cannot change them (regulatory requirements, customers, shareholders, competition, providers). If you add forces that influence the Landscape, you get a pretty good understanding of the context of the work that you are supposed to do, and better alignment.
How do you recognise the impact?
I could say that as a result of my work, important projects are launched or cancelled or money are spent or saved, but the reality is that you never know (nor can you know) what impact can be attributed directly to you, especially that you never get a chance to compare with alternative versions of reality.
I do my job in the best way I can. And I am ready to say I was wrong, I assume I am wrong, and if even with that assumption customers are willing to act in the way Wardley Mapping tells them, the situation can get only better.
What is the toughest issue for organisations to change?
Organisational knowledge. Organisations learn just like humans.
They store knowledge in the form of processes, procedures and policies. Once such a thing is approved, and once people change jobs, we have policies that may or may not be relevant for a current situation, and nobody knows what the case is.
Managers avoid breaking stuff, so those artefacts sometimes live for decades unchallenged.
Please share a story from your experience
Anonymised answer because of NDA:
I was helping a customer who was pushed by the provider to migrate a particular solution to the cloud. The customer was not sure whether the migrations was a win-win movement, they suspected it was a move that helped the provider only, especially given earlier experiences they had with the provider.
After a not-so-long analysis, the customer figured out that:
(1) they did not trust the provider to meet SLAs during and after the migration. The impact on the customer would be unacceptable.
(2) the migration could be a win-win move.
(3) There was no action that could change the situation without inducing too much risk.
(4) Not changing anything was safe for the organisation.
(5) Other opportunities were more interesting.
Sometimes, this is perhaps the toughest conclusion - there is not much that can be done, so it is better to focus on things that you can change. This customer had plenty of other opportunities, the one that was analysed looked important, but it was not.
I found it to be an act of courage, and I have seen similar situations resolved without taking any actions. Waiting is an action, too.
Part II: DOMAIN OF BUSINESS STRATEGY
How would you explain what Business Strategy is?
The Business Strategy, for me, is about continuous learning what is your current situation, what resources you have available, what opportunities do you face, and in which direction you should move, all of that, of course, with a great degree of uncertainty.
What is the relation between a Strategy and Risk Management?
This requires a short introduction to Taleb works - peolpe in general (including risk specialists) put too much focus on Gaussian distributions. Real life risks are far less predictable than many of us think, and this is the reson why many risk management frameworks give us sense of protection without doing much. But if you accept our limits in how we measure and quantify risk, you get a pretty holistic framework that does not differentiates between Risk & Strategy. They are the same, because you can define a risk called 'Strategic Failure' and derive your entire strategy from it.
What is the race as of today in the field of Business Strategy? Is it about who will make it to the 1% of the population that will join the Space colonisation vs those 99% who will not?
My this year's challenge is to focus only on things that I can change. The race, its fairness, prize & winners do not fall into this category, so I am afraid I will not answer this one.
How can one be a follower of the 3 Big leaders at the same time? I mean Dave Snowden, Simon Wardley, Nassib Taleb?
I do not want to diminish the work of any person from the Big 3, and while I do appreciate their different attitudes, I think they are very convergent in their thinking. Moreover, to me things that they differ are the source of complementarity between them rather than conflicting them. I guess I should play the question back: "How can you follow only one"?
What is the hygiene level in the Business Strategy that all companies simply must obey?
Know your customers, who they are and why they are using your products and services. And I mean a true "why", not because of "we are the best". This is an entry point that allows you to think about how your customers may change over the years, pick up subtle change indicators and prepare accordingly.
What is the delight level in the Business Strategy that all companies should aspire to?
We have just started our adventure in Business Strategies and Situational Awareness, so many years may pass until we learn what the ideal is.
In other words, I have no idea, but I can only imagine that experimenting more seems like an excellent direction to explore.
Part III: THE JOURNEY
When you take a retrospective look at the last decade of the Business Strategy field - what outcomes are most valuable in your opinions?
This is something vaguely defined as the position - how well is company positioned to exploit current market opportunities and how well can it spot and transition to other fields. This trumps everything else, but, unfortunately, is not immediately visible in the company balance sheets, so only unlisted companies may find this attractive.
From the perspective of shareholders, it is all about profits, not strategy. They "do strategy" on the portfolio level.
How would you describe the state of the Business Strategy field at present, in the beginning of the 2020s?
It's 2020 and we seem to have just learned that the world is so complex that we cannot predict results of our own actions (Taleb, Snowden, plenty of others). We are still trying to figure out how to reconcile goal-oriented budgeting and planning with the exploratory, experimental nature of strategy. Some companies do that, some pretend doing it, and plenty of others does not understand what is the difference.
What the Business Strategy needs most to continue making an impact?
Leaders willing to take risks and field experts willing to speak up, but mostly the former. When the environment is supportive, experts talk.
How do you imagine a business-wise successful company that is a Good citizen of the world (in terms of sustainability of ecosystem and human disintegrity)?
I refuse to speculate, but I can identify a few first steps which will help any company - calculate your carbon footprint and make sure you have nothing to be ashamed of.