Think Fast Talk Smart: Communication Techniques - 71. Strategy Success: How to Communicate Your Gameplan

Episode Date: November 8, 2022

As Professor Jesper Sørensen sees it, a winning strategy is the result of conversations, not commands.Sørensen says strategy can be directed from the C-suite, but it doesn’t have to be. ���Lots of great strategies are discovered,” he says, “they're discovered because the leaders were able to listen to their frontline workers or their frontline managers.” A more iterative approach, says Sørensen, helps companies adapt their strategy to an ever-changing landscape.In the latest episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, Sørensen joins host and lecturer Matt Abrahams to discuss how organizations can use better communication to craft better strategies.Connect:Premium Signup >>>> Think Fast Talk Smart PremiumEmail Questions & Feedback >>> [e-mail] Transcripts >>> Think Fast Talk Smart WebsiteNewsletter Signup + English Language Learning >>> FasterSmarter.ioThink Fast Talk Smart >>> LinkedIn,  Instagram, YouTubeMatt Abrahams >>> LinkedInEpisode Reference Links:Making Great Strategy: Arguing for Organizational Advantage, by Jesper B. Sørensen Glenn R. CarrollClass Takeaways: Crafting and Leading Strategy: Five lessons in five minutes — Professor Jesper Sørenson teaches how to create and implement a successful business strategy. ********Thank you to our sponsors.  These partnerships support the ongoing production of the podcast, allowing us to bring it to you at no cost.Strawberry.me. Get 50% off your first coaching session today at Strawberry.me/smartJoin our Think Fast Talk Smart Learning Community and become the communicator you want to be. 

Hi, Matt here. We have two days left before we close our listener viewer survey. A big thank you to all of you who have already provided feedback. Please take a few minutes to share your input on the show. We still have a few prizes left to give to lucky respondents. Go to FasterSmarter.com.com. To give us your input. That's FasterSmartter.com.io slash survey. And now a word from one of our sponsors.

Their support allows us to bring you quality content free of charge. If you've ever thought, I know I can do more, but something's holding me back. You're not alone. Whether you're navigating career growth, seeking better balance, or wanting to communicate with more confidence, coaching can help you bridge the gap between intention and action. At strawberry.me, you'll get matched with a professional coach who's trained to help you clarify your goals, build lasting confidence, and make intentional choices professionally and personally. This is not therapy. It's not consult. It's a thought partnership designed to help you take action with more clarity and purpose. I strongly believe in the value of coaching. All of us can benefit from the help of a coach. Visit strawberry.me slash smart to get matched up with your coach today. That's strawberry.combe slash smart and get 50% off your first coaching session. It's the most affordable time ever to see if coaching is right for you.

I passionately believe that strategic communication is critical to success in business and in life. But we must also think about strategy and how we communicate that. Many of us focus on our day-to-day work on just the tasks we need to complete and executing them well. Taking time to reflect on strategy in our organizations and our own life can help us be successful. I'm Matt Abrams, and I teach strategic communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast. I am very excited to speak with Yesper Sorensen. Yesper is a professor of organizational behavior at the GSP,

along with being the Senior Associate Dean of Academic Affairs. Yesper specializes in dynamics of organizational and strategic change. He teaches strategic leadership, crafting, and leading strategy. and along with fellow professor Glenn Carroll, Yesper wrote Making Great Strategy, arguing for organization advantage. Welcome, Yesper. Thanks for being here.

I'm super excited for our conversation. Thanks for having me, Matt. It's really an honor to be on your podcast. Well, thank you. Let's go ahead and get started. You've been studying and teaching strategy for over 25 years. Can you share with us how you define strategy

and explain how it's different from planning? Sure. You know, I think, you know, the tagline here, the GSP, change lives, change organizations, change the world. What I always like to tell students is if you want to change the world, you have to build great organizations. Because large-scale change always happens through organizations. And if you're going to build a great organization, you have to have the resources to sustain that organization. And strategy is really about explaining how you secure that organization's economic prosperity. And if you're a public company, that means how do you maximize profits, perhaps?

But even if you're a nonprofit, you have to have a strategy that is somehow the logic by which you get enough resources to be able to survive and do what it is you want to do. Now, that's different from planning. Like, I think planning is really about the order of operations, right? It's the sequence of things that you're going to do. Once you know why it is that you have a reason to do something and what the outcome is going to be. And so I think strategy is that sense much more complicated because in order to get the resources that you need, you have to engage with other actors. So you have to engage with your customers and your suppliers and so on and so forth. And you don't have control over them.

Planning is about the things that you can control. But strategy is really much more complicated in that sense. So it sounds like planning is much more tactical. Once you have the strategy, you then invoke the plans to enact that strategy. Exactly. You shared that one of the prime directives for leaders is to focus on building a strategy. What are some of the mistakes or misconceptions you've found over the years that leaders have about strategy or its role in their organization? So I think the biggest misconception that a lot of managers in organizations have and leaders is that strategy is not their job.

So I think in a lot of organizations, we have this image of strategy being dictated at the top. The CEO is going to articulate, here's what the strategy is. And it's like a football coach sending the play in from the sideline. And then we're all just going to go and execute all. And so you'll meet tons of managers who'll say, I don't do strategy. I'm just about execution. But of course, strategy is really about how you're going to best allocate your time. time and your resources. That's ultimately what it's about. And so if you have any responsibility

in an organization, you're doing strategy. And so you need to be able to engage with the strategy. And I think one of the things that happens is that we disempower ourselves if we think about strategy as that. The related misconception is then that people think of strategy as kind of like a set it once a year or once every five years kind of thing. And then we're just going to go execute on that plan. But, you know, if you think that strategy is, you know, no, no battle plan survives contact with the enemy, right? And so like as soon as you start to do things, things start to change. And so it's not just about drafting this beautiful architectural blueprint and then handing off for somebody to go build it because you've got to adapt to the changing landscape. So I'm hearing you say

that strategy is something that everybody owns within an organization. It's not just comes down from on high. and that it has to adapt and change. I have been part of several organizations where when people say we're going to strategically plan everybody's eyes roll and they think, oh, we're just going to put another document on the shelf or it's just going to sit on some website somewhere. And what I'm hearing you say is that it's living and you have to evolve it and everybody's involved in it. Which leads me to the next question, which is in your book and teaching, you and Glenn Carroll, make a very convincing claim that organizations should craft strategy arguments. Can you share what you mean by a strategy argument? What are they?

And how can they help? What Glenn and I are trying to do in that book is basically, you know, help people think about strategy not as just a set of analytical frameworks, which is what we teach many times in business schools. So you think about the classic way of teaching strategy in a business school is port or five forces or differentiation versus low cost. And those are all really important. But when you're doing strategy on a day-to-day basis, you have to understand, like, how is this working? So it's an explanation, and that's how I do think it's related to communication.

It's an explanation for how you think you're going to succeed. And that's an argument. And an argument is simply a set of assumptions that lead to a conclusion, right? That force a conclusion. And so what a strategy argument is, it's a statement about what are the investments and the activities that we are going to undertake that's going to lead us, us to be able to create and capture economic value. And if we can do those things, right, if we can understand the connection between those investments and those activities

and how we create economic value and how we capture economic value, then we can start to have sophisticated conversations about, like, what is it that's working, what is it that's not working, and it gives us a model through which we can see the world. The thing I feel is so powerful about this notion of strategy as an art, argument is, one, it involves how you think about it. Because when we craft arguments, we think about things like, who are we speaking to? What's the context? And it implies that this is a conversation that has to be had. Again, it's not some dictation that comes down from somebody. So I find that really

powerful. And it also implies in an argument that there is debate and discussion and change and evolution, and I think that's really, really important. And it fits very nicely with what, as you know, I teach strategic communication. And while I talk a lot about the importance of communicating strategically, I'm really curious to have you share your thoughts on how communication is important in strategy. So I think there's two different parts to that. And one, just to key off of what you just said, like I do think, and in the book, Glenn and I, we devote an entire chapter to basically thinking about how can you argue constructively as a group in an organization? Oftentimes, what we say when we teach, you know, if we teach MBA students or executives, we say, you know, you should go

and you should argue more in your organizations. And a lot of people are then like, well, whoa, no, wait, I don't want to do that because what they're hearing is fight. And we're not saying you should go fight more. Because so a fight is kind of like, you know, you're throwing assertions at each other and you're just waiting for somebody to give in. So it's like a street fight. But there's a There are ways to structure debates and arguments so that they are constructive. And part of that is about having the ability to listen to somebody else and hear what it is that they're trying to say and hear what their logic is. I think most people believe things for a reason.

Like they have a reason for believing it. You might disagree both with their conclusion and with some of their reasons, but you can't engage constructively in a debate unless you hear them. on that dimension. And so really it's about how do you structure engagements with each other to create that space. I think the other part of communicating strategically that's really important is when we think about delegation. So what we know is that if you want to build a great organization, you're not going to be able to do that yourself. You can't make all of the decisions, much as you might want to. And so we all know that we have to be able to delegate and we have to be able

empower people. And we have lots of books that tell us, delegation is wonderful. And even the word empowerment sounds so wonderful. But of course, the truth is most leaders wake up at three in the morning, petrified because they delegated a task to somebody else. And what are they petrified? What are scared about? They're scared that their subordinate is going to make the wrong decision. And at three in the morning, what is the wrong decision? It's not the decision. It's not the decision. decision I would have made. So there's this tension. Like on the one hand, you don't want to make all the decisions and yet you want to make all the decisions. And so, or at least you want somebody who might be closer to the information to make a better decision because they have more information,

but you want them to think about it the way you think about it. And then the question is, how do you get people to think about things the way you think about things? That's through communication. So that's about really explaining why you think we win, why you think we are a successful organization, why you think these sets of actions are the things that we need to do in order to accomplish our goals. And so that's where I do think really clear communication is going to be essential to effective strategic leadership. The fact that you are invoking the power of listening and being willing to engage in conflict but productive conflict so we can get to a collaborative place with our strategy is a very different way of thinking about strategy in general.

And I think that's really powerful for all of us to think about. And clearly being able to articulate your strategy, packaging it and communicating it in a way that not only motivates people, but also helps make better decisions is absolutely critical. Right. I mean, there's this element of strategy that we have a, I think most of our stereotype of what strategy is is very top-down. Yes. And so then you would think communication is broadcasting.

But, of course, we also know that lots of great strategies are discovered. And they're discovered because the leaders were able to listen to their frontline workers or their frontline managers tell them, here's something that's even better than what we're doing now. And so, of course, strategies really both. It's both top-down and bottom-up. And so you have to be able to both be able to articulate what it is that you want, to say and where you think we should be going, but then also be able to listen and hear where you might be wrong. Because I think the other part that we really emphasize is in an argument,

well, how do you make an argument? You make assumptions. Yeah. And assumptions are testable. Like, they're going to be proven wrong or they're going to be proven right. And, like, you have to be open to the possibility that the assumption you made yesterday has turned out to be wrong today and that you therefore need to revise your theory. That doesn't mean you have to go back and give up, but it means that you have to update your understanding of the world. We've talked a lot about testing assumptions and how to really challenge yourself to be open to what the reality is instead of staying fixed on what you thought it was. And thank you for reemphasizing that. I have to tell you when I was doing research for our conversation,

I had a big smile on my face when I saw that in your class and in your thinking about strategic communication and communicating about strategy. You talk a lot about how important storytelling is. And I'm curious if you can help us understand what makes a good story about strategy. So if you think about strategy as an argument, then I think a natural criterion suggests itself. And that criterion is logic. So a good strategy story, on the one hand, has a clear narrative to it and you can follow the steps and so and so forth. but it should also be internally coherent. And that is the realm of logic. Like, and philosophers and logicians have spent centuries

thinking about how do we assess arguments in terms of whether or not, like whatever assumptions you're making, do the assumptions that you do make lead to the conclusion that you think it does? And that is, I think, incredibly important in assessing strategy stories. And where it's particularly important

is when you're doing strategy, for the future. Like when you're trying to say, here's where we want to be in five years, here's my narrative. Well, think about it. You're telling a story about something that hasn't happened yet. And so how do you know whether that's a good story? Like you can say, well, it resonates with me. It inspires me. And those are important and useful criteria. But of course, they could also be foolishness. So you want to also be able to say, okay, I don't know whether all these assumptions are going to be true. and I can't know until I act, but at least I want to know whether if they are true,

will they lead to the outcome that I think they will lead to? And that's where we, you know, in the book, Glenn and I get into this, a somewhat technical set of chapters on thinking about what is logical validity and soundness and so on and so forth, which I think a lot of people who are like doing strategy, like, where did that come from? And I stopped thinking about that in eighth grade or something like that. But I do think that holding on to those ideas is like,

the way we should assess each other's arguments in the first instance is by the extent to which they're internally coherent. Right. And one of the things I strongly advocated, that whenever you're creating content, stories, et cetera, that there is a logical coherence, things follow, and that they're premises that you could support. I'm curious to get another dimension of story that I wonder your thoughts on, which is once you have a strategy, you have to propagate it in an organization. And sometimes I think the most effective way to do that is not putting it on posters or little note cards people have it. It's the stories that leaders tell. Do you have experience on that or thoughts on how, once we have the strategy, how do we actually communicate it and use story to actually motivate people to align to that strategy?

I think, first of all, I totally agree with the premise of your question. I do think that communication of these stories is really important. And I would add, like, relentless communication. I think one aspect of that is like it's very easy to approach management and leadership as an exercise in giving orders. And I think that's fine. Like I think there is an element to it that's about, again, delegation and giving orders. But but maybe give people a little bit of grace in the sense of saying, here's why. Like here's what I'm thinking and just let people into your mind and your logic. because then they're going to do a better job.

I just think that's the most important thing. And so I think the more you can just be aware of the need to always be communicating what your reasoning is and what your logic is, the better off you'll be. I absolutely agree. And if people can internalize your logic, they can then be able to not only know what they need to do and feel confident that it's the right thing, they can then communicate it to others. so it becomes a way of propagating that information. And they can more productively disagree with you. That's true. Right? Because they can say, oh, but wait a second, you thought that this was going to be true, and it's not.

So now, boss, we've got to do something differently. Absolutely. It's not disrespectful or anything like that. It's just like the world wasn't the way you thought it was, and I can help you do a better job. Right. And it allows for that immediate feedback so you can make those adjustments for sure. We'll be right back to finish our conversation. But first, a quick word from one of our sponsors.

Their support allows us to bring you this show free of charge. If you've ever felt like you're trying to do everything yourself, especially when the stakes are high, you're not alone. One of the biggest shifts I see in effective leaders growing their organizations comes from focusing on the right things. But that's hard to do when you're stretched thin. You need to be able to delegate some tasks to competent professionals. That's where Upwork can really help. Upwork is a one-stop platform to find, hire, and pay expert freelancers across areas like marketing, development, data and analytics, and more. It gives you fast access to specialized talent so you can move quickly, fill key gaps, and scale your work without taking on

full-time overhead. You can browse profiles, review past work, and get support scoping your project so you can hire with confidence. It's a simple way to focus your time where it matters most. Visit upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That's upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's UPWORK.com. Upwork.com. And now, back to our conversation. Before we end, I'd like to ask you the same three questions I ask everyone. You okay with that? Yep. All right. Here we go. If you were to capture the best communication advice you've ever received as a five to seven word presentation slide title, what would that be? The five to seven words would be a classroom, is a theater.

Oh. So I had the pleasure of working a number of times, actually, with a teaching coach named Barbara Lane Brown, and she was a former actor and theater director. And she really helped me think about how, you know, when you're teaching a class, which is obviously a very strong form of communication, like you're putting on a play and you have to think about all the different, like think about it the same way. So, like, you know, when you're first starting out, for example, you kind of tend to just kind of like, okay, let me just start talking.

Like, as opposed to taking command of the room. Like, a play doesn't start by somebody just wandering out on stage and deciding to start talking. Well, a good play doesn't. A good play doesn't. And a good theater performance has characters and different characters. And so thinking about yourself as an individual and, like, the different characters that you might deploy in the same class and thinking about engagement with the audience and how you move and all those other kinds of things. It was really powerful for me. It changed the way I taught and definitely for the better.

I have to say that I'm pleasantly surprised and a bit shocked. I see you as somebody who is, I mean, you're a fantastic teacher and you're very logical and methodical. And I love that I now see behind the curtain literally and figuratively that you think about it as a play. And I think all of us should think about the theater of our communication. Now, I don't mean we have to be actors, but think about the way the environment's set up. How are you starting, as you mentioned? How do you end? How do you build excitement?

And all of those are things that we can learn from acting. And thank you. That's fantastic. Who is a communicator that you admire and why? So, having listened to your podcast, I of course knew you were going to ask this question. Yes. And I'm in general terrible at answering questions like who is your favorite X? I'm sorry.

And so I was stump. No, no, no, that's fine. So I texted my kids. My kids are all grown, and I said, you know, how should I answer this question? And one of my sons said, Bill Belichick, because I'm a big New England Patriots fan. And then my other son said, the Swedish chef, because they take him up at stuff. And then my daughter said, Emmett, who is our dog, one of our dogs. And I thought about it, because what Emmett, the dog does, he has his amazing ability to get me up with nonverbal communication at 5.30 in the morning.

Like his just ability. So I actually thought, well, what unifies all of those? Because, you know, a thing about Bill Belichick, most people would not think of him as a great communicator. Because he very intentionally, actually, I think, is not communicating. He doesn't want to say anything. And so I actually thought, well, I was trying to make sense of that. I'm like, why would they all say that as a response to what they thought I would be?

And I think it actually has something to do with nonverbal communication. And so then I thought about some more. And I actually think, you know, like one of the musicians that I really have always enjoyed and loved is a jazz pianist named Keith Jarrett, who has this amazing style of performance. And, you know, again, entirely nonverbal, but if you think about the way great musicians use pacing and rhythm and kind of the ability to create drama without ever saying anything,

because I think what I find hard about this question, it's a great question, but I find hard about it is it's so hard to separate the message from the communication style. that's where I think the music helps me think about, okay, I don't really know what the message is, but I know how it moves me in different kinds of ways. Well, first, I am glad that I had an opportunity to bring your family together. I was very curious how you were going to have a football coach, a Muppet, and a pet lead to something. But you're right.

Nonverbal communication is critical, and you are one of the very few people to answer this question focused on nonverbals. Most people speak about people who communicate and speak in a certain way. Question number three, what are the first three ingredients that go into a successful communication recipe? My first ingredient is not going to surprise, given what we have just been talking about. But I think the first ingredient is clarify your logic. So be really clear about what your argument is. And that's saying that clear thinking is what leads to clear writing or clear speaking is really key.

And when I'm oftentimes giving feedback on papers to students or whatever, it's usually about like the writing is a mess until they get to the point where they're actually clear about what they're trying to say, which is oftentimes hard. So that's not a criticism. It's just like that's the process. And you know, related to that is writing is rewriting. Like you have to keep doing. And what you're doing is you're revising your argument as you go along. Second ingredient, I think, is, you know, imagine what the audience might hear, not just what you say.

I think we focus very much on getting the words right, but not enough on what the audience's perspective is going to be and how they're going to interpret the words. And I think one of the ways that I got better as a case class teacher was to be able to anticipate better how students were going to interpret a question, like all the different ways they could interpret it. And that I think is really key. And then I think the last ingredient, I would say, is be all parts of yourself, which goes back to this idea of the classroom as a theater. And like you actually have within you many different characters that you deploy at different times, the stern person and the joking person and that you shouldn't be afraid of using all of them at the appropriate moments in any given communication task. I really like that notion of bringing your whole self and giving yourself permission to be who you, you are when you communicate. That's very powerful. I feel a lot of us put on this communication person instead of who we are. And that notion of really thinking about the impact of your words on your audience

and planning for some of that in advance, I think speaks very nicely to your strategic thinking. And clearly, logic is critical. We've all heard people who just ramble and we wonder why and what makes sense. Well, Yesper, thank you so much for joining us. You made quite a convincing strategic argument for the value of strategy. And further, you helped us understand what makes for good strategy and good communication as well. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Thanks for joining us for another episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast. This episode was produced by Jenny Luna, Michael Riley, and me, Matt Abrams. Our theme music is composed by Floyd Wander. We invite you to find more episodes wherever you get your

podcasts. Be sure to tell a friend or two to listen in as well. Subscribe and go ahead and rate and review the show as well. Finally, join us on LinkedIn where our conversation continues. Before we wrap up, I just want to say thank you for listening. It really means a lot to hear how people all over the world are using these ideas in their own lives. It inspires me and the whole team that brings you this show. If you want more episodes and resources, feel free to follow, subscribe, and explore past conversations.

We're grateful for your support of Think Fast Talk Smart.