Real time strategy

Guess what? A post inspired by something said to me? Surely not?! I hate to break it to you, but yes, yes it is. And I am going to mercilessly rip apart what was actually said, change the entire intent and pretend it was something else to get the point I want to make across? Wait, this is LinkedIn, not Reddit, isn't it? No matter, this intro paragraph is mostly to fog the snippet used as this drifts down your timeline.

'What is our strategy for [technology du jour Y]? How are you going to introduce it? Does the timeline for integrating it fit in with some arbitrary notion of Quarterly Planning? Where does it sit in the five-year horizon vision?'

So what is my strategy for [technology du jour Y]? In what is now my usual refrain here, that is entirely the wrong question to ask. The only reason I can think of to have a strategy is if you want to put it on a slide in sixty-four point flaming letters for a presentation to the board. As I can't see much, if any, use for having one otherwise.

But how do you know where you are going without a strategy?

I mean...you think we are winging it here? (Editor's note: in fact, he has been winging since he graduated. If not since he could articulate any thought.) Not quite, but why do we need a strategy? Can we not evaluate our problem space and see if [technology du jour Y] solves any problems we have? Or might have within a sane timeframe?

With every tech strategy comes great responsibility (for an ever-increasing AWS bill). There is a pinch of YAGNI in here temperred with a dash of FOMO. Are your thoughts being led by some MBA saying you need to strategise the eschaton, immanentize the long term vision? Why? What is the point of having a strategy?

But maybe we need to go back to definitions. Because we might be talking past each other. (Oh, definitions are also subjective, they don't have the objective rational basis you think they do. That though is for another time, when the ghost of Phædrus has left the glass cage.) What better way to get a definition of a word than asking the dictionary. At least dict strategy doesn't (yet) have any Generative AI (nnnnn) to it, so we can trust it:

Oh dear, that doesn't help. The word 'elaborate' is going to help my cause here. Even 'systematic' aids it. Why would you want something 'elaborate and systematic' in your plans? Feels very much up-front sunk costs, trying to get that strategy to look grown-up in your deck.

Do I want to start thinking of five-year plans? No, I don't. Whenever I was ever asked in an interview (thank goodness this question has died a death) 'where do you see yourself in five years time?' my answer would invariably be 'not here'. And there is the rub of strategy: too elaborate for the short term, too proscriptive for the long, and an inane question to ask.

I'm not against writing strategy documents as it affords some crystal ball gazing. If not in certain places a lot of navel gazing, too. But to me it is the utility of all things. Our strategy is to deal with problems when they arise, and to ensure we build in a way that they won't come back from the dead. Both short-term and longer.

But isn't short-termism dangerous? No strategy is chaos! Pure and simple! If you think that, you should look into your development processes, how your people think and generally remove yourself from the situation. As long as you never, ever paint yourself into a corner there is no such thing as technical debt and no need for a strategy to appease it. Again: you'll never need a strategy. Keeping an eye on the future, keeping abreast of current trends, none of this requires a strategy. It requires you to be openminded, adaptable to change and infuse everything you do with craft and quality.

Maybe you mean something different by strategy, but I remain unconvinced. You need to get more strategic. What does that even mean? Not reactive to immediate stimulii? Ignore current work patterns in order to have that five-year plan? Now of course you need a roadmap if you are releasing many and varied and yet-to-be-developed-or-revealed products. Does that mean you need a go-to-market strategy, a technology strategy, a strategy strategy? No it doesn't. At all. You can have a plan, which may or may not change. But we aren't perparing for the Siege Of Verona. (And there is another rub: business language is still couched in military terms, strategy is no different.)

This isn't another 'be agile' post, but it is certainly agile-adjecent. New information comes in, change you plan. And if a strategy is an elaborate and systematic plan, how easy is that to change?

Maybe a Just In Time Strategy (oh no, he's got the JITS! Yeah, need a better term there) is what I am sort of grasping for here. But realistically, I just don't like the word in my own temporally contextual cultural bubble. It gives off the odour of the wrong thought process to lead to the wrong approach.

Leadership doesn't need a strategy, it needs a plan and empathy. We are still in thrall to the subject-object classical Western thought patterns here. It also smacks of busy work for the board. How can they sign off on something if they haven't seen your strategy? How can you possibly approach their hallowed table unless there is a strategy? Your budget depends on a strategy, therefore a strategy we shall have.

I bet if I looked at the companies which has ossified over the past decades, they are littered with cautionary tales of failed strategies. The inexorable decline of the old guard. Yes, I know, it isn't the strategy that caused them to fail, but the structures inside them. That were more than likely build upon a strategy. Or a strategy pivot, those never end well.

More and more it really is the terminology used that confuses me. It feeds corporate thinking, and corporate thinking is hivemind at the best of times. (Are we values led now? Or is it radical canduor informed? Are our goals SMART? Maybe they are FAST these days? At least booksellers have a strategy - milk the current MBA trend, as another one will be along shortly to also milk.)

It all feels wrong. But as ever, I know nothing other than the small corner of the room I am allowed to paint myself in to. We should be allowed to return to gut instinct, feelings, interpretations. Experience, context and curiousity. Knowing our own business enough to be able to plan effectively. Our plans won't always be right, but it is better than an elaborate strategy that gets ditched every six months. A strategy that doesn't include [technology du jour Y]. Yet.