Stool Pigeons

Strategic Gibberish in Action

Every so often, somebody has to jump up and say the emperor has no clothes — that putting something in a PowerPoint presentation doesn’t make it smart and concepts don’t become sensible if other people use them.
Today’s example is the confounding need to create a visual image of corporate strategy; more specifically, the three-legged stool. How many times have we heard an exec explain, “Our strategy is like a three-legged stool, with each leg equally weighted to achieve our goals.”

Just for fun, and to spur some thinking about other concepts employed without critical thought, let’s dissect this fruitless exercise in dumbing down strategy.

• Why is it always a stool? Stools are inanimate objects with little value and relatively few applications. You can sit on them, stand on them and, every so often, throw one at a moose. As sources of inspiration or energy, the moose would be a better mascot.
• Why is it always three legs? Can a company have a two-prong strategy or, better yet, one singular focus? The more legs a stool has, the sturdier it is, but the opposite is usually the case for strategy. The more legs, arms or tentacles, the less focused and effective it will be.
• Equally weighted? Strategies are never equally weighted. They are prioritized. Flowing from goals and capabilities, strategies reflect our ability to organize and deploy resources.
• What makes this intuitive?The idea of visualizing is to make something understandable. Stools are simple, but they don’t make people see the sense or the vision. Seriously, when was the last time an employee said, “I’m working on leg three?”

Words have meaning, as do symbols. Promote a nonsensical visual and expect nonsense in return. If the three legs are: build a customer cult, become synonymous with our industry and create the standards by which others are judged, say so. Don’t create some intermediate step between the strategies and the people responsible for implementation.So what is the lesson of today’s rant? When we repeat slogans or adages that don’t really relate to our business, we create added work for everyone and new obstacles to success.  It’s not enough to mean what we say. What we say must have meaning, or why bother?