STRATEGYCOACHING 205
At this point, strategy implementation becomes fun. Although we are en-
gaged in developing a strategy for the future, we really don’t know what that
future will look like. How can we possibly know which direction the com-
pany should take? When I work with senior management, I challenge them to
come up with two or three distinct future scenarios. It’s amazing the level of
creativity that emerges when people imagine and articulate what might hap-
pen to the world.
Picture an oil company. In one possible scenario, the Russians and An-
golans decide to increase production and glut world oil markets. In another
possible future, hydrogen fuel cell technology takes off and everyone begins
driving hydrogen-powered cars. In a third, hydrogen fuel cells are a f lop,
and everyone in China buys a moped, and everyone in India purchases a Sub-
aru. In each case, the implications for oil production, distribution, and mar-
keting strategies are radically different. I encourage the management team
to ask themselves where they would fit in each of those worlds. What would
their strategy be if the future were to take that direction? All scenarios will
not have the same level of probability. But what if one of the low probability
futures were to actually occur? Without going through the exercise of imag-
ining that possibility, an organization’s strategy could be blown to pieces. If,
on the other hand, it had prepared itself mentally for the other wise unimag-
inable and even put metrics into place to track that development, it would be
much more capable of shifting direction. To develop these ideas, we consider
companies from other industries and other times that have experienced sim-
ilar change and look closely at what they did in response. It’s a game that
everyone enjoys playing.
Throughout this process, managing the dynamics of cultural differences
within the implementation team is a key challenge. After all, the chances are
good that not everyone at the table is an engineer from Akron, Ohio, any-
more. Some are in marketing, others design, finance, or operations. Some
have start-up backgrounds; others are from consulting or manufacturing.
Some are efficiency-oriented, others creative; some are revenue-focused,
others cost-conscious. Culturally, they probably come from far and wide. The
head ofinformation technology, the guy you’ve always called Ken, may be
called Kennichi when he e-mails his family in Yokohama or Krishna if he
hails from Bangalore.
What I’ve found is that the diversity of the management team makes the
company more likely to be successful externally, even though it makes the in-
ternal operations more difficult. The diverse group, though often in conf lict,
is able to see more possibilities and come up with a distinctly greater range
of possible futures. Conversely, when the management team is consistent and