Beware the one eyed strategist

Have you ever tried driving with one eye closed?

With one eye closed everything looks flat.
Only the size of objects lets you know how far away things are.
You lose the rich information that comes from binocular vision.

Driving with one eye closed kills your depth perception.

The combination of parallax, perspective and binocular vision gives you a richness to your vision that lets you assess how far away things are, how fast they’re moving relative to each other, and to pay attention to what really matters.

Some businesses operate every day with one eye closed.

Many organisations dive straight into How.

• How can we increase sales?
• How can we improve customer service?
• How can we increase velocity in our business?
• How can we manage growth?
• How can we better develop our team?
• How can we make smarter hiring decisions?
• How can we prolong our assets?

Too often they neglect the power of What.

• What drives us as a business?
• What business are we really in?
• What are we working to achieve?
• What allows us to make money faster?
• What’s our economic engine?
• What really motivates our people?

“What” questions often get at the heart of the enterprise, allowing you to consider new perspectives and assess underlying needs. Unless you constantly revisit the answers to the What questions as your touchstone, the How answers can take you further and further away from what makes your business unique.

How questions are easy to generate. They’re often reactive and reflect an incomplete picture of the business (and this is becomes even clearer in larger businesses). What questions let you set a direction and identify the causes and effects. How questions keep you trapped within your bubble of assumptions, confusing

We really need to blend the vision of both strategy eyes.

Together, What and How questions let you determine resource allocation with a complete picture of strategy. In fact, you need to decide what before you can determine how. So many elements of your business look different with a different “What“.

• Are you focused on a particular technology, and what can be done with it?
• Are you focused on the peculiar market needs of a niche, like startup watchers?
• Are you focused on sheer returns, and set your strategy accordingly?

Once you’ve determined the What you can look at the How in more detail.

Next time you try driving with one eye closed…

Remember, there is a much richer view available to you when you drive with both eyes open.
It’s safer, smarter, and will get you to your destination alive!

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