Thread by @ibscribe

Strategy is the glue that keeps teams oriented - so any systemic practices designed to prevent organizational drift have to lean on strategy as the foundation.

But what makes one strategy better or worse than another in terms of keeping oriented?

The answer is coherence. 🧵

What I mean by coherence is that the strategy clicks for an organization, like all the puzzle pieces coming together; conversely, an incoherent strategy has one or more aspects due to which it doesn’t quite fit.

There are 4 dimensions of coherence:

1/ legibility
2/ synchronicity
3/ composability
4/ affordability

Legibility

When a strategy is legibile, it’s easy for folks to digest. It’s clearly written, well synthesized, chunked into digestible pieces, and ideally summarized into a compelling visual or tagline.

We’ve all seen and read & heard strategies that overly rely on buzz words & rambling explanations - legibility means short and sweet. And when a strategy is legible, it enables and empowers teams to make decisions and trade-offs at a local level vs escalating things up the chain.

Legibility

Synchroncity

A strategy is synchronous when the organizational design aligns with it; in other words, a strategy has to navigate the hierarchy of a company.

Of course communication is critical and repetition is necessary, but if the hierarchy implicitly re-broadcasts the strategy, you get maximum distribution and alignment.

There are many mechanisms to share and drive accountability (OKRs, DRIs, etc), but at the end of the day if a strategy is creating friction by going against culturural norms, communication channels, and standard practices, it’ll be hard to execute.

What this also means is that sometimes a re-org is required to run with a strategy; given how expensive org changes are, you’ll need a legibile strategy for folks to buy in.

Synchroncity

Composability

Executing a strategy can be a delicate dance - composability means the sequencing is correct. There’s a logical ordering to a well laid plan, and not every workstream needs to be kicked off in parallel in a mad dash to the finish line.

The science behind a well composed strategy consists of proper scoping, accurate sizing, reasonable staffing, and dependency management. The less composable a strategy is, the more dragged down it is by coordination overhead.

Composability

Affordability

Affordability is an idea you might not have thought of that comes into play often. Just because a strategy is legible, the org is aligned, and the plan is logical doesn’t mean the org has the stomach to actually do it.

Strategic execution requires trade-offs and you have to say no (or no more) to many things in the interest of saying yes to the main thing. The willingness to make someone (employees, partners, customers) unhappy in the short term for a payoff in the long term is affordability

Affordability

In summary, if all these factors come together properly, you have a coherent strategy.

1/ legibility → written clearly

2/ synchronicity → broadcasted regularly

3/ composability → planned logically

4/ affordability → executed effortlessly

And when one (or all) of these areas don’t click, incoherence, and ultimately disoriented teams, are the end result.

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