Strategy lurks in the deep places of our imagination
Most problems in implementing organisational transformation come back to a failure of imagination.
They became what they beheld.
William Blake, Jerusalem, 1804
Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire; you will what you imagine, and at last you create what you will.
George Bernard Shaw, The Serpent, Part 1, Act 1, Back to Methuselah, 1921
Unfortunately, most problems in implementing organisational transformation come back to a failure of imagination.
Leaders and managers can’t see past their administrative and process challenges. Consequently, everything they do shapes them toward what they already are, but slightly differently. So, they rearrange the deck chairs.
Imagination constrained
Organisations develop elaborate processes to control imagination, socialise it and constrain it. They have a talent for ‘grinding out diversity’. Consciously or unconsciously, the organisational systems and processes relentlessly ensure nothing changes. They worked hard to make a difference by limiting and constraining imagination.
The organisational cues and incentives for leaders and managers to keep everything exactly as it is while maintaining the illusion of change are powerful. We become chained into Max Weber’s ‘iron cage' of bureaucracy or Blake’s ‘mind-forg’d manacles’. Others do not impose these chains and restraints but are those we willingly put on ourselves.
The pandemic melted every management pretence and illusion. It also dissolved the hubris of experience, the trustworthy source of the ‘ways things are done around here’. It opened vistas and opportunities that were once only seen in the secret ‘what if’ dreams of young and inexperienced leaders – people who did not have the benefits of ‘in my experience’.
But while a part of me wants to believe that good things will come from our pandemic experience, a quietly insistent voice reminds me just how strong the shackles of our thinking can be.
Strategy is where imagination flourishes
If we let it, strategy is where imagination can flourish. But we must trick ourselves into letting go of what we know and permitting ourselves to see differently.
We could see imagination and action as opposites. Action demands the clarity of facts and ‘knowns’. Action has no time for abstraction, whereas imagination starts with emotion and wants to suspend belief in search of a different metaphor.
Using our imaginations, we can free ourselves from the sharp relief of facts and take a fuzzy view of the world and its facts. On a dark night, our imagination can turn a bush into a threatening beast. For a moment, the reality of the bush becomes fuzzy and is interpreted in another way. Our imagination has been engaged, often with emotion as the catalyst.
Promoting ‘fuzziness’ in strategy
Imagination requires us to forget what we think we know, which is the hardest part of strategic thinking. We desperately want to stay in the comfort of our cage.
A crisis is often the only opportunity for imagination to flourish— very briefly, the cage becomes fuzzier. But even then, the drive to action usually works to discount the future.
You say this is a pessimistic summary from someone who believes in the importance of strategic imagination! Here are three views on how we might become more imaginative when developing strategies.
A different perspective
G.K. Chesterton told the fable of two boys who were each granted a wish. One chose to become a giant, and one to become extremely small. To his surprise, the giant found himself bored by the shrunken land beneath him. The tiny boy, however, set off gladly to explore the endless world of wonders his front garden had become. The lesson is the value of perspective.
Strategy often takes the perspective of the giant looking down on the land. It is abstract, passionless, and meaningless. Thus, most business strategies are barren shelfware.
An imaginative challenge to this approach is to consider what different perspectives and opportunities come from seeing the world on a different scale. A strategy that comes from working with the wonder of practice.
Imagination in strategy does not need to be exotic or high-minded; it just needs to be curious and open.
Let go history
Miles Davis recorded the classic jazz album Kind of Blue in two sessions in 1959. The album is described as ‘sophisticated and sublime, yet spare and complex’. Kind of Blue is considered one of the greatest jazz albums ever made. In the language of management, the album ‘jumped to the next S-curve’.
Davis did this by detaching the creative process from past successes. According to Carl Stormer, Davis ‘forced his musicians to approach the music without expectations or preconceptions by giving them minimal sketches and sparse instructions’. For me, Davis made the facts fuzzy and freed up his musicians' imaginations.
How often do we start our business strategy with a review of the past? We ground our thinking in the facts of history and constrain imagination. Should we approach our business strategy with ‘minimal sketches and sparse instructions’? Should we instead try to see the possibility of the beast and not the fact of the tree?
Disturb indolence
Management ‘science’ is firmly grounded in rationality and reason. Imagination doesn’t get much of a look in. However, the disciplines of philosophy, art, and science all accept leaps of imagination as critical to progress.
Adam Smith (whose thinking has been selectively colonised by economists) argued that imagination is sometimes ‘indolent’. He meant that we can become so familiar with some process or action that we do not raise questions about it.
Smith saw the artisans of his day so embedded in the process of dyeing, baking, or brewing that they could not see the connections between activities or events. Production was a sequence to be followed in the order it had always been done. Preoccupation with a method, technique, and procedure dominates experimentation and innovation. How it is done is more important than whether it should be done. Time and history become baked into practice without context or meaning. Learning is limited to watching, doing, and repetition. Rinse and repeat.
For Smith, the role of imagination is to disturb the indolence of routine. Here, imagination is a deliberate and disruptive force. Imagination is rebellion!
Leaders often need to be up for rebellion.
Organisations have many embedded processes, ways of working, and templated approaches. Approaches are handed down from the experienced to the inexperienced, from master to apprentice. What is learned depends on the quality of the teacher.
When do we question these practices? When do we recognise that slavishly following an age-old but convenient method is wrong? When do we have the courage to experiment? When do we disturb our indolence? Then, we can apply our imaginations to give new insights into our familiar world.
In developing a strategy, we should leave ourselves open to wonder, embrace surprise with appreciation, and cultivate a spirit of imagination where we roam like artists, questioning, connecting, and challenging.
A response to the action-orientated
“All a bit airy-fairy and not very practical”, says the action-orientated leader. Maybe.
In response, I would say:
There is nothing as practical as a good theory.
Problems of organisational growth, decay, and renewal are everyday problems that need imaginative solutions.
I would show you how we have shaped our world through imagination and that only a little has been achieved with imagination.
Most of all, I would argue that Blake's quote – ‘They became what they beheld’ – is not just about the limitations of our thinking but also the possibilities of our imagination.
If we want to be strategic, we must permit ourselves to imagine.
