Trope
Is trope a good word? Wordle thinks so.
How about this.
“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”
The lead story in the WSJ today, was about Goldman Sachs, working through challenging times.
And a piece at the end from Forbes about “Culture Eating Strategy for Breakfast” of course.
The CEO is the boss
After reading the WSJ backstory about how the CEO of Goldman was shaking up the place, and many internal leaders were expressing frustration with the company’s direction, here’s the quote that stuck out as recounted by the CEO:
“Disney chief Bob Iger had given him some advice: At some point the CEO has to pick the strategic direction himself, and the leadership team has to be onboard.”
Jim Esposito was mentioned prominently in the article. I Googled him. He left Goldman last year after being there for 29 years. He is now President at a big hedge fund.
His online bio describes his roles at Goldman:
co-head of the Global Banking and Markets Division
served on the management committee
co-chaired the partnership committee
member of the diversity and inclusion committee
co-head of the Global Investment Banking and Global Markets Divisions
co-head of the Global Financing Group
Do these descriptions tell us anything about the culture of Goldman over a 29 year career?
Goldman’s strategy to expand into consumer lending business apparently didn’t work out. Was Jim Esposito right after all? Perhaps a story for another time. As CEO’s know, sometimes ventures don’t pan out, right?
Enabling Constructive Dissent
It’s the decision-making process that interests me now.
In a prior company, our CEO was fan of constructive dissent, right up until a decision was made. Then it was time to align and support the decision.
Back to another CEO, Mr. Bezos, when he advocates a culture of “Disagree and Commit” as a way forward when leaders disagree. Here’s the video link. Fast forward to about 1 minute in, his quote when referring to a hypothetical associate who he disagrees with:
“You are closer to the ground truth than I am. I’ve known you for 20 years. You have great judgement. I don’t know that I am right either, not really, not for sure. All these decisions are complicated. Let’s do it your way. At least you have made a decision. And I’m agreeing to commit to that decision. I’m not going to be second-guessing it. I’m not going to be sniping at it. I’m not going to be saying I told you so. I’m going to try actively to help make sure it works. That’s a really important teammate behavior.”
Thanks to YouTube for the video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Afoh23PHVP0
The ground truth.
Perhaps this is what leaders don’t know until we’ve put feet on the ground. Perhaps after flying around in circles, seagull style.
My intent here is to help leadership teams consider how to build flexible leadership team structures that enable rapid feedback from the ground truth-tellers, because they’ve seen it and experienced it.
Enabling Agility
We did this with Crisis Management Teams. After a disaster hit, they would report the status, real ground-truth, to the tip-top of a large company. Quickly. Unvarnished. And then return to business. It worked brilliantly.
Enabling Strategic Decisions
From the Forbes article, author Jacob Engel writes about his experience interacting with the leader of a successful company:
“From the get-go, I was impressed by his entire company having this unbelievable can-do attitude. Every curveball thrown at them was an opportunity for growth. The leadership displayed a unique blend of humility and confidence. Integrity was a real goal in everything they did.”
That sounds resilient to me.
It seems organizations can gather ground truth for strategic decisions. To venture forward into the unknown, testing, learning, trying things, breaking things, improving things.
Coordinating, even through conflict, stronger because of conflict.
Anti-Fragile?
We don’t need to fall for another trope… or build committees, ad-hoc teams, or take weekend retreats.
“A camel is a racehorse build by committee”
People and organizations are self-aware, learning machines.
So, let’s learn.
Here’s the original WSJ article:
Here’s the original Forbes article: