Keeping a Strategic Dialogue Moving, page 2

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ACT I: Taking a Long Day's Journey

Mary: You must'nt mind Edmund, James. Remember he isn't well. (Edmund can be heard coughing as he goes upstairs. She adds nervously): A summer cold makes anyone miserable.

Jamie: (Genuinely concerned): It's not just a cold he's got. The Kid is damned sick. (His father gives him a sharp warning look but he doesn't see it).

*    *      *  *

Jamie: (Moved, his love for his brother coming out): Poor kid! God damn it! (He turns to his father accusingly): It might not have happened if you'd sent him to a real doctor when he first got sick.

Tyrone: What's the matter with Hardy? He's always been our doctor up here.

Jamie: (With a scornful shrug of his shoulders): Oh, all right. I'm a fool to argue. You can't change the leopard's spots.

Eugene O'Neill, A Long Day's Journey Into Night 1

Sound familiar? Like Frank and Ian, these characters in O'Neill's play are caught up in a conversation that revolves around the questions: "What's wrong?" "How bad is it?" "Who's responsible?" and "What's to be done?" And like Frank and Ian, they answer these questions with accounts that clash, and the only option they see for reconciling their differences is to argue, and they know that that option is no option at all. Before long, they find themselves talking in circles and going nowhere in a dialogue gone awry.

When life imitates art, some pattern is at work. If we revisit the scene between Ian and Frank, we can see how the different pieces of this pattern work and how they shape the way critical strategic choices are explored, understood, and made. Later on, we can build on this foundation by identifying the mechanisms that guide organizational dialogue and by looking at how these might be redesigned over time.

Weaving accounts that clash.The first thing to notice are the different ways in which Frank and Ian account for what is wrong and what should be done. To paraphrase their accounts:

Frank and Ian are engaged in a familiar conflict between the entrepreneurial small company president and the large company executive. Whether you are predisposed to agree with one or the other's perspective, first notice that each account has an integrity of its own. Each one holds together; nothing striking is out of place. Even so, they clash. But how can this be? How can two people weave coherent yet clashing accounts of the same situation? If we look more closely at what happened, we can spot some of the pieces to this puzzle:

First, even though Ian and Frank may see the "same information," as Ian put it, they bracket off different aspects of the situation. Some of these they bring to the foreground, others they push to the background, and still others they ignore altogether. Notice that Frank emphasizes a study that focuses on growth opportunities; he underscores how established competition is turning into a slugfest; he points to the difficulty of sustaining any form of competitive advantage in that context; and he returns again and again to the question of whether continued investment is wise. In contrast, Ian raises the possibility that the segment is not yet fully satisfied; he refers to past decisions made consciously and carefully; he raises the possibility that these investment decisions might not be in pay-off mode yet; and he comes back again and again to the question of whether change is wise.

Second, when Ian and Frank do focus on the same aspects of the situation, they give different names to what they see, using metaphors that make their perspective vivid and compelling. To illustrate:

What Frank calls a slugfest, Ian refers to as a business getting tight. Where Frank sees growth, Ian imagines people fighting. Each one focuses on the "same" aspects and each one sees different things.

Third, Frank and Ian organize what they see into an account that explains what's wrong in a way that makes obvious what should be done. Like Mary in A Long Day's Journey into Night, Ian believes that the firm's troubles, while miserable, will pass like a summer's cold. The business is struggling, he explains, because it is just a little bit tight, and because carefully made decisions have not yet paid off. Explained this way, it's obvious that it would be precipitous to change course. Yet Frank, like Jamie, thinks the core business has a lot more than a summer cold; it's in its death throws. The core business is struggling, he explains, because it is in a slugfest with a paradigm that's old and a strategy that's all worn out. Explained this way, it's obvious that it would be a bad idea to continue the investment; it would be like throwing money at it. So, not only do Frank and Ian see different things and give the same things different names, they assign different causes to the firm's trouble. And in each case, the causes they see underscore their view of how bad the trouble really is.

When you witness conversations like this one, it's easy to see something's wrong but difficult to spot what it is. Paradoxically what's wrong lies, in part, with what's right. Ian and Frank are engaged in a process that goes on all the time, namely, defining a complicated situation in order to decide what to do. The difficulty arises when you undertake this process so automatically that you lose sight of the steps you take from facts to conclusions, making it harder to imagine how reasonable people could view the same situation differently. When this happens, parallel story lines emerge -- each one emphasizing its own "facts," each one cast in its own language, and each one meaning nothing to the other. 2

Making differences irreconcilable.When Frank and Ian define their troubles, they get trapped in a "point-counter-point" conversation neither liked or intended. But how can this be? How can two people get trapped in a conversation they don't like or intend? If you take a second look at the dialogue, you can see that it is based on three assumptions that make it impossible for them to reconcile their differences.

The first assumption is that the "information" they exchange consists of facts, and that these facts speak for themselves. When Frank first enters the conversation, he offers some data from a study on the growth potential of the high, middle, and low segments of the market: 0 to 2 percent for the high end, 10 percent for the middle, and 15 percent plus "projected" for the bottom. He then concludes: "And so the growth is very much at the low end, and as somebody mentioned earlier, our subsidiary had a tremendous year. I think this reflects a general dynamic in the market. The customers' desires are changing, and so the opportunities for us to serve them are changing, and all of it's moving down-market."

Of all the exchanges, this excerpt is the one most people think is full of incontrovertible facts. Yet if you look closer, you can see that no facts actually exist. Statements like "tremendous year" or "customers' desires are changing" might be connectable to facts, but they are not themselves facts. Similarly, but less obviously, the growth "data" cited on each segment are also inferences. They are predictions based on extrapolations from unspecified data on segment trends. Moreover, these predictions are a product of a particular way of segmenting the market and of a particular question. They come from a study that segmented the market according to the high, middle, and low ends and then asked about each segment's growth potential. Had the market been segmented differently, which it eventually was, it might portray a different picture -- one that showed how some needs are actually heading up rather than down market. Although this doesn't make Frank's projections any less relevant, it does mean that his data do not speak for themselves, as Frank suggests when he says, "You know it's clear that, relatively, the core business is by far in the no growth segment."

The second assumption is that it is possible to take the role of an omniscient observer when giving an account of an actual situation. This assumption is evident in the way Ian and Frank tell their accounts. Consider what Frank and Ian actually say and contrast this with what they might say if they assumed their perspectives were partial.

Neither Frank nor Ian pursue the possibility that someone might have other data, or a perspective on their data, that would alter their view. They act as if they assume that they see all the relevant data available and all the useful ways of viewing them. Had they asked more of each other and of others at the table, 3 they might have discovered more in others' views than these assumptions would ever allow them to imagine. Instead, at a point when it is especially important that they have a broad range of views and a deeper understanding of how people arrive at them, they get only two perspectives and only the most superficial understanding of each one.

The third assumption is that matters of self-interest are illegitimate or inappropriate inputs into a substantive problem. You can see this assumption at work in the way Ian and Frank repeatedly take pains to clarify their intentions. Recall Frank saying: "Let me clarify a little bit, because I know it comes across as 'put all your money in my segment." And then later: "I'm not advocating that you invest in my strategy. What I'm advocating is...." It is as if he is anticipating and then inoculating against people thinking that his perspective is motivated by his own self-interest and as a result discounting it.

This worry about how others might think is consistent with how Frank himself thinks. When Ian clarifies his own intentions by saying, "I'm just trying to be sensitive to the fact that some things may not be in a pay-off mode," Frank accuses him of "trying to take certain decisions off the table" -- as if that is obviously a bad thing to do. Ian, who rises to the bait, quickly denies the possibility: "No, I'm saying that the competitive advantage of the core business...was to have a broader line" -- even though a moment earlier, he has just asked rhetorically: "Should we deal with something as fundamental as [the decision to broaden the product line]?"

Frank's accusation, followed by Ian's contradictory denial, suggest that both of them a priori assume that it would problematic were it true. Yet imagine what might have happened had Ian said: "That's right. That is what I'm trying to do, because I don't want us to undo an investment decision that hasn't played out yet because of the time delays involved in implementing them. I could be fooling myself, so we ought to test, but I think pulling the plug now will do more harm than good." This response makes it easier to press the issue of whether the investment will ever pay-off, because it stops all the backing and filling around intentions. All this accusing, denying, anticipating, and inoculating makes the conversation so convoluted that the substantive issues get lost. It also pushes the question of self-interest under the table where it is much more likely to be pursued privately and unilaterally without regard for other interests.

These three assumptions reflect an implicit theory of knowledge that confounds the search for truth with the belief that they have found the Truth. 4 This not only sets the trap in which they eventually get caught, it narrows the lens through which the group can view a critical and complex problem. The problem at Elite is far too complex for any one person to hold all the relevant facts or to know all the useful perspectives on those facts. Moreover, when Frank and Ian assume that facts can speak for themselves and that they can take an omniscient perspective, they no longer see the need to trace the steps they take from their data to their conclusions. This makes it difficult -- if not impossible -- to learn anything new from their differences, and it traps them in the kind of "point-counter-point" discussion Ian wished to avoid. And finally, when they a priori assume that people's interests are illegitimate -- especially as inputs into a substantive dialogue -- they not only drive them underground where they can no longer be explored, they stifle the passion that drives excellence and commitment.

The Moral of the Story So Far. The more tightly Ian and Frank weave their accounts, the more repetitious they become, the less they mean to each other, and the more difficult it is to reconcile them. When executives can't find a way to reconcile their conflicting story lines, their dialogue breaks down, their efforts at finding a solution falter, and they soon find themselves stuck. In an effort to cut their losses, they then take a separate but equal stance: "Not that yours is wrong -- it's one avenue." But nothing gets settled this way, and outside in the halls, where people are likely to collude with one another, you hear a cacophony of conflicting stories, accompanied by a Greek chorus chanting over and over again: "No one knows what we're doing around here!" Before long, the person or group with the most political power feels compelled to impose a solution based on his or her own account of the situation. While this settles the matter for the moment, it risks overlooking elements of the situation that could reduce the odds of making a serious mistake or produce a more creative solution. Equally important, those with a different tale to tell are unlikely to understand or support the new course of action, not because they are disloyal, but because the imposed "solution" is based on an account that literally means little or nothing to them.

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