Two Strategy Models To Navigate The Covid-19 Exit, But Which Is Right For You?

This chart can be your most simplistic map of what is happening across almost every organization across the globe. From the biggest enterprises to the smallest companies. From governments to charities and across various forms of education and healthcare organizations. We are either six months in or three months in, but the world is seeing seismic changes now and inevitable transformative experiences when it is all (hopefully) finished. There might be a long journey to that point and no guarantees on the way. However, the ability to get through whatever will come is going to be driven by a distinctive combination of elements, not some of the elements described in A or B, but all of them in the correct model.

Model A – It looks like positive action in the right way, but it isn’t.

Imagine there are one hundred units of time or one hundred units of currency. In effect, time is money or visa-versa. In model A, organizations are in denial (the black time) of the new world or the situation around them. Opening up with a denial mindset actually encourages a whole range of individuals or small groups to think about alternative worldviews (light blue). These are invariably disparate and rarely share common threads or themes. The amount of time churning through these alternative views sucks up five or six times more energy and resources than you think because the energy and ideas are all over the place. Sometimes small silo areas of performance (green) happen, but it is invariably by accident. In a highly connected world, it is very tough for those little moments, moments of hope to get scalable traction. Spending so long in periods of denial and a range of created alternative worldviews causes a sense of delayed panic and a drive to go straight to the action. We call this forming. Some of these forming activities might work in model A. Still, actions with value can only come after a careful combination of acceptance of the reality around you and the organization and then a period of storming and forming ideas, alternatives in groups or collectives around the organization.  

OK, now you know the right model is B. However, have you experienced the A model of denial, alternative universes, and a sudden drive to action? It’s tough to give measurable real-world examples here. 

A simple digital transformation example that starkly shows this example of model A in play is a simple digital transformation example. Organization’s (Global 2,000) that had reacted late to the ideas of digital transformation (denial and alternative world view) and had not developed the strategic re-alignments (storm) needed for success but had focused (forming) on some critical areas of digital investment, in fact, had invested more than 30% of their peers. 

Even with that significant overspend, their chances of success compared to those that lent into the new world, stormed and formed ideas, was 85% less productive. This is why model B is the best model for two simple reasons.

Acceptance of a new reality has colossal energy for the whole organization. Think about how clear you have; or have not been about the Covid-19 world we now live in for your organization. Have you asked what it means for you all and what it might mean in terms of what you stop doing, start doing or do differently? If not, then you have not allowed teams, groups, divisions to lean into the new world around you. People need time to accept and adjust. They also need to know they are going to become part of the engineering that new reality. Acceptance and empowerment to storm a new future go hand in hand.

Storming and forming is a simple result of all the best brains being put together in an organization. As leaders, we can get somewhere on our own. 

If we go together, we go far, far further. All the primary research for the Digital Helix found that the most successful organizations (measured in OPEX, CAPEX, organizational confidence, capacity for innovation) had a propensity for collaborative decision making that was twice as high as those that were more focused on silo functional expertise.

We are living through a seismic moment of potential change in the world. Political leaders and corporate leaders face this same model A and model B discussion. Acceptance, storming, and performing are the right sequence of actions to get the best possible amounts of performance, model B. The chart feels simple. Still, evidence shows from the Digital Helix that to succeed in moments of seismic change, we need the clarity around acceptance, and the constructs best represented by some level of collective storming and forming new ways to thrive.