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Welcome to the Creative Confidence Podcast, where we talk to subject matter experts about creativity, leadership, innovation, and growth. I'm Colita Stafford, partner at IDEO.
For those of you new to the podcast, we open up the last portion for questions, so think about what questions you might have for our very special guest today, Roger Martin. I'll give a proper intro in just a moment.
First of all, thank you everyone for calling in and joining us. Please share where you're from. Many of you have Roger! Look at how many people we have today; it's great!
I want to give a shout-out to Carl from Grand Prairie, Alberta. There's a pulp mill outside Grand Prairie, which is in Northern Alberta. I visited it in the winter, and it was still the coldest place I've ever been. So, he'll have to confirm if it's still there.
Yes, yes, that would be a good question. I suspect it is.
Thank you, everyone! We have folks all around the world today from Colombia, Brazil, Sweden, and more. Thank you for making the time.
I am so excited for our conversation today. Roger is a repeat guest of IDEO, and he's going to be talking to us about strategy—what makes for a good strategy and what are some mistakes that people make when it comes to planning strategy.
We're also going to talk about tips. So let me give Roger a proper intro.
You have an impressive resume, Roger. You are the strategy advisor to numerous C-suite executive teams in Fortune 500 companies such as Procter and Gamble, Lego, Ford, and many more. You're the author of numerous best-selling books, including "Playing to Win," which I can see on the shelf behind you there, by the way, Roger, and your latest release, "A New Way to Think."
Your writing has been featured in numerous publications, including Harvard Business Review, and I personally am really enjoying all of your Medium articles of late.
In 2017, Roger was named the world's number one management thinker by Thinkers50. He is also the former dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto and an instructor at IDEO for our course, "Designing Strategy."
Roger, as always, thank you for joining us. It's a pleasure!
The one book you didn't mention, I will mention, is "Creating Great Choices," which I co-authored with IDEO partner Jennifer Riel. Thank you for calling that out; it's a good book. It was fun to work with her, and we get the pleasure of working with her all the time now.
Yes, she is an IDEO partner here.
Roger, before we dive in, a quick warm-up question: What's something that's bringing you joy these days?
Well, it's the Medium column that you mentioned. I love it! I sort of started innocently enough. My book publicist for "A New Way to Think" just told me, "Hey Roger, have you ever thought about writing on Medium?" I thought, "Oh, I'll give it a try."
I did, and I wrote a piece called "The Role of Management Systems in Strategy" because lots of people ask me that from having read "Playing to Win." People seem to love it, so I thought I'd do another one and another one. Sure enough, we're almost at 152 columns later. Every week, I've done one of these columns, and I really enjoy it because I go and work with companies, and whatever they're interested in or intrigued by, I often have seen it before and seen other people be intrigued or perplexed by it.
I write a piece, so that rhythm of listening to my clients and then being able to write something that's of hopefully general interest is a joy. Maybe that's a nerdly joy, but it is a joy.
No, it's wonderful! You're going to be able to share more of that gift with all of us today because we are going to talk about strategy.
I'm going to start with the beginning. I want to set some context with some definitions because some of our listeners today may be very new to this world.
As we near the end of the year—pardon me, no Freudian slip there—many companies start to talk about it's the time for strategic planning.
During our prep call for this webcast, you mentioned you want to demolish the concept of strategic planning. Tell us why.
It's because, sort of, planning in that two words—I wouldn't want to abolish it if strategy was the most important word in that twosome or even equal. But it turns out that the practice of the thing that's called "strategic planning" out in the world is almost entirely planning and almost nothing strategy.
I just think we've always had planning in companies long before strategy came into existence. Military strategy has been around forever, but business strategy kind of came into existence and into prominence in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Long before that, we had planning.
What I think has generally happened is that people have kept on planning and they call it strategic planning because it sounds kind of cool and interesting, but there is little strategy in strategic planning. That's why I want to demolish it.
All right, he's got some fans who agree!
The big idea is to recognize that they're two different things. So let's talk about that. What are the key differences? Why is it important to distinguish planning from strategy?
What are the key differences?
Let's start with why it's important to distinguish these two.
Well, because they are so different. The case is that if you only have planning, I would argue if you've got a problem. The really distinguishing feature of strategy is that it's about influencing the thing you don't control.
As a company, there are lots of things you control. You control completely how many people you hire, how many square feet of office space you lease, how many raw materials you buy, when you buy them, how much you advertise—all of those things are things you control.
The one thing that you don't control that's super important is the customer. You cannot order the customer to give you money. I mean, the government can, but if you're a corporation, you can't. What you need to do is compel them to want to give you money and actually enough money so that you can cover your costs and earn a profit.
The art of strategy—and it is an art form—is figuring out how you can configure all those things you control in a way that compels customers to take the action you wish them to take. That's hard. It's tricky. It's intellectually challenging, but it is the essence of strategy.
I love it!
Planning, on the other hand, is just saying kind of what we're going to do in each of the areas we control.
Got it.
What typically happens, unfortunately, is that companies spend a whole lot of time on strategic planning. They ask everybody, "Oh, Colita, you're running manufacturing. What do you want?" And Colita says, "Oh, you know, I need to refurbish this factory, and it's going to take $150 million."
And we say, "Okay, Rich, that's great."
"Daniel, you're in marketing. What do you need?" "A big ad campaign."
And they just list all of them and come up with a list of things to do, a list of initiatives. In most strategic plans, you'll see long lists of initiatives.
But if you add them up, they don't compel the customer to do what you wish. Then people get all sad. It's sort of like, "Oh, we did all these things on the list, and it didn't provide that."
They say, "Well, I guess this strategic planning doesn't work."
So what you're saying is that when many companies feel they are doing strategy, what they're really just doing is planning.
Yes, got it!
That's organizing everybody. I think everyone on the call would recognize that they organize everybody. You have to fill out forms and make your submissions, and then you get together and horse trade among, you know, "Are we going to do this? Are you going to do that?"
And the customers are sitting there sort of saying, "I don't care. That's not compelling to me," and buying from somebody else.
So just to make this very tangible for some who may be new to this construct, the qualities of planning involve things like projects, timelines, deliverables, budgets. They're very much the things, like you said, that you can control to a large degree.
What are the qualities of strategy?
That includes things like making choices to do some things and not other things, and making those choices with a view of the customer and having a deep understanding of the customer.
Something that, last time I checked, IDEO is pretty serious about is having a deep understanding of the customer so that you can figure out how to configure the things that you control to deliver something unique to them, where they say, "I have to have that one," or figure out how to deliver it at such a lower cost than all your competitors that you can win over your competitors.
So you don't have to be unique and different to win in that way, and that's what I call a—my co-author originally called it a low-cost strategy versus something unique for them that nobody else can do in that way, and that's differentiated.
Got it!
We are going to talk a little bit more about this because we want to get past planning and really help equip our listeners today with strategy.
But just one last thing on this: Why do people fall into the planning trap?
I will admit, I do, Roger. I feel like I'm making choices, I'm planning out people and resources. So why is it so hard to—why is it easy to fall in the planning trap?
There are a variety of reasons for it. To try and give them quickly: One is it just isn't taught.
You'd say, "Are you kidding me, Roger? There are strategy courses at every business program!" They teach planning, so it's a lost art in the sense that it just isn't taught. That's one reason.
The second reason is it's just harder. It's harder to have a complete mindset.
As you know, I've worked a whole lot with IDEO. I'm doing this course with IDEO because I love you guys. IDEO is so customer-driven, user-driven. You start so much with that.
That would not be the way I describe most of business. Most of business doesn't start there and work backward from that point. Instead, they start where they are, which is, "I use the factory sales region. Here's what we control."
It's just more familiar and easier. Unless you have somebody in the leadership of the company who is saying, "You know, we serve the customer," like AJ Lafley, my co-author of "Playing to Win," when he took over as CEO of P&G—P&G, what you'd think of as a highly customer-oriented company—had to say one of his adages, which he said over and over again: "The consumer is boss."
He wanted to make sure that we weren't saying our engineers, our clever engineers, are our boss or our marketers are our boss. No, the consumer is boss.
What he essentially meant by that is what I mean by it: You don't control them; you have to compel them. The only way you can compel them is really, really understanding them and having that recognition.
But it's just not taught nearly as much as it should be.
So let's go there. To summarize where we are so far: Planning and strategy are two different things not to be confused. The most important thing about strategy is it seeks to influence or compel the things that are not in your control, in particular customers.
So let's talk about what makes a good strategy and how teams can go about making a good strategy. What are the qualities?
Let's start there.
One is it is choiceful, and it makes what I call real choices. I have a simple definition that I hope people find helpful, which is: You've made a real strategy choice if the opposite of your choice is not stupid on its face.
I need you to say more.
I'm sorry!
Let's just think of a choice, and you'll see this in many strategic plans. We are—our strategy is to be consumer-centric.
Okay, okay.
So let's just think: What's the opposite? Our strategy is to be consumer entirely. Well, that's stupid, right? That's plain stupid.
So all you've made is a choice to be non-stupid, and that'll get you a D or a C minus. It's not going to get you an A.
If instead you're Four Seasons Hotel chain, and you say, "In our industry, which is the luxury hotel space, that segment of the industry, luxury service is defined as grand architecture and decor and sort of obsequious service—'Yes, ma'am, what would you like? We'll do anything for you, ma'am.'"
Four Seasons made a strategy choice to say, "No, we're going to define luxury service as service that makes up for what you left at home."
Even though you're staying in a luxury hotel, there's a place you'd rather be—at home. If you can't be at home, you'd still rather be at the office in front of being at a hotel because at least you can be productive there.
I love it!
So they're both aspects of a true aspect of customer centricity, but Four Seasons made a choice to do something that everybody else made a different choice.
Grand architecture and decor? Yep. Service that makes up for what you left at home in the office? That was a real choice, and it turned out to be a really good choice because it turns out that all these people staying in luxury hotels preferred that.
And then they could configure all their activities around that.
So I ask you the question: Who do you think was the first hotel chain to put shampoo in the showers—little bottles of shampoo in the showers?
Who did it?
Four Seasons!
Yeah, but why do you think?
Why? Because they referred to them!
I get it! Because it tied back to their strategic choice of, "We want to provide services for what you can't have at home."
So it went back to—they had a theory for what was going to be of value to their customers.
The art of strategy!
I've learned a lot from you, and what's a nuance in your story that I think is really important to emphasize is it's about making choices of what you will do and also what you won't do.
We have someone saying, "You know, it's strategy about doing the right things." It's about making choices, which includes placing bets on something that might not work out because you don't know.
That is absolutely right!
In some sense, it's all about figuring out the things that, if you did, would provide the greatest leverage for you in accomplishing your goals.
The sharp founder of Four Seasons' goal was to become the number one luxury hotel company and to be the definition of luxury service. In order to do that, he couldn't do all the things that were possible to do.
Right!
He had to make some choices about what he would do.
Exactly!
Often, sort of like a relatively tiny sub-segment.
Just on your "not to do" point: One of the things he did under this strategy is sell off all of his hotel properties and get out of the hotel development business.
Oh, interesting!
Yeah! He became a hotel management company. Rich people like Bill Gates, who now owns the whole company, and David Thompson and Michael Dell, they own the property that Four Seasons is on, and they actually own this and fund the structure.
Four Seasons specifies it, kind of gets everything for them, and Four Seasons manages it.
Why did he say that?
He said being a real estate developer—that's such a different business from running a hotel.
What we're going to have to do is get rid of that.
So we're going to stop doing something that everybody else does.
Now, lots of them have followed Four Seasons, but at the time, the choice wasn't stupid because everybody else was doing it.
So you can focus all of your energy on fabulous service.
Yeah!
Such a key idea!
Of course, Roger, you have experience in these very big, significant industries. I just want to say, too, all of us can use these same approaches in whatever team or organization we are in, including things like education and government.
We're very much talking about consumer behaviors, but the principles apply to making choices of how to compel and influence to provide value to whoever the audience is, whether that is students or hotel guests.
Absolutely!
So let's talk a little bit about tips you have for wherever people sit within their org to really focus on their customer and whoever that is.
I will just say you teach this strategic process in your course, and it's everything from a structured process for how to understand where to play and how to win.
So we're not going to go into that in depth, but I am hoping you'll share one of your top tips for where to focus if somebody is looking to make choices for their strategy.
Well, I guess the first thing I would say is remember that you have lots of choices as to where.
Since we've talked about it, and it's easier to talk within the hotel business, the luxury hotel business, there was kind of land acquisition—figuring out great possible land, construction, building, all that stuff—then growing and managing the hotel.
It is easy to say, "No, no, no, no! Hotel business means doing all those things!"
Because everybody else defines it that way.
No! There's a "where" choice of everything!
Making that choice rather than just implicitly saying, "We're a hotel company, so we do all those things."
You say, "No, no, there's a "where" choice, and we're just going to do this one."
I'd recommend that for everybody: Just look at what you're doing now through this context of "where."
What's the set of "wheres" we're engaged in now?
Then ask yourself the question, "Is that optimal? Is there a way to—sometimes it's expanded, 'Oh, we're in a narrow one,' and if we actually did these other things too, that would be differentiated."
Or we're just going to do one or two of the things that everybody else does so that would be my first tip: Don't take as given what the "where" your company has implicitly decided on or the industry has all decided on.
Think about a different one and how you think about that different one is on the basis of winning, which is how can you do that in a way to create superior value for the customers you want to serve.
Right!
And again, for Four Seasons, what he said is, "If we got rid of these things, we could focus our energy and attention on this one domain of how it feels to be in our hotels."
A bunch of customers will really care about that, and they will say, "Yes, we will pay what we need to pay to Four Seasons for that."
So you take the "where" and then reflect on, "In what 'where' could we provide great value to the customer?"
So I want to expand one little point you're making there too about providing value to customers.
I know many organizations often rely on quantitative data about their customers, which is important when it comes to strategy.
I've heard you say qualitative data as part of your customer understanding is very important. Why is that?
And I won't fight you, and I'll be generous on quantitative; it has some utility, absolutely.
I know I sometimes wonder whether that's too generous, but because I think the greatest strategies come from a depth of understanding of customers that is hard to acquire when you essentially flatten out the exploration with the customer.
So let's just say I'm going to do a customer survey of 10,000 customers, including Colita Stafford.
And I have as question three, "How much do you like blue-colored whatever it is? One, two, three, four, five on a scale of five?"
Well, essentially, that's taking everything you think about color and flattening it into either a one, a two, a three, a four, or a five.
All nuances are gone completely from them.
If you actually think about color in a different way, then when you say three and I accumulate that with all the other answers to come up with what people think about taste, it's this cold, flat, meaningless thing.
I want all the nuances, and this is why I say if given the choice, if I'm a CEO or I'm advising a CEO, and I say to the CEO, "You have a choice of either having a quantitative survey of 10,000 people or you, Mr. or Miss CEO, going out and personally spending an hour with 10 customers," I'll take the latter over the former a hundred percent of the time.
A hundred percent of the time!
Why?
It's because that CEO, if he or she is worth their salt, is really intelligent, really understands the industry in which they're in, which they're asking the questions, and will be able to process all of that information.
They'll ask you questions, they'll look at, "Oh, did Colita smile when I said that, or did she frown when I said that?"
All these little signals that you can't quantify and come away from that with some much more deep insights.
What if it's not representative?
Oh, that's terrible!
I say you want the insights, and then you can go back—now that you have the insights—and do the quantitative survey.
So they're complements more than substitutes.
Sorry, I interrupted!
No, no! What I hear you saying is it adds that distinction that enables you to better understand why this choice is a value to a customer, or it adds a nuance that I think helps give definition to—goes back to that strategic choice.
It helps you understand why that choice is where you want to play or where you want to place the bet.
I agree entirely!
Mastery of a domain of a subject matter is illustrated by or manifested in your ability to make finer and finer distinctions.
You're a designer; you hang around with all those designers.
When Tim Brown sort of says, "Not quite! If we just made it a little bit this way or that way," you'll listen to it because he can make this fine distinction.
That was not quite the right color—not exactly!
It's close!
It's so close!
But if we just amp this up a little bit, and if you took a non-subject matter expert, a non-designer, and they looked at the same thing, they'd say, "Yeah, yeah!"
Or an MD—an experienced MD looking at a set of X-rays versus an intern.
There's so much fun!
Exactly!
And they can say, "That's not healing exactly the way it should be healing. We've got to recast that arm to put a little more pressure on it."
Whereas the intern would be like, "Uh, to me."
So I want, when we're talking to customers, I want somebody with the highest level of connoisseurship to be understanding those customers and coming to the most important points of view.
Okay, right!
And that's like, you know, Steve Jobs!
I want that!
I want the corners around it!
Okay, you got it!
You got that nice brown!
How can you prove that in advance?
You know, you can't!
You need to connoisseur!
It goes back to the things you can't influence, but you can make more informed decisions the more connected you are to the people you serve, is what I'm hearing you say.
Yeah!
And it'll compel them!
It'll compel them!
I have to have this one!
I was looking at the statistics recently.
So Apple sells about, depending on the month, 15, 16, 17 percent of the world's smartphones.
What percentage of the operating profit dollars in the whole industry do you think Apple makes?
So 15 percent share—what share of profit?
Well, often, you'd think it'd be similar, within a similar range—maybe 15 to 20 or 30 percent.
How about 75?
Yeah, they're making good choices!
Clearly, they're making choices!
The other 85 percent of producers have to make do with 25 percent of them, but actually, Samsung, who also has a strategy—it's a different strategy—sells 17, 18 percent in an average quarter, and they make 20 percent of the profit.
So the remaining two-thirds make 5 percent, and that's because the rest of them are not making distinctive choices that compel customers to pay them enough to make a buck.
It's a charity!
67 percent of all smartphone sales in the world are a charity because those operating profit dollars—5 percent doesn't cover all the rest of the costs.
So they're a charitable activity.
Why? Because they aren't compelling!
Yes, people buy them because it's 67 percent of them, but what do they sell them at a rate that isn't justified economically?
So Roger, we're getting close to the time where we're going to ask questions. I know we've got some good questions, but I do want to just honor that we have taken a lot of time to go deep on a couple of key constructs.
We do this on purpose because strategy and planning, like we said at the beginning, oftentimes when teams think they are doing strategy, they're just doing planning.
The nuance that we just wanted to make sure everyone felt today was it's about making choices to influence the things you can't control, one of the biggest ones being customers.
So the more time you spend with your customers, understanding their needs, what's of value, the more informed strategic choices you can make.
But even so, all of them are bets you're trying—they're not guarantees.
I think that's what's important.
Any last points on just that?
You summarized it so nicely, Co, for what it's worth.
No, no! That is the essence!
If that's the thing that listeners take away from that, that's the most important thing.
All right, so then I guess we can go to some questions. I think that would be good!
Yeah, absolutely!
So let's start with—I mean, I know you've heard this one before—timing for strategy. When should organizations or groups talk about strategy, and how often?
The way I think of strategy is a problem-solving technique.
So anytime you have a situation where what you wish were happening is much greater and more favorable than what is happening—so there's a gap between the outcomes you're achieving and your wishes—that's the time to do strategy.
It doesn't matter what time of year it is.
There is no annual cycle to that.
It's a problem-solving technique for tackling problems whenever they are.
Planning is a regular thing. Like, if you're a public company, you have to go to the board with a budget for the operating plan and budget for the next year, and so there's some timing to that where you've got to put it together.
But that's divorced completely, in my mind, from strategy.
You should do strategy—do an exercise of making choices whenever there's a gap between what is happening and what you wish were happening.
Because what is happening is a function of all the choices you've made to date, right?
That's what produces the outcomes.
It's the definition of insanity if you think somehow those outcomes are going to get a whole lot better without making any different choices.
So it's the way of the world informing you: You need to make a different set of choices.
That's the time for strategy.
And let's just be honest: In this post-pandemic world, everything is changing often, and I feel like it's a much more dynamic sensibility you have to have at all times.
I feel like as a leader in your org, you need to be tuning in.
Yeah!
To go back again to an IDEO thing, in many respects, you brought at a commercial level to the world the notion of rapid iterative prototyping.
In many senses, I think the COVID world and the post-COVID world is manifesting the fact that you have to view what you do as rapid iterative prototyping.
I love that!
You make choices; it's important to make choices, right?
But you're going to learn something from every choice interacting with the world, and then you're going to have to tweak it and make it better and make it better and make it better.
So I think my advice to the world would be to take that concept from design and apply it to strategy.
Now, in the world of strategy, one of the things that you preach at IDEO, I know, is make it cheap and low risk.
Don't spend an insane amount of money on that first thing in strategy.
Sometimes you're going to have to spend a big amount of money to put in action something to be able to get the reaction that will enable you to prove it so it can be higher stakes.
But I would argue it's the same kind of game.
Even as IDEO is doing rapid prototyping, time is passing; time is money, right?
There is a cost to it, whether the cost is medium, bigger, or little.
But take that approach!
Yeah!
Too precious!
And also just don't assume that you can get everything right out of the box.
There's a great book by Bill Buxton called "Sketching User Experiences." He's a great user interface designer, and he has a chapter called "The Instant Success of the iPod."
It's a sarcastic title of the chapter because he shows there's a fold-out thing where he shows how much the iPod iterated in its first three years.
The last characters were maybe the eighth on this iteration is what we think an iPod looks like because they kind of stabilized on that.
But he shows, "No, it wasn't an instant perfect device."
It never is!
They iterated, iterated, and iterated, and it became the perfect device that sold like hotcakes because they weren't satisfied and resting on their laurels of something pretty good.
They just made it better and better and better.
Got it!
Okay, Roger, we have so many good questions, so I'm going to keep trying to get through as many as we can.
Okay!
And I'll try and give us quick answers.
You've got—
We're doing great!
Organizational change!
So this is—we have a lot of questions around how do you encourage an organization to shift away from planning to strategy, which can be a lot more uncomfortable, as we talked about.
Yep!
You're right; it is hard.
What I've sort of come to understand over time is that one of the two best tools for doing that is to help them understand that everybody has a strategy, whether it came out of any conscious set of decision-making or not.
Your strategy is what you do.
So I always start with, "Let's reverse engineer your strategy."
And that's what you do.
Then you say, "Okay, you got them," and then say, "The outcomes that this is producing, you know, how do you feel about them?"
If they say, "We feel great about them," I say, "Well, just keep doing them, I guess."
But in 99 times out of 100, they say, "Well, I wish this were different. I wish this were different."
Then I can say, "Okay, we have to make a different set of choices."
That tends to ease them into it.
I don't sort of say you have to do this thing called strategy.
In fact, I often don't even call it that.
I just say, "We've got to make some different set of choices. Let's start thinking through that."
So you can never get somebody to do something new and different if they're completely satisfied with what is going on today.
Right!
So you've got to find the place in which they are not satisfied and then show them an exercise for getting what satisfies them.
Then they will say, "Well, I want to do more of that thing."
You can say, "Well, that's strategy, guys and gals!"
Then they're more ready.
I would say to everybody on this call: Do not go in and try to say to people, "You have to do strategy, you silly people! You have to do strategy! You're not doing strategy!"
That won't work!
Solve a problem for them!
Be relentlessly useful, and good things will happen, as you know I say—the doctrine of relentless utility.
If you focus on utility, good things will happen!
Just back to wisdom from you too: Focus on your customer!
I'm never—even though I've practiced this for years, I'm continually humbled by—whenever I'm with a team that feels stuck, if we just take time to focus on our customer, listen to them, connect with them, we always find a path forward and something meaningful to focus on.
Absolutely!
But you have to sort of get rid of a preconceived notion of, "We're going to have to do this and then this and then this."
Yeah!
Listen and use it!
You said again the magic words: You will find a path forward!
You will!
If you have one that you're imposing on them, you will find one together with them.
Yeah!
So let's do one more question.
There's quite a few people asking about how this applies to these same constructs applied to the public sector or social impact.
Do you have an example of a story of how these can apply to improving the world for human beings or non-profits in some of those spaces?
Sure!
The framework that I use for strategy is learning, aspiration, where to play, how to win, capabilities, and management systems.
The big change that I make when I'm working for any kind of non-profit is to change slightly the definition of what a win means.
For me, a win means providing value that's far in excess of the costs that are put in.
Typically, in non-profits, the fundamental structure of them is somebody else pays the bills, and those receiving the benefits.
Right!
So if you're working, say, St. Jude's Hospital, all sorts of donors provide money so St. Jude's can give resources to somebody else.
They will give more money, and you'll be able to help more people to the extent that you create all sorts of value.
So what you have to say is, "Where can we play where we can create all value to the target of this philanthropy?"
Then you'll have a world in which the philanthropist will say, "Boy, that was—or the government will say—that's a great place to spend your resources, and we'll give them that, and then you can do more."
Can you give one really tangible example within either education or government of what it means to provide value?
Just so we're tracking.
Sure!
I can use—I was Dean of Rotman School for 15 years.
The value that we want to create is to have students learn something very valuable that makes them employable in jobs of the sort that they're interested in and helping the world.
You're competing against a bajillion other business schools.
You have to figure out how you can do that in a distinctive way so that the government, donors, students—it's a tripartite kind of funding of those things—will say, "We'll give you the resources because you're producing great output that will be helpful to the world."
I love that you said the nuance there too: Learning things that they can apply, be useful in a skill in a job.
Yep!
Got it!
All right, I have one last question kind of in the open question area, and then we're going to wrap.
So sorry!
So let's do it again!
I know, right?
Let's tie it back to where we started our conversation.
So Roger, how would you redesign the relationship between planning and strategy to just ensure that they're viewed as complements, not substitutes?
In the world today, planning is a substitute for strategy at least 90 percent of the time—maybe closer to 95 percent of the time.
That was perfect!
Okay, so Roger, we're going to start wrapping up.
I have one last fun question for you, and I'll let you close on that, and then I'm going to wrap us up.
I always love to ask guests: What advice would you have given to a younger Roger at an earlier stage in your career?
So while you think on that, I want to thank everyone for listening.
This has just been a wonderful conversation with Roger Martin.
Thank you, everyone, for your questions and fodder!
If you like what you've heard, I invite you to check out our IDEO course, "Designing Strategy," which Roger mentioned. He is the instructor along with the colleague he mentioned, Jennifer Riel.
We love Jennifer Riel!
Agreed!
You can find out more at ideou.com/designingstrategy.
If you want to boost more of your skills in this area, I actually recommend our strategy certificate program, which combines Roger's course with a second course called "Activating Strategy," and it's all about bringing your strategy to life and others along in how you make everyday choices.
We'll share the links on the screen, and you can find out more at ideou.com/strategycert.
I said strategy a lot today, Roger!
Okay, so back to you: Advice for a younger Roger or a different stage of your career?
Be more patient with others.
Earlier in my career, I always had this helpful desire to help people get better, do better, etc.
I would get frustrated that that wasn't happening as fast as I thought it should happen.
Now I just realize that all change takes time, and they're not changing because they reject your thoughts or whatever.
They're often processing it and trying to figure out how to fit it into their lives.
I think I'm a better advisor; I'm a better helper now because I'm more patient with the folks with whom I work—not because I have a lower aspiration for them.
I think they're going to get to a great place, but I'm now more chilled out about on all along what path at what pace they're going to do it.
That's wonderful!
Thank you, Roger!
Thank you, everyone, for listening.
Hope you go enjoy your day and think about how you want to approach strategy versus just control what you can with planning.
Okay, thanks, everyone!
Bye!
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