Year after year, organizations find that becoming more strategic is primarily a communications problem, not a problem of ideas but of influencing behavior. Management vocabulary is largely to blame, but it can change.

1. The Babel of Strategy
Codifying Decisions, Consequences and Accomplishments

2. Chaos Theory
In the 3-D space of Planning, many different realities
can derive from the combination of decisions
(commitment), accomplishments (outputs), and
consequences (outcomes).
In theory, there is a preferred reality that can be
engineered for the given time and place. Controlling the
variables along the way is an opportunity that becomes
a responsibility, and that’s what the plan is for.
The probability, however, is that there is only so much
precision that can be sustained, and that what is
acceptable within a plan can affect or be affected by the
pursuit of other plans – making each plan a potential
variable in the other plan’s likelihood.
Those two variabilities – within and around a plan –
make for an environment in which the describer of
what is going on can make things harder to recognize
and understand instead of easier, obscuring the view of
the forest with the ambiguous detailed view of the
trees. Depending on how descriptions are being used,
they can either hide or provoke the very thing that will
make or break a plan’s usefulness as a guide. ©2017 Malcolm Ryder / Archestra Research

3. Incoherence: Three Notes
1.
With strategy, a basic presumption is that the strategy must be
“adopted” to be useful rather than just influential.
To show evidence of adoption, management is expected to use
standardized forms of description, dominated by “measures” that are
qualitative or quantitative in expressing differences and changes.
But for managers the challenge is to decide what to measure, since
perfectly measuring the “wrong” things will lead to something
associated with intent only coincidentally, if not detrimentally, at best.

4. Incoherence: Three Notes
2.
The main difficulty in managing the description of that adoption is
reflected in the anxiety or clarity about what is most important.
Whether this importance is expressed in cultural vocabulary (goals,
missions, successes, keys, etc.) or in scientific vocabulary (objectives,
factors, performance, etc.), management is now deluged with
acronyms and debates about what to call certain types of issues and
why.

5. Incoherence: Three Notes
3.
Having multiple stakeholders in confusion or debate is not uncommon
where their differing points of view are not a part of the measuring
methods used to represent pursuit of the strategy.
But the uncertainty dramatically increases the difficulty of “adopting”
strategy, since adoption is generally not achieved except by
management’s “leadership” through description and demonstration.

6. Observation
One way out of the chaos of competing ideas and acronyms about good and
bad metrics, or right and wrong measures, is to go back to basics. Consider
the actual difference between being managed and being not managed.
The fact is, unmanaged activity can be successful. So why manage?
Unmanaged activity is far less likely to succeed as desired as the dual
pressures of urgency and coincidence mount up.
The purpose of management is mainly to make activity repeatable,
predictable, and “applicable” – by either mitigating or exploiting the
conditions of complexity, risk, priority and probability that exist with the
activity.
Things that aren’t helping with that purpose are likely not necessary for
“managers” to dwell upon, although parties with other responsibilities may
need to do otherwise.

7. Observation
Another way out of the chaos, complementary to the first, is to stop using the
dictionary of acronyms for a bit, and go look back at what more ordinary language
would be used to point at whatever is important.
If it can’t be understood in an ordinary language, then it probably doesn’t yet
warrant an acronym in debate, certainly not in the formality of methodological
standards.
Most of the time, people should be able to combine various ordinary ideas in order
to express a more complex idea that is unambiguous and, more importantly, as
easy to re-generate as it is to remember.
Therefore, as a combination, the way that it makes sense should also be the same
to most audiences, so that in the context of its presentation it has a meaning that is
not hard to appreciate.
It should not be difficult to create similar meanings in many different contexts by
being “sensible” in consistent but ordinary ways. Following: an ordinary vocabulary.

8. Clarity: talking about something instead of around it is supposed to be the point of measurement in
the first place. But metrics get mired in labelling that people don’t understand or don’t agree. They
need to be able to communicate about what matters and why, without debates.
Unclear Term What’s being talked about? Here’s the “ordinary” meaning that needs attention. Explicit idea Implication
Critical A condition in which the probability of a desired outcome occurring is at its most vulnerable necessary mandatory
Factor A type of condition that, according to experience or theory, could make a significant difference influencer element
Success A condition in which intended desired outcomes are credited to current outputs achievement winning
Key A device that sets conditions in a particular way decisive principal
Indicator A pointer about the location or direction of a specific circumstance signal status
Performance A degree of actual accomplishment compared to an intent progress advancement
Goal A desired future state, that is also considered to be necessary to achieve target purpose
Objective A specific step towards a goal, that is part of an explicit plan requirement assignment
Priority A level of relative importance that pre-determines what at any time will be supported more or supported less preference ranking
Risk A condition that is a potential inhibitor of the likelihood of success restraint problem
Result A current state that is directly attributable to immediately prior acts or events effect completion
Benefit A desired consequence above and beyond the initial condition that causes it gain need
Value The significance a party attaches to the difference one thing has from another reason justification
©2017MalcolmRyder/ArchestraResearch

9. Alignment
Finally, ordinary terms of understanding can reveal
important things like the following:
• something that is an end-point for one role’s
effort can be just a beginning or interim point
for another role’s.
Assume that I may accomplish something – my
“target” – that is merely a prerequisite for
someone else’s effort, whose own accomplishment
only supports a third person’s effort to reach their
final accomplishment.
That presents three roles, with three different
impacts, and they relate as seen here.
What is not obvious is that for each role, the
accomplishment may have required a strategy to
request it or acknowledge it. How many
strategies?
Who is in a role, anyway? Examples: an entire
company in an industrial value chain; a
department or project within an organization; a
person who is a member of a workgroup…
Target is: An Intended
Future State
Important
Progress
A Needed
Prerequisite
for
Role A
And here…
for
Role B
And here…
for
Role C
The affect is
here…
Any one particular accomplishment can amount to something that has a
different meaning for different purposeful stakeholders. Similarly, if each
stakeholder had been independently planning for it to occur all along,
their respective descriptions of it could have been different; they may not
have known they were pursuing something either highly similar or
complementary to the others.
A Stakeholder gets…
Who cares about an accomplishment, and why?

10. “WHAT IF…” Future State
(a Position)
Progress
(of Operation)
Prerequisite
(a Condition)
Management navigates complexity,
probability, and risk, so that the current
state can change as preferred
Definition: Purpose and Posture Priority Dependency In theory, certain available conditions
will allow certain actions to predominate
that will cause intended changes
Indication: Differentiator Effect Criticality Are observable facts able to express
whether compliance to the theory is
advancing or receding?
Alignment: Context Impact Connection What logic explains why things will
coexist and interact as needed and
tolerated?
Performance: Trajectory Degree Capability How much of the designated
stakeholder’s intention is currently met?
Value: Benefit Outcome Compatibility What known qualities account for an
expectation of desirability?
Common
Variables:
Missions
Agreements
Accountabilities
Methods
Environments
Events
Rules
Risks
Constraints
All addressed issues are coordinated to
the common intent of making
preferences usual instead of unusual
NET: Every strategy is a theory, a “WHAT IF…” about how things can add up to the future.
©2017 Malcolm Ryder / Archestra Research

11. Archestra notebooks compile and organize decades of in-the-field empirical findings. The notes offer explanations of why things
are included, excluded, or can happen in certain ways or to certain effects. The descriptions are determined mainly from the
perspective of strategy and architecture. They comment on, and navigate between, the motives and potentials that predetermine
the decisions and shapes of activity as discussed in the notes. As ongoing research, all notebooks are subject to change.
©2017 Malcolm Ryder / Archestra Research
©2017 Malcolm Ryder / Archestra Research
www.archestra.com
mryder@archestra.com