Doz and Kosonen’s new book Fast Strategy presents their research into how companies can dramatically alter their core businesses in response to dynamic strategic environments. I’m just reading through it, and one of their comments caught my eye, as we emphasize a similar approach to Discovery Driven Planning (DDP). With DDP, we always say it’s important for the plan to be “our” plan, not “my” plan, because that emphasizes the value of learning.
In their book (p. 28) a similar point is made, and the quote they use is beautiful:
“…collective decisions are likely to be less conservative and more self-confident than individual decisions made by executives who have more to lose by being wrong for the first time than to gain by being right one more time.”
That calculus – asymmetry in rewards for being “right” drives a lot of dysfunctional behavior in organizations struggling with uncertainty.