71. Strategy Success: How to Communicate Your Gameplan

Matt Abrahams 0:00 I passionately believe that strategic communication is critical to success in business and in life. But we must also think about strategy and how we communicate that. Many of us focus on our day-to-day work on just the tasks we need to complete and executing them well. Taking time to reflect on strategy in our organizations and our own life can help us be successful. [upbeat music] I'm Matt Abrahams, and I teach Strategic Communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast. I am very excited to speak with Jesper Sørensen. Jesper is a professor of organizational behavior at the GSB, along with being the Senior Associate Dean of Academic Affairs. Jesper specializes in dynamics of organizational and strategic change. He teaches strategic leadership, crafting and leading strategy. And along with fellow professor Glenn Carroll, Jesper wrote Making Great Strategy: Arguing for Organization Advantage. Welcome, Jesper. Thanks for being here. I'm super excited for our conversation.

Jesper Sørensen 1:11 Thanks for having me, Matt. It's really an honor to be on your podcast.

Matt Abrahams 1:14 [laughs]

Matt Abrahams 1:14 Well, thank you. Let's go ahead and get started. Uh, you've been studying and teaching strategy for over 25 years. Can you share with us how you define strategy and explain how it's different from planning?

Jesper Sørensen 1:27 Sure. So, you know, I think, um, you know the tagline here at the GSB, "Change lives, change organizations, change the world." What I always like to tell students is if you want to change the world, you have to build great organizations.

Matt Abrahams 1:40 Mm-hmm.

Jesper Sørensen 1:40 Because large-scale change always happens through organizations. And if you're going to build a great organization, you have to have the resources to sustain that organization. And strategy is really about explaining how you secure that organization's economic prosperity. And if you're a public company, that means how do you maximize profits-

Matt Abrahams 2:01 Mm-hmm

Jesper Sørensen 2:01 ... perhaps. But even if you're a nonprofit, you have to have a strategy that is somehow the logic by which you get enough resources to be able to, to survive and do what it is you want to do. Now, that's different from planning. Like, I think planning is really about the order of operations, right?

Matt Abrahams 2:16 Hmm.

Jesper Sørensen 2:16 It's the sequence of things that you're going to do, uh, once you know why it is that you have a reason to do something and what the outcome is going to be. And so I think strategy is, in that sense, much more complicated because in order to get the resources that you need, you have to engage with other actors. So you have to engage with your customers and your suppliers and so on and so forth, and you don't have control over them. Planning is about the things that you can control.

Matt Abrahams 2:45 Mm-hmm.

Jesper Sørensen 2:45 But strategy is really much more complicated in that sense.

Matt Abrahams 2:48 So it sounds like planning is v- is much more tactical. Once you have the strategy, you then invoke the plans to enact that strategy.

Jesper Sørensen 2:56 Exactly.

Matt Abrahams 2:57 You shared that one of the prime directives for leaders is to focus on building a strategy. What are some of the mistakes or misconceptions you've found over the years that leaders have about strategy or its role in their organization?

Jesper Sørensen 3:12 So I think the, the biggest misconception that a lot of managers in organizations have, and, and, and leaders, is that strategy is not their job.

Matt Abrahams 3:21 Mm-hmm.

Jesper Sørensen 3:22 So I think in a lot of organizations, we have this image of strategy being dictated at the top.

Matt Abrahams 3:29 Right.

Jesper Sørensen 3:29 That the CEO is going to articulate, "Here's what the strategy is," and, you know, it's like a football coach sending the play in from the sideline, and then we're all just going to go and execute on it.

Matt Abrahams 3:39 Right.

Jesper Sørensen 3:39 And so you'll meet tons of managers who will say, "I don't do strategy. I'm just about execution."

Matt Abrahams 3:46 Mm-hmm.

Jesper Sørensen 3:47 But of course, strategy is really about how you're going to best allocate your time and your resources. That's ultimately what it's about. And so if you have any responsibility in an organization, you're doing strategy.

Matt Abrahams 3:58 Mm-hmm.

Jesper Sørensen 3:59 And so you need to be able to engage with the strategy. And I think one of the things that happens is that we disempower ourselves if we think about strategy as that. The related misconception is then that, um, people think of strategy as kind of like a set it once a year-

Matt Abrahams 4:17 Right

Jesper Sørensen 4:17 ... or once every five years kind of thing, and then we're just going to go execute on that plan. But, you know, if you think that strategy is se- You know, no, no battle plan survives contact with the enemy, right?

Matt Abrahams 4:28 [laughs] Right.

Jesper Sørensen 4:28 And so, like, as soon as you start to do things, things start to change. And so it's not just about drafting this beautiful architectural blueprint and then handing it off for somebody to go build it, because you've got to adapt to the changing landscape.

Matt Abrahams 4:43 So I, I'm hearing you say that strategy is something that everybody owns within an organization, it's not just comes down from on high, and that it has to adapt and change. I have been part of several organizations where when people say, "We're going to strategically plan," everybody's eyes roll, and they think, "Oh, we're just going to put another document on the shelf," or, "It's just going to sit on some website somewhere." And what I'm hearing you say is that it's, it's living, and you have to evolve it, and everybody's involved in it. Which leads me to the next question, which is, in your book and teaching, uh, you and Glenn Carroll make a very convincing

Matt Abrahams 5:13 claim that organizations should craft strategy arguments. Can you share what you mean by a strategy argument? Uh, what are they, and how can they help?

Jesper Sørensen 5:23 What Glenn and I are trying to do in that book is basically, you know, help people think about strategy not as just a set of analytical frameworks-

Matt Abrahams 5:33 Mm-hmm

Jesper Sørensen 5:33 ... which is what we teach many times in business school.

Matt Abrahams 5:35 Right.

Jesper Sørensen 5:36 So you think about the classic way of teaching strategy in a business school is Porter five forces or, or, or differentiation versus low cost, and those are all really important. But when you're doing strategy on a day-to-day basis, you have to understand, like, how is this working? So it's an explanation, and that's how I do think it's related to communication.

Matt Abrahams 5:54 Right.

Jesper Sørensen 5:54 It's an explanation for how you think you're going to succeed, and that's an argument. And an argument is simply a set of assumptions that lead to a conclusion-

Matt Abrahams 6:02 Mm-hmm

Jesper Sørensen 6:02 ... right?

Matt Abrahams 6:03 Right.

Jesper Sørensen 6:03 That, that force a conclusion. And so what a strategy argument is, it's a statement about what are the investments and the activities that we are going to undertake that's going to lead us to be able to s- create and capture economic value. And if we can do those things, right, if we can understand the connection between those investments and those activities and how we create economic value and how we c- capture economic value, then we can start to have, uh- ... sophisticated conversations about like what is it that's working, what is it that's not working, and what gives us a model through which we can see the world.

Matt Abrahams 6:40 The thing I feel s- is so powerful about this notion of strategy as an argument is, one, it involves how you think about it. Because when we craft arguments, we think about things like who are we speaking to? What's the context? And it implies that this is a conversation that has to be had. Again, it's not some dictation that comes down from, from somebody. So I find that really powerful, and it also implies in an argument that there is debate and discussion and change and evolution, and I think that's really, really important. And it fits very nicely with what, as you know, I teach strategic communication. And while I talk a lot about the importance of communicating strategically, I'm really curious to have you share your thoughts on how communication is important in strategy.

Jesper Sørensen 7:32 So I think there's two different parts to that.

Matt Abrahams 7:34 Right.

Jesper Sørensen 7:34 And one, just to key off of, of what you just said-

Matt Abrahams 7:36 Yeah

Jesper Sørensen 7:36 ... like I do think, and in, in the book, Glenn and I, we, we devote an entire chapter to basically thinking about how can you argue constructively-

Matt Abrahams 7:43 Sure

Jesper Sørensen 7:43 ... as a group in an organization. Oftentimes, what we say when we teach, you know, if we teach MBA students or executives, we say, you know, "You should go and you should argue more in your organizations." And a lot of people are then like, "Whoa, whoa, no-"

Matt Abrahams 7:56 [laughs]

Jesper Sørensen 7:56 "... wait, I don't, I don't want to do that," because what they're hearing is fight. Like, and we're not saying you should go fight more, 'cause so a fight is kind of like, you know, you're throwing assertions at each other, and you're just waiting for somebody to give in, so it's like a street fight. But there are ways to structure debates and arguments so that they are constructive, where and part of that is about having the, uh, ability to listen to somebody else and hear what it is that they're trying to say, and, and hear what their logic is. I think most people, um, believe things for a reason, like they have a reason for believing it. You might disagree both with their conclusion and with some of their reasons, but you can't engage constructively in a debate unless you hear them on that dimension. And so really, it's about how do you structure engagements with each other to create that space. I think the other part of communicating strategically that's really important is, is, is when we think about delegation.

Matt Abrahams 8:55 Hmm.

Jesper Sørensen 8:56 So what we know is that if you want to build a great organization, you're not going to be able to do that yourself. You can't make all of the decisions, much as you might want to. And so we all know that we have to be able to delegate, and we have to be able to empower people. And we have lots of books that tell us delegation is wonderful, and even-

Matt Abrahams 9:13 [laughs]

Jesper Sørensen 9:13 ... the word empowerment sounds so wonderful. But of course, the truth is most leaders wake up at 3:00 in the morning petrified because they delegated a task to somebody else. And what are they petrified, what are they scared about? They're scared that their subordinate is going to make the wrong decision. And at 3:00 in the morning, what is the wrong decision?

Matt Abrahams 9:36 Yeah.

Jesper Sørensen 9:36 It's not the decision I would have made. So there's this tension. Like on the one hand, you don't want to make all the decisions, and yet you want to make all the decisions.

Matt Abrahams 9:49 [laughs]

Jesper Sørensen 9:49 And so, um, or at least you want somebody who might be closer to the information to make a better decision because they have more information, but you want them to think about it the way you think about it.

Matt Abrahams 10:00 Mm-hmm.

Jesper Sørensen 10:01 And then the question is, how do you get people to think about things the way you think about things? That's through communication. So that's about really explaining why you think we win, why you think we are a successful organization, why you think these sets of actions are the things that we need to do in order to accomplish our goals. And so that's where I do think really clear communication is going to be essential to effective strategic leadership.

Matt Abrahams 10:28 The fact that you are invoking the power of listening and being willing to engage in conflict, but productive conflict, so we can get to a collaborative place with our strategy, is a very different way of thinking about strategy in general, and I think that's really powerful for all of us to think about. And clearly, being able to articulate your strategy, packaging it, and communicating it in a way that not only motivates people but also helps make better decisions is absolutely critical.

Jesper Sørensen 10:59 Right. I mean, there's this element of strategy that we have a... I think most of our stereotype of what strategy is, is very top-down.

Matt Abrahams 11:05 Yes.

Jesper Sørensen 11:05 And so then you just, you would think broad, you know, communication, just broadcasting. But of course, we also know that lots of great strategies are discovered.

Matt Abrahams 11:13 Mm-hmm.

Jesper Sørensen 11:13 And they're discovered because the leaders were able to listen to their frontline workers or their frontline managers tell them, "Here's something that's even better than what we're doing now." And so of course, strategy's really both. It is both top-down and bottom-up. And so you have to be able to both be able to articulate what it is that you want to say and where you think we should be going, but then also be able to listen and hear where you might be wrong. 'Cause I think the other part that we really emphasize is in an argument, well, how do you make an argument? You make assumptions.

Matt Abrahams 11:45 Yeah.

Jesper Sørensen 11:46 And assumptions are testable, like they're gonna be proven wrong or they're gonna be proven right. And like you have to be open to the possibility that the assumption you made yesterday has turned out to be wrong today, and that you therefore need to revise your theory. That doesn't mean you have to go back and give up, but it means that you have to update your, your understanding of the world.

Matt Abrahams 12:05 We've talked a lot about testing assumptions and how to really challenge yourself to be open to what the, the reality is instead of staying fixed on what you thought it was, and thank you for re-emphasizing that. I have to tell you, when I was doing research for our conversation, I had a big smile on my face when, when I saw that in your class and in your thinking about strategic communication and communicating about strategy, you talk a lot about how important storytelling is. And I'm curious if you can help us understand

Matt Abrahams 12:36 what makes a good story about strategy?

Jesper Sørensen 12:40 So if you think about strategy as an argument, then, uh, I think a natural criterion suggests itself, and that criterion is logic.

Matt Abrahams 12:50 Mm-hmm.

Jesper Sørensen 12:50 So a good strategy story, on the one hand, has a clear narrative to it.

Matt Abrahams 12:54 Mm-hmm.

Jesper Sørensen 12:54 And you can follow the steps-

Matt Abrahams 12:55 Mm-hmm

Jesper Sørensen 12:56 ... and so on and so forth, but it should also be internally coherent, and that is the realm of, of logic. Like, and philosophers and logicians have spent centuries thinking about, how do we assess-

Matt Abrahams 13:07 Mm-hmm

Jesper Sørensen 13:08 ... arguments in terms of whether or not... Like, whatever assumptions you're making, do the assumptions that you do make lead to the conclusion that you think it does? And that is, I think, incredibly important in assessing strategy stories. And where it's particularly important is when you're doing strategy for the future. Like, when you're trying to say, "Here's where we want to be in five years. Here's my narrative."

Matt Abrahams 13:33 Mm-hmm.

Jesper Sørensen 13:33 Well- well, think about it. You're telling a story about something that hasn't happened yet, and so how do you know whether that's a good story? Like, you can say, "Well, it resonates with me, it inspires me," and those are important and useful criteria, but of course, they could also be foolishness. So you want to also be able to say, "Okay, I don't know whether all these assumptions are going to be true, and I can't know until I act, but at least I want to know whether, if they are true, will they lead to the outcome that I think-

Matt Abrahams 14:03 Mm-hmm

Jesper Sørensen 14:03 ... they will lead to?" And that's where we, you know, in the book, Glenn and I get into this somewhat technical set of chapters on thinking about what is logical validity and-

Matt Abrahams 14:11 Mm-hmm

Jesper Sørensen 14:11 ... and soundness and so on and so forth, which I think a lot of people who are, like, doing strategy are like, "Well, where did that come from?"

Matt Abrahams 14:17 [laughs]

Jesper Sørensen 14:17 "And I stopped thinking about that in eighth grade," or something like that. But I do think that, that holding on to those ideas is, like, where... The way we should assess each other's arguments in the first instance is by the extent to which they're internally coherent.

Matt Abrahams 14:31 Right. And, and one of the things I, I strongly advocated, whenever you're creating content, stories, et cetera, that there is a logical coherence, things follow, and that they're premises that you could support. I'm curious to get another dimension of story that I, I wonder your thoughts on, which is once you have a strategy, you have to propagate it in an organization, and sometimes I think the most effective way to do that is not putting it on posters or little note cards people have. It's the stories that leaders tell. Do you have experience, uh, on that or thoughts on how, once we have the strategy, how do we actually communicate it and use story to actually motivate people to align to that strategy?

Jesper Sørensen 15:09 I, I, I think, first of all, I, I totally agree with the premise of your question.

Matt Abrahams 15:13 Okay.

Jesper Sørensen 15:13 Like, I do think that communication of these stories is really important, and I would add, like, uh, relentless-

Matt Abrahams 15:20 Yeah

Jesper Sørensen 15:20 ... communication. I think one aspect of that is, like, it's very easy to approach management and leadership as a exercise in giving orders.

Matt Abrahams 15:30 [laughs]

Jesper Sørensen 15:32 And I think that's fine. Like, I think there is an element to it that's about, you know, again, delegation and giving orders. But, but, but maybe give people a, a little bit of grace in the sense of saying, "Here's why."

Matt Abrahams 15:44 Mm.

Jesper Sørensen 15:44 Like, "Here's what I'm thinking," and just let people into your mind and your logic, because then they're gonna do a better job. Like, I just think that's the most important thing, and so I think the more you can just be aware of the need to always be communicating what your reasoning is and what your logic is, the better off you'll be.

Matt Abrahams 16:04 I absolutely agree, and I... A- and if people can internalize your logic, they can then be able to not only know what they need to do and feel confident that it's the right thing, they can then communicate it to others, so it becomes a way of propagating that information.

Jesper Sørensen 16:20 And they can more productively disagree with you.

Matt Abrahams 16:22 That's true.

Jesper Sørensen 16:23 Right? Because then-

Matt Abrahams 16:23 That's true

Jesper Sørensen 16:23 ... they can say, "Oh, but wait a second, you thought that this was gonna be true, and it's not, so now, boss, we gotta do something differently."

Matt Abrahams 16:29 Absolutely, yeah.

Jesper Sørensen 16:29 And it's not disrespectful or anything like that. It's just like, the world wasn't the way you thought it was, and I can help you do a better job.

Matt Abrahams 16:36 Right, and it allows for that immediate feedback so you can make those adjustments, for sure. Before we end, I'd like to ask you the same three questions I ask everyone. You okay with that?

Jesper Sørensen 16:46 Yep.

Matt Abrahams 16:47 All right, here we go. If you were to capture the best communication advice you've ever received as a five- to seven-word presentation slide title, what would that be?

Jesper Sørensen 16:59 The five to seven words would be, "A classroom is a theater."

Matt Abrahams 17:03 Oh.

Jesper Sørensen 17:03 So I had the pleasure of, of working a number of times, actually, with a teaching coach named Barbara Lane Brown.

Matt Abrahams 17:10 Mm.

Jesper Sørensen 17:10 And she was a, a former actor and, uh, theater director. And, and she really helped me think about how, you know, when you're teaching a class, which is obviously a very strong form of communication, like, you're putting on a play, and you have to think about all the dif-

Matt Abrahams 17:28 Uh-huh

Jesper Sørensen 17:28 ... like, think about it the same way. So like, you know, when you're first starting out, for example, you kind of tend to just kind of like ... [laughs] Okay, let me just start talking.

Matt Abrahams 17:37 [laughs] Yeah.

Jesper Sørensen 17:37 Like, as opposed to taking command of the room.

Matt Abrahams 17:39 Right.

Jesper Sørensen 17:40 Like, a play doesn't start by somebody just wandering out on stage-

Matt Abrahams 17:43 [laughs]

Jesper Sørensen 17:43 ... and deciding to start talking, right?

Matt Abrahams 17:44 Well, a good play doesn't. [laughs]

Jesper Sørensen 17:45 A good play doesn't. And a good theater performance has characters, a ve- different characters. And so thinking about yourself as an individual and, like, the different characters that you might dep- deploy in the same class, and thinking about engagement with the audience and how you move, and all those other kinds of things, it was really powerful for me. It changed the way I taught, and definitely for the better.

Matt Abrahams 18:08 I have to say that I'm pleasantly surprised and, and a bit shocked. I, I see you as somebody who is... I mean, you're a fantastic teacher, and you're very logical and methodical, and I love that I now see behind the curtain, literally and figuratively-

Jesper Sørensen 18:21 Yeah

Matt Abrahams 18:21 ... that you, you think about it as a play. And I think all of us should think about the theater of our communication. Now, I don't mean we have to be actors, but think about the way the environment's set up. How are you starting, as you mentioned? How do you end? How do you build excitement? A- and all of those are things that we can learn from acting. And, and thank you. That, that, that's fantastic. Who is a communicator that you admire, and why?

Jesper Sørensen 18:45 So having listened to your podcast, I of course knew you were going to ask this question.

Matt Abrahams 18:49 [laughs] Yes.

Jesper Sørensen 18:50 And I'm, in general, terrible at asking, at, at answering questions like, who's your favorite X?

Matt Abrahams 18:55 I'm sorry.

Jesper Sørensen 18:55 And so I was stumped. No, no, no, that's fine. So I, I, I texted my kids. My kids are all grown, and I said, you know, "How, how should I answer this question?" And one of my sons said, "Bill Belichick."

Matt Abrahams 19:06 [laughs]

Jesper Sørensen 19:07 'Cause I'm a big New England Patriots fan. And then my other son said, "The Swedish Chef," 'cause they're big Muppets fans.

Matt Abrahams 19:13 [laughs]

Jesper Sørensen 19:14 And then my daughter said, "Emmett," who is our dog, one of our dogs.

Matt Abrahams 19:18 [laughs]

Jesper Sørensen 19:19 And I thought about, 'cause what Emmett the dog does, he has this amazing ability to get me up with nonverbal communication at 5:30 in the morning.

Matt Abrahams 19:26 [laughs]

Jesper Sørensen 19:26 Like, it's just ability. So I actually thought, well, what, what unifies all of those? 'Cause, you know, think about Bill Belichick. No- most people would not think of him as a great communicator.

Matt Abrahams 19:34 Right.

Jesper Sørensen 19:34 Because he very intentionally, actually, I think, is not communicating, doesn't want to say anything. And so, so I actually thought, well, while I was trying to make sense of that, I'm like, why would they all say that as a response to what they thought I would lo- be? And, and I think it actually has something to do with nonverbal communication. And, and so then I thought about it some more, and I actually think, you know, I, like, one of the musicians that I really have always enjoyed and loved is a jazz pianist named Keith Jarrett.

Matt Abrahams 19:58 Mm-hmm.

Jesper Sørensen 19:59 Who has this amazing style of performance. And, you know, again, entirely nonverbal, but if you think about the way m- great musicians use pacing and rhythm-

Matt Abrahams 20:10 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm

Jesper Sørensen 20:11 ... and kind of the ability to create drama without ever saying anything, 'cause I think what I find hard about this question, it's a great question, but what I find hard about it is it's so hard to separate the message-

Matt Abrahams 20:21 Mm-hmm

Jesper Sørensen 20:22 ... from the communication style.

Matt Abrahams 20:25 Yeah.

Jesper Sørensen 20:25 So that's where I think the, the music helps me think about, okay, like, I don't really know what the message is, but I know how it moves me in different kinds of ways.

Matt Abrahams 20:33 Well, first, I am glad that I had an opportunity to bring your family together.

Jesper Sørensen 20:38 [laughs]

Matt Abrahams 20:38 I was very curious how you were gonna have a football coach, a Muppet, and a pet lead to something. But you're, you're right. Nonverbal communication is critical, and you are one of the very few people to answer this question focused on nonverbals.

Jesper Sørensen 20:51 Mm.

Matt Abrahams 20:51 Most people speak about people who communicate and speak in a certain way. Question number three, what are the first three ingredients that go into a successful communication recipe?

Jesper Sørensen 21:03 My first ingredient is not gonna surprise, given what we've just been talking about. Uh, but I think the first ingredient is clarify your logic. So be really clear-

Matt Abrahams 21:11 Mm-hmm

Jesper Sørensen 21:11 ... about what your argument is. And that saying that, you know, clear thinking is what leads to clear writing or clear speaking-

Matt Abrahams 21:17 Mm-hmm

Jesper Sørensen 21:17 ... is, is really key. And when I'm oftentimes giving feedback on papers to students or, or, or whatever, like, it's usually about, like, the writing is a mess until they get to the point where they're actually clear about what they're trying to say, which is oftentimes hard. So that's not a criticism. But it's just like that's-

Matt Abrahams 21:34 Right

Jesper Sørensen 21:34 ... that's the process. And, you know, related to that is writing is rewriting. Like, you have to keep doing it. What you're doing is you're revising your argument as you go along. Second ingredient, uh, I think is, you know, imagine what the audience might hear-

Matt Abrahams 21:49 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm

Jesper Sørensen 21:50 ... not just what you say. Like, I think we focus very much on, like, getting the words right, but not enough on what people, what the audience's perspective is going to be and how they're gonna interpret the words. And I think one of the ways that I got better as a, you know, a case class teacher was to be able to anticipate better how students were gonna a- interpret a question, like all the different ways they could interpret it.

Matt Abrahams 22:19 Mm-hmm.

Jesper Sørensen 22:19 And that, I think, is really qu- uh, key. And then I think the last, uh, ingredient I would say is be all parts of yourself.

Matt Abrahams 22:26 Hmm.

Jesper Sørensen 22:27 Which goes back to the, this idea of the classroom as a theater, and that you actually have within you many different characters that you employ at different times, the stern person and the joking person and the... And that you shouldn't be afraid of, of using all of them at the appropriate moments in any given communication task.

Matt Abrahams 22:46 I really like that notion of bringing your whole self and giving yourself permission to be who you are when you communicate. That's very powerful. I feel a lot of us put on this communication person instead of who we are. And that notion of really thinking about the impact of your words on your audience and planning for some of that in advance, I, I think speaks very nicely to your strategic thinking. And clearly, logic is critical. We've all heard people who just ramble, and we wonder why and what, what makes sense. Well, Jesper, thank you so much for joining us. You made quite a convincing strategic argument for the value of strategy. And further, you helped us understand what makes for good strategy and good communication as well. Thank you.

Jesper Sørensen 23:28 Thank you for having me. [upbeat music]