Page 160 - The Resilient Organization

Case Study: Imaginative Thinking in Action 147

disruptive technologies. Discussion of strategic issues was suppressed in the
company as a matter of policy, to protect the ignorance of top management.
Any document that “could start a discussion” was not to be circulated.
What company can survive when its top management uses its privileges to
isolate itself in oblivion?
Furthermore, most strategy documents are empty exercises in number
crunching. For example, past rounds of its Spring Strategic Outlook and
Fall Planning Review—two pillars of the strategy-making process—were
heavy on details such as capital expenditure budgets and earnings targets
but light on consideration of the external environment—the real world in
which AT&T operated. Growth by 10 percent is not a strategy—it is a
number. Such is not a recipe for success. Instead, what might help is the
recognition that strategy is the job of everyone inside a corporation, and
good strategy can emerge from anywhere. Strategy isn’t just the concern of
a few executives with “strategy” buried somewhere in their titles. Pay atten-
tion: Strategic ideas may emerge from the most unlikely sources in your
company—even the R&D group. The cardinal sin of management is to mar-
ginalize the smartest and most passionate people in a company due to
management’s own lack of enthusiasm for the future. Don’t disavow the
existence of ODDsters in your organization. They’ve probably already seen
the future. And if there’s a freight train heading your way, you’ll be glad you
hooked up with them. That way you won’t end up a dead squirrel, the
ODD term for a company when its strategy has failed.
P.S.: AT&T was purchased by SBC, one of the so-called baby bells, in
2005, although the combined company kept the AT&T name presumably
for its consumer brand value.

SOME ODD REFLECTIONS LOOKING BACK
What ODDsters Could Have Done Differently
• Avoided the us-versus-them mentality that may have created some
confrontation.
• Tuned down their slight intellectual snobbism—even if corporate
strategists don’t have sufficient technological background, they
might have other qualities.

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