Page 30 - The Resilient Organization

Fallen Eagles: Bet on Resilience, Not on Strategy 17

motorcycles, and acting without the knowledge of corporate manage-
ment, the Honda representatives nevertheless decided that selling motor-
cycles was their only option, having failed to achieve straightforward U.S.
market entry earlier with automobiles. In retrospect, Honda appeared to
have executed a brilliant strategy (see the BCG report Strategy
Alternatives for the British Motorcycle Industry, 1973). Similarly, Best
Buy, a highly successful U.S. consumer electronics retailer, saw the begin-
ning of its big-box retailing in electronics in a Midwestern tornado that
caused water damage to the inventory. Discounted electronics were a hit,
and thereby a business model was born. Serendipity, rather than strategy,
was the true force at work.
Strategy has been the bulwark against uncertainty, on one hand, and
the magic wand for success on the other. [Think of “blue ocean strate-
gies” by Kim and Mauborgne (2005), for example, where the focus is on
the discovery of the heretofore “uncompeted” business arenas.] Perhaps
only the word innovation is more reliable than strategy for lifting spirits
toward victory. Yet strategy has diminished in stature due to its proven
inability to cope with fundamental shifts in the business environment.
“No visibility” was the expression used by the CEO John Chambers of
Cisco Systems in the dot-com bust of the 2000. “Impossible to call” say
many more executives in 2009, though the Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka
Kallasvuo claimed “the freefall” had ended in late spring 2009. Indeed,
even in the best times, the role of strategy is unclear: “The market was
growing so fast there was no need for strategy” was one executive’s expla-
nation of his company’s process in the late 1990s. Just crank those phones
out, efficiently and reliably. No wonder Nokia’s strongest suit is logistics
(Arlbjorn et al., 2008).
Rarely is there only one way to see a situation. Some people would claim
that Nokia’s success was due to an agile strategy (Doz & Kosonen, 2008);
others would suggest it was being in the right place at the right time: the
company benefited from a long-term investment in radio technology; the
free markets in telephony in Finland; the Nordic GSM standard; the rise
from a deep recession that created a sort of “winter war mentality” (Finnish
for a determination to win); the support of the state in R&D; and the rapid
expansion of education of electrical engineers in Finland (see Lovio, 1993).
Such ambiguity is both the demise and the promise of strategy. That there