Clarity and Complexities in delivering

By driving clarity down into your planning process you inherently create more complexity.

This is the concept of entropy.

Entropy is a something I think a lot about as a designer. Organisations, problems, products, etc. tend to become more complex as time goes on and the systems we create just never get simpler. When leading cross-functional teams, complexities naturally accumulate.

But worse for team managers, is the hidden complexity that hides behind strategy, prioritisation, and delivery discussions. And leaders hardly notice this complexity because of the altitude in which they work.

Strategy takes place in three areas:
1. Strategic Thinking (problem)
2. Strategic Planning (solution)
3. Strategic Implementation (how to deliver in a way that creates perpetual value)

These are not steps - because the nature of business will mean you have to flow into and out of these areas as the landscape changes.

You might start with a vision - and because it is typically one sentence *feels* very concise and clear. But think about how unclear it really is and the numerous questions you must answer to make it a reality.

So you begin to add strategic pillars that underpin the vision. This then begins to ask more questions… and so more clarity is needed. So maybe you add a couple more layers to help define the work and the outcomes… and, BOOM, clarity. But that is a false sense because now the teams have to actually deliver those outcomes.

This is where strategic implementation begins to matter… because HOW you deliver is just as important as the WHAT. The “how” is not just the work in a Gantt chart, but the “how” of the work as it collects together overtime to create differentiation and perpetual value.

And that HOW means real clarity for the teams despite its complexity because it’s closer to reality.

But obviously being “closer to reality” isn’t reality. The map is never the terrain. But that Strategic Implementation is important because it pushes teams to make the trade-offs from a strategic perspective rather than a resources/time/effort perspective.