Spot­ting the duck-rab­bit: A stake­hold­er-led strat­e­gy model

Meet the duck-rab­bit, a clas­sic exam­ple of how all is not as it seems. View­ers of this image may first per­ceive either a left-fac­ing duck or a right-fac­ing rab­bit; the draw­ing has been care­ful­ly con­struct­ed to be open enough that either inter­pre­ta­tion is equal­ly valid. 

How quick­ly one can switch per­spec­tive between a left­ward-fac­ing duck and a right­ward-fac­ing rab­bit is said to cor­re­late with cre­ative abil­i­ty. How­ev­er, whether or not one regards engage­ment with opti­cal illu­sions as indica­tive of cog­ni­tive dex­ter­i­ty, this image serves as a pow­er­ful demon­stra­tion of irrec­on­cil­able ambi­gu­i­ty. A con­cept (such as an idea, song, or work of art) can have mul­ti­ple, mutu­al­ly exclu­sive inter­pre­ta­tions — and each can be equal­ly valid. 

What, then, are we to do with this les­son? And what does it have to do with strategy? 

It’s well-estab­lished that the notion of strat­e­gy has its roots in mil­i­tary deci­sion-mak­ing. The goal of strat­e­gy is to use the resources and abil­i­ties at one’s dis­pos­al to achieve one’s objec­tives. The most suc­cess­ful strat­e­gy is one in which the agent achieves an out­come with­in their means that best meets their needs. 

How­ev­er, this high-lev­el def­i­n­i­tion is suf­fi­cient­ly vague that it allows for sim­i­lar cog­ni­tive ambi­gu­i­ty to our inscrutable friend above. This flu­id­i­ty in mean­ing has giv­en rise to com­pet­ing con­cep­tu­al mod­els, which we will explore next. 

In 1980, Michael Porter released Com­pet­i­tive Strat­e­gy, a pro­found­ly influ­en­tial book intro­duc­ing his gener­ic strate­gies, the con­cept of the ​‘val­ue chain’, and his famous ​‘five forces’ mod­el. This phi­los­o­phy of cor­po­rate strat­e­gy is based on the design school mod­el of tra­di­tion­al plan­ning, an attempt to sys­tem­a­tise strate­gic thought. 

In this mod­el, ​‘strate­gies should appear ful­ly for­mu­lat­ed before they are imple­ment­ed’ — in oth­er words, it per­mits no dis­tinc­tion between intend­ed and realised strat­e­gy. A com­pa­ny, organ­i­sa­tion, or prod­uct team employ­ing this mod­el does pre­cise­ly what it set out to do. No recog­ni­tion is made of the impact of events that take place dur­ing the exe­cu­tion of this strategy. 

A com­mon use of this is to answer the big ques­tions — why does this organ­i­sa­tion exist? What is it meant to achieve? And what mar­kets does it there­fore com­pete in? These things are hard to change, and the answers to these ques­tions tell you who your cus­tomers are (and who they aren’t). 

By con­trast, Hen­ry Mintzberg — anoth­er titan of busi­ness thought—coined the term emer­gent strat­e­gy to describe a process where­by what gets realised is a com­bi­na­tion of what was orig­i­nal­ly planned, cou­pled with deci­sions that could only be made dur­ing the exe­cu­tion of that strategy. 

Rather than sim­ple chaos, the term ​“emer­gent strat­e­gy” seeks to for­mal­ly recog­nise the role of oppor­tu­ni­ties, threats, and oth­er piv­ots while deliv­er­ing a plan that was drawn up before work com­menced. This strat­e­gy is recog­nised as part of the Agile Man­i­festo principles: 

Respond­ing to change over fol­low­ing a plan. 

This strat­e­gy aims to max­imise results by remain­ing flex­i­ble — avoid­ing neg­a­tive events and exploit­ing pos­i­tive ones. How­ev­er, by its nature, it doesn’t tell you exact­ly what you’ll get or when. 

Now that we have two wide­ly accept­ed yet con­tra­dic­to­ry mod­els of strat­e­gy, we have to con­sid­er what hap­pens when they are both applied in the same organisation. 

In truth, this hap­pens more often than we realise — some­times two par­ties can use the same lan­guage but have dif­fer­ent intend­ed mean­ings. The title of this sec­tion, which is made up of con­tronyms, demon­strates this: con­sult means both to give advice and to receive it; cus­tom means both stan­dard and unique; and over­sight means both super­vi­sion and a fail­ure of it. What we mean may not always align with what our audi­ence per­ceives us to have said. 

Organ­i­sa­tions are made up of peo­ple, who all come with their own learned behav­iours and ways of see­ing the world. How­ev­er, it could fur­ther be argued that dif­fer­ing views of strat­e­gy actu­al­ly cor­re­late to dif­fer­ent stake­hold­er groups. As a result, it seems like­ly that one’s strate­gic view­point is influ­enced direct­ly by the wider sys­tem with­in which they work — their goals, incen­tives, and risks. 

In explor­ing these dif­fer­ences, it is worth con­sid­er­ing how dif­fer­ent con­texts give rise to dif­fer­ing views — and, hence, expec­ta­tions — around strate­gic plan­ning. Those work­ing to fixed con­stants, such as time, cost, or scope, may expect oth­ers to share their approach. Con­verse­ly, those for whom details are flu­id, so long as the val­ue is max­imised, may apply a dif­fer­ent log­ic when pri­ori­tis­ing or mak­ing commitments. 

Let’s take a look at sev­er­al stake­hold­er groups and exam­ine how they may engage with strat­e­gy and what might influ­ence this. 

The goal of mar­ket­ing is to shout from the rooftops about the amaz­ing val­ue propo­si­tion that an organisation’s var­i­ous goods and ser­vices rep­re­sent. This includes shar­ing what will come in the next few months or even lat­er that year. While help­ing to build a brand with an inno­v­a­tive and dynam­ic pres­ence, this also dri­ves the aware­ness and inter­est stages in the mar­ket­ing fun­nel, which can lead to even­tu­al sales or upsell opportunities.Core to this is the abil­i­ty to con­fi­dent­ly state what things are com­ing and when they can be expect­ed. The risk is obvi­ous­ly that adver­tised items may not mate­ri­alise in the way or at the time they were orig­i­nal­ly promised. How­ev­er, inter­est­ing­ly, this risk is typ­i­cal­ly borne by those down­stream of the mar­ket­ing process, such as the sales, client engage­ment, onboard­ing, and prod­uct teams. 

Dri­vers of delib­er­ate strat­e­gy 

• Pub­lish­ing roadmaps 

• Adver­tis­ing upcom­ing features 
  

• Shar­ing prod­uct tra­jec­to­ry at roadshows 

Dri­vers of emer­gent strat­e­gy 

• Sud­den mar­ket trends 

Since the objec­tive is to sign­post prod­uct or ser­vice fea­tures well in advance, this team grav­i­tates towards a delib­er­ate strat­e­gy — one in which what is realised is the same as what was orig­i­nal­ly planned. To peo­ple work­ing in such a role, the world can look like one in which we are most suc­cess­ful when we do exact­ly what we said we were going to, regard­less of what has been learned in the meantime. 

Sales is a com­plex activ­i­ty that picks up where mar­ket­ing leaves off — the aware­ness, inter­est, and demand of a sales prospect — and con­verts this into a sale, turn­ing the prospect into a cus­tomer. This involves explain­ing the var­i­ous mer­its of the prod­uct or ser­vice and how it solves the customer’s prob­lems at a price worth paying. 

For a SaaS prod­uct, sales cycles may be suf­fi­cient­ly long enough that it’s pos­si­ble for some of the fea­tures a cus­tomer requires not to exist at the start of the sales con­ver­sa­tion. This is not nec­es­sar­i­ly a prob­lem — so long as there is rea­son­able con­fi­dence that these fea­tures can be deliv­ered before the con­clu­sion of the sales cycle, or at the very least, before the cus­tomer comes to use the product. 

Dri­vers of delib­er­ate strat­e­gy 

• Cus­tomer pro­cure­ment requirements 

• Mar­ket entry requirements 

• “Sales block­er” lists 

Dri­vers of emer­gent strat­e­gy 

• Sud­den opportunities 

This is where the risk of promised fea­tures is most evi­dent since entire deals can become mired in con­tin­gent fea­ture deliv­ery, also known as ​“sales block­er lists.” Such a sit­u­a­tion is where delib­er­ate strat­e­gy over­pow­ers emer­gent strat­e­gy — the chal­lenge being how to min­imise the val­ue lost while piv­ot­ing to deliv­er demand­ed fea­tures instead of dis­cov­ered ones. This is the bat­tle­ground between being sales-led and prod­uct-led, a sub­ject wor­thy of its own blog post. 

The world of a prod­uct man­ag­er is strik­ing­ly both sim­i­lar to and dif­fer­ent from those of sales and mar­ket­ing. In each case, deeply under­stand­ing the cus­tomer base is nec­es­sary. In each case, the most valu­able oppor­tu­ni­ties come from busi­ness prob­lems and result­ing cus­tomer pain points. How­ev­er, while the focus of sales and mar­ket­ing is finan­cial — equat­ing to busi­ness val­ue — the focus of prod­uct man­age­ment is pro­vid­ing cus­tomer val­ue in a way that aligns with busi­ness inter­ests. It is the obses­sion with cus­tomer prob­lems that fill a prod­uct back­log, and craven atten­tion to solv­ing them that shapes a roadmap. 

Pop­u­lar dis­cov­ery and deliv­ery approach­es, such as the dou­ble dia­mond tech­nique, under­score the iter­a­tive and diver­gent nature of prob­lem and solu­tion find­ing. By their nature, these process­es are hard to time­box, and the resul­tant find­ings may trans­form the fea­ture orig­i­nal­ly con­ceived when the prob­lem was first report­ed (which almost always takes the form of a pre­ferred solution). 

Dri­vers of delib­er­ate strat­e­gy 

• Depen­den­cy management 

• Stake­hold­er demands 

• “Sales block­er” lists 

Dri­vers of emer­gent strat­e­gy 

• Assump­tion testing 

• Exper­i­ments 

• Unex­pect­ed complexity 

• “Sales block­er” lists 

As a result, prod­uct teams can’t help but be drawn to emer­gent strat­e­gy, with each new find­ing hav­ing the poten­tial to trans­form pre­vi­ous under­stand­ing. Per­haps the cus­tomer val­ue trapped behind this prob­lem is larg­er than orig­i­nal­ly believed, or maybe the com­plex­i­ty turns out to be high enough that, while solv­able, oth­er prob­lems offer greater returns. This open­ness to re-exam­in­ing pre­vi­ous­ly held beliefs in the face of new evi­dence not only sways prod­uct teams towards emer­gent strat­e­gy; it fun­da­men­tal­ly chal­lenges any delib­er­ate strat­e­gy since the end result can’t be pre­dict­ed at the outset. 

Inter­est­ed in learn­ing about the advan­tages of tran­si­tion­ing from tech­nol­o­gy-dri­ven to prod­uct-dri­ven devel­op­ment? Check out this arti­cle for more details. 

The engi­neer­ing process begins with an agreed set of require­ments and cul­mi­nates in the release of a soft­ware prod­uct or fea­ture that solves them ade­quate­ly and in a usable man­ner. While this implies a lin­ear process from require­ments → fea­ture, in actu­al­i­ty, this is often an iter­a­tive process that involves return­ing to some require­ments to elab­o­rate or even inval­i­date them as unfea­si­ble or too costly. 

This iter­a­tive flow leads to an inabil­i­ty to pre­dict exact­ly what will be deliv­ered and when. All pre­vi­ous steps in the val­ue deliv­ery jour­ney (mar­ket­ing, sales, prod­uct man­age­ment) involve plans, while the engi­neer­ing team is respon­si­ble for exe­cu­tion. It is unsur­pris­ing, there­fore, that this team most close­ly embod­ies emer­gent strat­e­gy. The very con­cept of esti­ma­tion is frus­trat­ed by a process where­by some of the knowl­edge about what needs to be deliv­ered is not avail­able until after deliv­ery has already commenced. 

Dri­vers of delib­er­ate strat­e­gy 

• Tech­ni­cal debt 

• Platform/​dependency management 

Dri­vers of emer­gent strat­e­gy 

• New tech­nolo­gies 

• Unex­pect­ed complexity 

• Sup­port cases/​bugs 

• Dep­re­ca­tion 

Engi­neers respond to this lack of pre­dictabil­i­ty by remain­ing adapt­able — some prob­lems can be solved by amend­ing the scope or cer­tain require­ments, while oth­ers will sim­ply take longer than antic­i­pat­ed. The process of deliv­er­ing soft­ware becomes even more com­plex towards the end when user tri­als or beta test­ing com­mence. These can often sur­face new require­ments not pre­vi­ous­ly con­sid­ered. It is up to engi­neers and prod­uct man­agers, work­ing togeth­er, to deter­mine which requests are vital to deliv­er the com­mit­ted val­ue and which rep­re­sent unnec­es­sary iter­a­tions that can wait until a sub­se­quent release. How­ev­er, even this action under­mines pre­dictabil­i­ty and nat­u­ral­ly pro­motes emer­gent strategy. 

In explor­ing the chal­lenges faced by dif­fer­ent teams in a typ­i­cal soft­ware prod­uct organ­i­sa­tion, the two schools of strate­gic thought inter­act in sev­er­al ways. 

Delib­er­ate to emer­gent 

The jour­ney from mar­ket­ing to deliv­ery starts fol­low­ing a delib­er­ate strat­e­gy (prod­uct roadmaps pro­ject­ed into the com­ing 3 – 12 months) but ends up being man­aged via emer­gent strat­e­gy once ​“the rub­ber hits the road.” As com­mit­ments become actions, the weight of the unex­pect­ed forces an adap­tive approach that sim­ply resists up-front plan­ning. The only dynam­ics that can over­pow­er this are high-con­se­quence design require­ments, such as safe­ty tol­er­ances or mat­ters of com­pli­ance, which are non-nego­tiable. Every­thing flex­es as the expect­ed deliv­ery date draws closer. 

Emer­gent to delib­er­ate 

Since work is con­stant­ly being planned and mar­ket­ed, it is com­mon­ly the case that as cur­rent work is being exe­cut­ed, future work has already been planned. This means that there are knock-on effects from delayed deliv­ery that impact not only the cur­rent fea­ture but also the sub­se­quent­ly planned ones. This implies that a delib­er­ate strat­e­gy may need to be emer­gent­ly revised to account for a new real­i­ty where work can­not com­mence until a month or a quar­ter lat­er than orig­i­nal­ly planned. Like­wise, emer­gent strate­gic deci­sions made dur­ing deliv­ery today can become a source of delib­er­ate deci­sion-mak­ing tomor­row. For exam­ple, tech­ni­cal debt accept­ed dur­ing the deliv­ery of one fea­ture must be con­scious­ly account­ed for dur­ing future work and will usu­al­ly nar­row the solu­tion space. 

Avoid­ing a clash in strate­gies 

There are a few tac­tics that may be employed to help pre­vent the neg­a­tive con­se­quences of com­pet­ing strategies: 

• High-integri­ty com­mit­ments raise the stakes for delib­er­ate strate­gies. Avoid fix­ing deliv­er­ies to spe­cif­ic dates where pos­si­ble, focus­ing instead on quar­ter­ly goals or sim­ply using a now/​next/​later approach. This aligns all teams around a plan that min­imis­es the inevitable fric­tion as emer­gent deci­sions impact delib­er­ate goals. 

• When a high integri­ty com­mit­ment is unavoid­able, derisk this by split­ting the dou­ble dia­mond approach in two — only once dis­cov­ery has been com­plet­ed should a deliv­ery com­mit­ment be attempted. 

• Instead of man­ag­ing time, man­age scope by com­mit­ting to out­comes rather than deliv­er­ables. This reserves space for prod­uct man­agers and engi­neers to be cre­ative about what is released on the due date. Future iter­a­tions can always increase the val­ue delivered. 

The duck-rab­bit is a use­ful depic­tion of irre­ducible com­plex­i­ty. It is impos­si­ble to state which ani­mal is pic­tured, as either inter­pre­ta­tion is equal­ly true. Under­stand­ing this, and the rea­sons why we make the deci­sions we do, can help us empathise with oth­er stake­hold­ers who may think and act differently. 

Our pri­or­i­ties and world­view are a func­tion of how our effec­tive­ness is mea­sured and what we need to be suc­cess­ful. Dif­fer­ent con­di­tions lead to dif­fer­ent approach­es across teams. Only by under­stand­ing what leads to bet­ter out­comes for a col­league — pre­dictabil­i­ty or elbow room — can we tru­ly empathise with their needs, lead­ing to more effec­tive and empa­thet­ic collaboration. 

Can you see the duck-rabbit?