Many Strategies Fail Because They’re Not Strategies (2017)

Re:Many Strategies Fail Because They’re Not Strategies (2017) by moksly on Friday December 13, 2019 @07:59AM (#21781136)

We have a scientist in Denmark called Morten Münster who wrote a book called “Jytte fra marketing er desværre gået for i dag” (Karen from marketing has unfortunately left for the day), in which he talks a lot about the necessity of clear and simple strategies that can be understood by employees at 3pm on a busy Thursday. He has a lot of good examples, but mostly he outlines how silly something a long the lines of “forward together” is as a strategy because it quite literally means nothing to anyone who does any real work.

It agrees with this article, and I always find it kind of hilarious. I do work on the public sector, and we’re exceptionally bad at implementing strategies, despite having hundreds of people working on it. The thing is though, that most of those people have read these articles and books, exactly like this one. So apparently knowing these things aren’t even helping us implement meaningful strategies.

After years in the bureaucracy I’ve long learned to simply keep quiet while these pseudo-workers do their thing, and then get things done when they leave. Then you can always word the work up to sound like it plays into whatever current strategy we’re pursuing at the end of the year review.

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Re:Many Strategies Fail Because They’re Not Strategies (2017) by toolslive on Friday December 13, 2019 @10:10AM (#21782216)

one of my more sarcastic personalities derives great pleasure in comparing what's happening in the workplace with what's described as effective sabotage in the CIA's field manual.

https://corporate-rebels.com/cia-field-manual/

tip for pro's : you can play the bingo version too!

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Re:Many Strategies Fail Because They’re Not Strategies (2017) by itronitron on Friday December 13, 2019 @10:23AM (#21782330)

I wouldn't be surprised if the authors of the cia field manual just copied verbatim their management training manual

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Re:Many Strategies Fail Because They’re Not Strategies (2017) by toolslive on Friday December 13, 2019 @11:13AM (#21782826)

now that is sarcasm with a big 'S'. Love it.

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Re:Many Strategies Fail Because They’re Not Strategies (2017) by jpmattia on Friday December 13, 2019 @10:23AM (#21782332)

That is a great/hilarious post, even if the title is wrong. (The CIA did not yet exist in 1944; The manual is likely from the OSS, which was roughly the wartime predecessor of the CIA.)

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Re:Many Strategies Fail Because They’re Not Strategies (2017) by tejtm on Friday December 13, 2019 @03:27PM (#21785099)

for the original

https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/...

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Re:Many Strategies Fail Because They’re Not Strategies (2017) by 99052882514569 on Friday December 13, 2019 @10:28AM (#21782382)

That 8-point "General Interference with Organizations and Production" list sounds like ~50% of city councillors on every council in North America.

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Re:Many Strategies Fail Because They’re Not Strategies (2017) by azepoi on Friday December 13, 2019 @08:41AM (#21781399)

I looked it up, it appears the title has been translated into English. Morten Münster, I'm Afraid Debbie From Marketing Has Left for the Day - How to Use Behavioural Design to Create Change in the Real World, Translated from Danish by Helen Dyrbye, Gyldendal Business, 2019

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Re:Many Strategies Fail Because They’re Not Strategies (2017) by goto11 on Friday December 13, 2019 @01:00PM (#21783774)

Pretty funny how you translate names like "Jytte". The translator chose "Debbie" while moksly chose "Karen"

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Re:Many Strategies Fail Because They’re Not Strategies (2017) by moksly on Saturday December 14, 2019 @11:20AM (#21790250)

It’s because I use reddit, their use of “Karen” seem appropriate for the use of “Jytte” in this context. Maybe “Debbie” is as well.

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Re:Many Strategies Fail Because They’re Not Strategies (2017) by LargeWu on Friday December 13, 2019 @01:27PM (#21784029)

Probably just substituted a generic American sounding name, rather than a translation.

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Re:Many Strategies Fail Because They’re Not Strategies (2017) by twic on Friday December 13, 2019 @06:46PM (#21786706)

While the name is actually cognate with Judith.

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Re:Many Strategies Fail Because They’re Not Strategies (2017) by tasubotadas on Friday December 13, 2019 @03:33PM (#21785161)

Thanks for the tip

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Re:Many Strategies Fail Because They’re Not Strategies (2017) by ksumo on Friday December 13, 2019 @04:08PM (#21785486)

Reminds me when Ballmer changed MS's original mission statement from "A computer on every desk and in every home" to "enable people and businesses throughout the world to realize their full potential". One clearly defines a victory condition, the other is nebulous BS. It accurately reflects that Ballmer had no vision whatsoever except for counting money.

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Re:Many Strategies Fail Because They’re Not Strategies (2017) by hyperman1 on Friday December 13, 2019 @10:06AM (#21782182)

I presume the bureacratic decision makers design these strategies exactly for what you use them for.

They have to do something, and they have to demonstrate it costs money and effort.

So they hire a bunch of externs with the intent of producing powerpoints, and put some buts in seats before them. Get someone to create some procedures and buy or build some software to support it. Money has been spent, which proves beyond doubt the problem has been solved.

Meanwhile the actual workers can do actual work, and the strategy is vague enough that everybody can demonstrate to have done something.

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Re:Many Strategies Fail Because They’re Not Strategies (2017) by wool_gather on Friday December 13, 2019 @11:34AM (#21783027)

There's also a CYA element to a degree, in that the person actually in charge can blame the development process or execution of the "strategy" (optionally along with one or more of the people who were nominally in charge of those things) if their attempt goes awry.

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Re:Many Strategies Fail Because They’re Not Strategies (2017) by Tarq0n on Friday December 13, 2019 @12:20PM (#21783455)

One thing about the public sector is every task of a public body is important or mandatory to some degree. This means that most strategies are necessarily overly broad and that they don't have the freedom to pivot away from or deprioritize anything.

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Re:Many Strategies Fail Because They’re Not Strategies (2017) by Tarq0n on Friday December 13, 2019 @02:47PM (#21784729)

Also you don't have the direct feedback loop of success or failure in the market obviously. Funding isn't directly related to performance either.

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Re:Many Strategies Fail Because They’re Not Strategies (2017) by JJMcJ on Friday December 13, 2019 @10:57AM (#21782655)

Did my due diligence, Jytte (pronounced You-tay) is a Danish women's name.

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Re:Many Strategies Fail Because They’re Not Strategies (2017) by skrebbel on Friday December 13, 2019 @01:09PM (#21783877)

Total nitpick: You-tay is very far from how the name Jytte is pronounced. In IPA it'd be ['jydə] I think. You-dah would be closer, in the sense that she might look up if you'd say that :-)

But English doesn't have the [y] so it's hard to explain. Even harder that the y in Jytte is kind of halfway [y] and [œ]. Somewhere between the vowel in "few" and the "i" in Cockney "bird".

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Re:Many Strategies Fail Because They’re Not Strategies (2017) by JJMcJ on Sunday December 22, 2019 @01:39PM (#21858807)

Thanks for the correction.

Got it from a web site on names. I guess they were sloppy on the phonetic rendering.

Not enough due diligence on my part.

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Re:Many Strategies Fail Because They’re Not Strategies (2017) by dhimes on Friday December 13, 2019 @05:33PM (#21786240)

As Rumelt (Good Strategy/Bad Strategy) would say, a slogan is not a strategy.

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Re:Many Strategies Fail Because They’re Not Strategies (2017) by luckydata on Friday December 13, 2019 @01:21PM (#21783973)

"forward together" is not a strategy, it's a slogan. Of course if your management can't tell the difference, you have a much bigger issue than simply a lack of strategy.

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Re:Many Strategies Fail Because They’re Not Strategies (2017) by cpeterso on Friday December 13, 2019 @12:11PM (#21783358)

The title of the English translation of the book is "I'm Afraid Debbie From Marketing Has Left for the Day: How to Use Behavioural Design to Create Change in the Real World".

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