A Real World Example of Strategic Intuition (Part 2)

In my last post, I attempted to describe Kevin Kelly’s approach to problem-solving, using Strategic Intuition. In this post, I will describe another example of Kevin’s problem-solving in his work with New York City government. Before I do, I’ll provide Kevin’s four step problem-solving approach (you can read my last post for more detail on each step):

1. Problem Identification
2. Determine What Is Needed
3. Search For Solutions  
4. Create the Solution

Kevin’s Second Example: NYC Business Express
Kevin Kelly’s second project was much more difficult than his first, yet, if he were to succeed, it would revolutionize how small businesses operate in New York City. Mayor Michael Bloomberg assigned Kevin to the task of creating an online one-stop place for small business owners and operators to take care of permit applications, make payments online, etc.

For small business owners, navigating the maze of applications, permits, and regulations for the more than 20 city agencies (plus the state and federal agencies) was a daunting, costly, time-consuming task. Businesses wanted a process that was predictable, easy, consistent and clear, but what they had was the opposite--a Byzantine labyrinth of agencies, applications, permits, and regulations with no clear path to navigate them. It was a manual system with lots of paperwork needed, not to mention the time spent at agency offices, plus the cost and hassle of fines for omitting even one step in the process.

The Problem Identification Step (Kevin’s First Step) is too complex to recount here, but his second step, Determine What Is Needed, provides a clear road map to where Kevin would ultimately look for his solutions. Here is what Kevin determined his needs to be:

• Provide Simple Information and Instructions: These would be interactive and customized to the needs of the small business owner (the customer).
• Allow Multiple Permit Applications: The online system would support the ability of business owners to simply and easily apply for multiple permits from different agencies.
• Permit Online Payments: Business owners could pay for permits, application fees, and even fines online.
• Manage Online Accounts: Business owners could create an online account that would save pertinent information about their business, would allow for multiple sessions, and would automatically update their status and balances.

Once Kevin had determined what was needed, he began his search for solutions components (his third step). He found three solution examples that contained the elements he needed to stitch together his ultimate solution. They were:

• Turbo-Tax: Turbo-Tax guides online users through the quagmire of the Federal Tax Code with simple interactive questions. The same technique and technology could be harnessed to guide small business owners through the maze of permits and applications in an online system.
• Online Banking and ATMs: Bank customers are able to remotely access their accounts, check on balances and activities and also manage their accounts.
• Common Online College Application: Known as the Common App, prospective college students fill out a single online form with basic personal and demographic information. This can be used by the applicant to apply to any of the 414 colleges and universities using the system. Some schools may require additional information but the student only has to fill out the basic information one time and then update it as needed.

These three solution components were used by Kevin and his team to create NYC Business Express, an online that is “a one-stop website that makes starting, operating, and expanding a business in New York City clearer, faster, and simpler.”

In my phone conversation with Kevin Kelly, he adds this important advice in creating a solution:

• Be concrete in working through each step. “What does it mean to do X, Y, or Z?”
• Be ruthless in pushing to break down complex processes into useful and discreet components.
• Focus on creating something useful, not perfect.
• Create a mechanism for feedback from customers. NYC Business Express uses customer focus groups and input from their online “Feedback” button to continually solicit feedback from their customers.
• Create an open architecture so that the processes and products can be continually upgraded and improved as needed, based on feedback.

Thanks to Kevin for presenting to our group at Columbia U and for taking time out of his busy schedule to talk to me by phone. I hope I have accurately captured at least some of his approach in using Strategic Intuition to find creative and workable solutions.

A Real World Example of Strategic Intuition (Part 1)

I had a chance to here Kevin Kelly speak at Columbia University last month. He was a guest speaker in the Exec Ed course, Strategic Intuition. It is not often that “wow!” and “government leader” end up in the same sentence, but such was the case for me with Kevin’s presentation on how he tackled some major problems in New York City Government, where he serves as the Deputy Commissioner of Business Development / Agency Strategy with NYC’s Small Business Services agency. Kevin was kind enough to have a follow up phone conversation with me last week. What follows is my take on his take of Strategic Intuition.

Like most people in government leadership, the challenge typically comes in a problem begging for a solution. This is where Kevin’s approach begins. Kevin’s four step approach to problem solving looks something like this:

1. Problem Identification: Break down the problem into what Kevin calls its “prime number components.” These are the basic components of the problem that requires a solution.
2. Determine What Is Needed: Determine, in a concrete way, the nature of each component. How does it work? How should it work? Why isn’t it working? How is it important to the overall problem?
3. Search For Solutions: Kevin searches for solutions pertaining to his “prime number components,” not necessarily for the overall problem. His search is focused, but not too narrow. It is associative—he follows a creative path towards a solution that works by finding “solution components” and he tries to be as open as possible to perception and possibilities. He refers to this as a “fun, stream of consciousness approach” where it is “hard to be wrong.”
4. Create the Solution: Kevin "stitches together" the various solution components into an overall whole. He focuses on something useful, not perfect. He installs a mechanism to improve and upgrade his solution as he creates it, something most government solutions lack.

Kevin’s First Example
One of Kevin’s first tasks was to lead a revamping and revitalization of the New York City’s job centers. Despite significant resources being pumped into the job centers, there were not enough people being placed in employment. Successes were few and far between. The system was riddled with poor processes and poor technology. Businesses were not using the centers to find employees and job seekers were not using the centers to find jobs.

Kevin broke the problem down into four prime number components. He says he envisioned them as interlocking wheels or turbines—bringing job seekers in the front door, building their skills as needed, and then matching them with appropriate jobs at the back door. His four components were:

1. Sourcing of Labor (Supply)—The job centers needed to get more people in the front door.
2. Intake—Gather data on each job seeker and determine who needs what in terms of training, etc.
3. Training—Connecting people with the training that they need, depending upon employer needs.
4. Matching and Referral to Employer—The system should be demand driven with the goal of providing employers with qualified candidates.

Kevin determined that the job centers needed to have an easy-to-use mutable database that allowed the job centers to track job seekers in real time from intake to job training to job placement. The job centers also needed to be staffed so they could handle the ebbs and flows of job seekers without being either overstaffed or unable to serve job seekers quickly. Finally, job matching had to be effective and inclusive, so that the best matches were made for employers and, at the same time, job seekers did not fall through the proverbial cracks because they did not have an exact word match of skills to employer need.

At this point, the real fun begins. Kevin began his search for solutions. This is what he came up with:

• Who excels at data gathering and intake in real time with a flexible and upgradeable database? The New York City library system. Libraries have developed simple, powerful, flexible and usable data base systems that are unobtrusive to patrons and staff alike. They are easy to maintain, upgrade and they are useful to everyone involved in library use, both customers and staff.
• Who excels at scheduling and staffing based on estimates of usage? The Staten Island Ferry. The Staten Island Ferry is free to passengers and it does maintain exact count of passengers. Even so, it is able to efficiently and effective provide services at peak and off-peak use times with just the right amount of staff and scheduled services.
• Who excels at searching and matching? Google. Google provides searchers with the best matches in rank order but also does not exclude matches that are close but not exact.

Kevin was able to revamp and revitalize the NYC job centers. The result of was annual job placement in the tens of thousands instead of the hundreds. He and his team created a demand-driven system that brought people in the front door, tracked them effectively, provided them with needed training, and then matched them with real jobs at the other end. The key was the use of strategic intuition, scanning the environment for solutions and being open to the possibilities outside of his immediate field of job centers.

Next Post: Kevin’s second project.

Say "Yes" to Agility

Bob Ottenhoff has a great blog post on the concept of being agile as an organization and how it relates to strategic planning. Bob highlights the importance of adaptability to meet ever-changing challenges and opportunities. By time we finish up our strategic planning, make it all nice and pretty, and have it reviewed and approved by our Board, it is probably out of date. The process of planning and the plan itself might lead us from the readiness we need to jump on a opportunity when it pops in unexpectedly through our door.

My struggle with struggle with being boxed in by plans and planning has led me to explore alternatives, such as strategic intuition (the topic of my last few blog posts). Not planning is not an option, but there must be room for intuition, for agility, and for being ready like a crouching tiger (or hidden dragon) to pounce on the opportunity.

Wikipedia has a nice little article about business agility.

Finding Your Point B--Strategic Intuition to the Rescue

In America, we know him mainly for his short stature, but Europeans have a much more profound understand of how Napoleon shaped history. They recognize him as the perhaps the single best implementer of military strategy of all time. Napoleon was a star of epic proportions—a Lebron James-style prodigy—and post-Napoleonic Europe was filled with academics, historians and military theorists, all trying to explain his genius, his successes, and his ultimate failure.

If you are a leader and you have used any sort of formal method of strategic planning beyond darts or a Magic Eight Ball (I’m not knocking the Magic Eight Ball!), then you stand in a long tradition that goes back to those military theorists and historians who first tried to make sense of Napoleon, the master strategist. Even if your means and your ends stand diametrically opposed to that of Napoleon, if you have used SWOT analysis, environmental scanning, five forces modeling, the LOGIC model, Six Sigma, or just simple business planning, you are indebted to Napoleon, or, to be more exact, Napoleon’s interpreters.

Getting From Point A to Point B

Baron Antoine Jomini served on Napoleon’s staff from 1804 to 1813. In 1838, Jomini published Summary of the Art of War. Jomini’s influence is still felt today as he established strategy, tactics, and logistics as the three subjects of modern military science. He also laid the groundwork for strategic planning for an army in the field. Jomini says there are three basic steps to strategic planning (and this will look very basic to you, the gentle reader):

• Step 1: First figure out where you are (this is your Point A).
• Step 2: Decide where you want to be (this is your Point B).
• Step 3: Then you make a plan to get from Point A to Point B.

Think of the money Jomini could make as a modern consultant! His is a very linear approach that is the basis for most forms of strategic planning used in the nonprofit world (I should note that all of this comes from William Duggan’s book, Strategic Intuition: The Creative Spark in Human Achievement, 2007, p. 60).

Figuring Out Your B
But how do you determine your Point B? Sometimes that is the real problem for us. The challenge is not in analysis, the planning or in the implementation. The problem is in the second step…the step that involves innovation and insight. How do know where you want to go? Where does that idea come from? How do you determine your Point B?

Think of where your best ideas hit you? I know when I was attending William Duggan’s Strategic Intuition course at Columbia U, class participants were universal in their response: The Shower. This was followed by: Driving a Car; Waking Up in the Middle of the Night; Walking the Dog; and Cooking Supper. No one answered Strategic Planning Sessions or Brainstorming Meetings. This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone, including my cat, Felix. Innovative ideas come at a point when we often least expect them.

Where did Napoleon get his Point B’s from? This is what separated him from his contemporaries on the field of battle. It wasn’t that he was a better planner or had a better army or a bigger army. He was better than his opponent at picking his Point B. This was true in just about every battle, time after time. He was a Point B kind of guy. It wasn’t a matter of planning, it was a matter of intuition (or as William Duggan calls it, Strategic Intuition).

And here we are helped again by another post-Napoleonic military theorist, Carl von Clausewitz, whose classic treatise, On War, was published in 1832. Unlike Jomini, von Clausewitz casts Napoleon’s methodology in a very different light, a four-step process that is nonlinear and more akin to that ah-ha moment in the shower. Von Clausewitz uses the French term “coup d’oeil” (literally: strike of the eye), which is indicative that he understands that Napoleon’s genius was based on a flash of insight. Here are von Clausewitz’s four steps (as presented by William Duggan, Strategic Intuition: The Creative Spark in Human Achievement, 2007, pp. 53-64):

• Step 1: The Examples of History—Napoleon did not rely on his own experience but was a student of military history. In his study and in his mind, he searched history for examples to solutions to problems that he faced in the field. He could mix and match examples of successes and failures as the starting point for his battlefield innovations.
• Step 2: Presence of Mind—The second step involves freeing the mind of preconceptions, previous ideas, and expectations. Even the concept of an objective or a goal is let go of by Napoleon. There is no Point B in the mind at this stage.
• Step 3: The Flash of Insight—A mind that has been freed of preconceptions and filled with examples of history is fertile ground for the best elements of those historical examples to come together in surprising and innovative combinations. The actual “flash” may actually be a much longer process but, in the end, something new is created in the mind that did not exist there before. Napoleon now has a Point B.
• Step 4: Resolution—Once Point B has been decided upon, Napoleon is now determined to act with resolve.

William Duggan, the author of Strategic Intuition: The Key to Human Achievement, uses von Clausewitz’s four steps as his foundation for understanding the process of strategic intuition. You can read an excellent summary of Duggan’s ideas here.

Getting From Point A to Point B--A Quotation

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"

"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.

"I don't care where--" said Alice.

"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat."

--dialogue between Alice and the Cheshire Cat,

from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll 

Strategic Intuition--A Dragon's Key To Human Creativity

Where does innovation come from? Where do we get our best ideas? And, more importantly, can we intentionally create innovation as leaders rather than just waiting for that "a-ha" moment to strike us in the shower?

William Duggan, of Columbia University, answers that last question with a resounding "yes." I had the privilege and pleasure to be a participant in his course, Strategic Intuition, which is an offering through the Columbia Business School's Executive Education program.

Strategic Intuition is really a discipline that encompasses an eclectic set of methods and tools, around the idea that the human brain learns best by examining the world around us for examples of success and then synthesizing our observations into a new idea or innovation. These observations and the subsequent synthesis result in a "flash of insight."

My next few posts with present a few examples of how this works, along with the theoretical framework. I'll end with some thoughts how strategic intuition can happen intentionally within an organization and how it might be integrated (or not) with traditional strategic planning. I start today by basically distinguishing Strategic Intuition from other forms of intuition.

Strategic Intuition--Not Your Mother's Intuition
It sounds kind of trippy, like Zen irony. Strategic Intuition. It's like "the sound of one hand clapping" or "wherever you go, there you are." Here is how Strategic Intuition differs from your run-of-the-mills version of intuition:

• Intuition--The generic sort of intuition. This is that gut feeling that tells you something is right, not right, safe, not safe, etc. It is usually based a complex and subtle set of signals and observations that your conscious mind may not have even noticed, at least when it is working at is best. It can also go haywire when you have had a bad experience (like in childhood) or you have a particular bias or prejudice (which we all do). Or, sometimes, we just misread a person or situation without knowing we are even reading them in the first place. But I digress...Basic intuition is that gut feeling most of us get about some things.
• Expert Intuition--This is the sort of intuition that leads to rapid decision making that emergency responders, top athletes, and great musicians all display. They all take in a huge amount of data in the blink of an eye, make numerous decisions, adjust, readjust, and perform at a high level that few others match. They, of course, have talent, but they also practice and drill, plus they perform the same basic activity over and over and over. They perform it all very quickly and expertly in a narrowly defined arena, with no true surprises. A jazz musician improvises but it is within the confines of a jazz tune; her band mates will not shock her by lurching into a Metallica tune two minutes into Autumn Leaves. A power forward going in for a dunk will not suddenly face a football defensive end in full pads trying to tackle him in the paint. In other arenas of life, however, such surprises do happen with unpleasant regularly which leads to the need for...
• Strategic Intuition--This is the sort of nonlinear thinking that allows us to innovate and find creative solutions when faced with brand new challenges, startling new opportunities, and daunting new problems.

Enter the Dragon Adept

I have always liked dragons. As a young child, my parents listened to Peter, Paul and Mary, so Puff was my very first dragon image (leaving aside any herbal or medicinal references). I discovered The Hobbit while in middle school, with Smaug the dragon being one of the antagonists. And, during my sophomore year in college, one of my favorite albums of all time came out, the self-titled debut album by Asia. This was back in the last glory days of vinyl albums, when album art was at its peak and the dragon on the cover was a good match for the awesome prog rock on the inside.

I kind of have my own dragon mythology. It is obvious that dragons represent power but they represent so much more to me. I like some of the Asian thoughts on dragons. Dragons are not merely fearsome beasts to be conquered by the heroic knight in shining armor. My dragons are indeed powerful, but they are also benevolent and compassionate. They can change human lives for the better. In many Eastern myths, dragons have the ability to change shape in order to bring about good. The wise man at the waterfall who changes your life just might be an ancient dragon. I like that.

A leader is a dragon. She is someone who has the ability to change herself to adapt to circumstances, yet she retains her essential character and values. She is compassionate and wise, powerful and benevolent. She interacts with others to generate positive change. She goes with the flow yet never loses her overall sense of direction and purpose.

This brings me to the other word in my blog title, the word “adept.” An adept is a skilled practitioner in ways of secret knowledge, such as alchemy. It is a word that was used in late medieval times to describe someone gifted with secret knowledge and wisdom. In my case, the secret subject matter is leadership. I make no claims to be skilled in the ways of leadership but I have spent much of my life exploring various aspects of leadership. This blog is a continuation of my exploration; a way for me to test some of my thoughts, observations, and experiences regarding leadership by writing them out, sharing them, and getting feedback from the larger community.