The Emperor has no Clothes

The other day I was watching a video from Mintzberg and in it he mentioned that his only hero or mentor is the little boy in the Hans Christian Anderson story who shouts “the Emperor has no clothes”.

In case you have not read the short story, here is the link.

This made me think of how we have so many non-strategies around us. Strategies wearing no clothes at all!

In modern day corporates, we see strategies like the ones I share below.

Like seriously, what does this even mean! So did you have an alternative to worsen customer experience? did you not want to take care of your employees? did you not want to improve financial performance.

Where is the little boy in these companies shouting - the strategy is shit!!

You would have expected the strategist to play this role but they are actually complicit in this. I am assuming the above words are written by a well respected strategist somewhere, most probably named Mr or Ms Obvious.

Now the biggest challenge in telling the emperor he has no clothes is that the emperor might just order your head to be chopped off.

We used to call this CLM - Career Limiting Move in consulting.

As you can tell, most emperors or CEOs are confident (some people might say full of themselves). A part of them has to be. You need to back yourself in such jobs. So if you go and tell your leader that their strategy is shit, they might not take to you so kindly.

So you might need to rephrase it to say, “Emperor your clothes have a hole in it, a large gaping hole”

But two things need to be present for someone to even attempt that.

- a culture of listening

- a reward mechanism that promotes risk taking

If you have a culture of shutting people down, doling out 0% to 1% increments across the board and no promotions to be given because you have no growth, you can be sure that the emperor will be roaming the streets naked for a long time.

Note in the above case the emperor still admires himself for he has already committed to this act and there is no going back!

Well hope you can shout that the emperor has no clothes in organizations you work in or for. In case not, well you might need a new emperor!

PS: I am going to restart “Anatomy of a strategy” notes at least once a month.

PPS: Link to Mintzberg’s video.