The gardenersix days beforeI often use the analogies of gardens and gardening in my writing.…The law of tightening aperture

Stages of the customer-vendor loop2022One other thing that seems useful is the idea that the feedback…What happens to the teams with wide apertures over time? Does the aperture stay the same? What about the teams with narrow strategy apertures? When I started examining these questions, I recognized a familiar pattern. This pattern seems so pervasive that I will go ahead and boldly proclaim it as a law: the law of tightening aperture. Here it is:

Embodied Strategy2022I was having a great conversation with a colleague about organizational learning…Given a changing environment, the strategy aperture of any organizational unit tends to only tighten over time.

Why will this be hard for us?2021I was working on a strategy and helping review another this week,…Using super-plain language, the law states that every team’s openness to exploring new opportunities diminishes over time. Every organization that exists today is highly likely to be more strategically flexible than the same organization tomorrow.

💰 The requirement of value

Change2022So far, I carefully avoided the topic of change, presenting my problem-solving…Why does this happen? Strategy aperture appears to be subject to a gravity-like force that can be resisted and sometimes counterbalanced, but never expected to relent: the force of homeostasis. To make it a bit less concrete and easily digestible in the context of this essay, I will rename it to the force of requirement of value.

The expectation gradient2021The conflation of “what is” and “what should be” is not the…The requirement of value can be described as a collective expectation that an organization will at some point deliver value. Given how much we put into it, we’d like to receive it back – and get at least a little bit more (notice how this rhymes with homeostasis).

Dandelion/Elephant Strategy Rubric2022I discussed the nature of conditions that encourage dandelion or elephant strategies,…There are organizations that don’t have these requirements – but usually, they don’t have strategies, either. In this way, the requirement of value both creates the need for strategy and imposes the law on this strategy.

The protocol force2024Here’s a riff on the “hourglass model” conversation I’ve had with Bernhard…The law of tightening aperture applies to any kind of organization, including polities and ecosystems. As long as there’s the requirement of value, the same dynamic will emerge.

Separating cargo from the train2023I’ve been puzzling over a problem that many engineering teams face and…The requirement of value doesn’t always come from the need for tangible outcomes (profits, growth, etc.). Team identity can play a big role in the tightening of the aperture. A team that painstakingly discovers who they are and becomes comfortable with that is the team can’t become something altogether different.

Lenses, framings, and models2022At a meeting this week, I realized that I use the terms…Loops: dead or alive2022There are two important shifts to consider when examining a setting. The…Organizational mindsets are developmental2021I’ve been playing some more with the idea of organizational mindsets in…As an illustration, consider Tuckman’s phases of group development model. The “performing” phase is highly sought after and celebrated when reached, yet it is also the one with the narrowest aperture. There is a reason why there’s the “adjourning” or “transforming” stage tacked on at the end: once a team learns how to perform, it must necessarily cease to exist in its current form to do something different.

Pace layers of predictability2023One thing that stood out to me was this notion of a…Continuously Integrated Strategy2022Somehow, these amazing ideas don’t seem to extend to strategy. In the…Strategy and FOMO2022In itself, feeling fearful about missed opportunities is not a bad thing.…Another source of requirement of value might be the collective desire for predictability. This comes up very strongly in the rapidly changing environments. When everything is up in the air, the need for stability can feel existential. This desire may lead to a paradox during the times of change: just when the team needs to keep its aperture wide to better anticipate and see new opportunities, the collective fear of uncertainty will keep tightening the organization’s strategy aperture.

🏛️ Not necessarily a bad thing

Strategy aperture gifts and curses2023Now that I’ve sketched out the concept of strategy aperture, let’s play…Aperture tightening is not always a bad outcome. It might be exactly what we’re looking for. Teams with a narrow aperture are easily pointed at the problems whose shapes are within their aperture. Confidently solving that problem is their unique gift. The key here is to understand and be intentional about the change.

Aircraft Carriers and Zodiac Boats2024An insightful conversation with a colleague inspired me to articulate the distinction…When we seek a tighter aperture, we usually talk about focus. For example, the phrase “more wood behind fewer arrows” heralded such a change for Google back in 2011. Transitioning from a wide aperture to a narrow aperture is often seen as a necessary step to improve a team’s ability to create value efficiently. This is all good. Aperture tightening works out great when the viable niche the organization ended up pointing at is durable in the long term. For instance, it is exceedingly likely that people will want to consume electricity or the Internet for the foreseeable future. No matter how tight it’s aperture, an organization can thrive providing either.

Growth and control biases2023When we don’t recognize that growth and control are in tension with…We just need to remember that – at least according to the law I present in this essay – there will be no easy way to reverse that shift. Becoming more open to contemplating new opportunities is much, much harder once the aperture tightens. If the shape of the industry changes, and the niche shifts, we will suddenly discover that we are unable to adjust, battered by the winds of change and unable to even see them clearly. Like, hey those cassette tapes were cool, but if I built my business on them, I am in for a nasty surprise in the 90s.

⏪ Can the tightening be reversed?

Limits2022This story builds on the one I wrote a while ago, and…Can the aperture tightening be reversed? Not permanently. As I mentioned earlier, it’s best to view this force as gravity. To keep a soccer ball in the air, I need to exert energy. The default state of the ball is to lay still on the ground. Similarly, the default state of a strategy aperture is to be as narrow as possible. We can resist this force by investing our energy into it, and counteract its effects. But these investments will not have a permanent effect.

Nudging Embodied Strategy2022The whole concept of the cone of embodied strategy is a bit…Anytime we get an impression that organization has revitalized itself, it is doubtful that this happened to a permanent broadening of the aperture. More likely, a “kick-in-the-pants” event loosened the aperture long enough to spot a new promising similarly-shaped opportunity and allowed re-pointing of the organization toward it. Or perhaps we’re actually observing a wholly different organization, similar in name only – an outcome of (likely painful) transformation.

Strategy Aperture2023The concept of embodied strategy continues to captivate me. Recently, I found…What the heck is strategy work?2022We turn the mastermind toward frameworks. The key objective of this role…As organization’s leaders, when we decide where we want to invest our time, it might be useful to look at where we want to be in relation to our current strategy aperture. Relative to the aperture we have, do we want it tightened or broadened?

Cutting or highlighting?2021Talking with one of my wise colleagues, we arrived at this neat…If we need a tighter aperture, we must be very careful about embarking on our team-focusing venture: is this a long-term viable niche? If yes, let’s plow ahead. If it is likely to shift (or is shifting already), we are making ourselves more vulnerable to disruption.

A strategy and a plan2021Working as a group, our good fortune depends (among other things) on…Shadow Gristletwo days afterI’ve been writing a bit of Web components code recently and used…Innovation frontierlinks here, 2023And who knows, my law of tightening strategy aperture could be proven…If we determine that we need to broaden our strategy aperture, it might be that the entirety of our job will be resisting the law of tightening aperture. This is why leading teams and organizations may feel so challenging and downright futile: we keep trying to walk against gravity. It’s a task that is feasible in the short-term, but not in the long term. Eventually, that soccer ball has to come down.