Latest / Complexity Cogitators Podcast / #010 - Everything is Strategy...?
Transcript
- Joakim von Prónay: Marco. Is everything strategy? I'll give you our conclusion as introduction to this episode. No, everything is not strategy. But more than we traditionally believe. And it's also easier than we think, but more complex than we want it to be. That is what we are talking about today on Complexity Cogitators. My name is Joakim von Brånaj and together with Marco Ahumada-Juntunen. Thank you for listening to the whole episode. If you enjoyed the conversation, please consider leaving a review and sharing the episode with at least one other person who you believe will also enjoy it. It truly helps us reach more people. And if you don't follow us already, please consider subscribing to our Substack on complexitycogitators.substack.com. And if you have a topic that you want us to talk about, drop us a message. We are more than happy to receive suggestions. Marco: Joakim Joakim von Prónay: Good to see you as always. Marco: Indeed it is. Joakim von Prónay: Indeed. And now today we are at a ⁓ long awaited conversation. Marco: Well, you say that, but we've been here before. Joakim von Prónay: We have been here before, but even then we wanted to revisit the idea of strategy. And we have come to the point in many of our conversations thus far that everything seems to boil down to strategy. Marco: Mm-hmm. Joakim von Prónay: Bye for now. we try to make sense of organizational behavior. Marco: It does seem that way. I mean, in a lot of episodes up until now, we've sort of hand wavily said that that's strategy, that's a strategic statement. I mean, I think, I think even back. To the episode about Agile, we talked about the Agile manifesto being a strategic document. And you brought it up last time too as well. Joakim von Prónay: Yeah, exactly. Last time we talked about... Last time we built on our conversation on agile nomadology. And we continued building on that because I had a question. How would you formulate or describe boundaries within which you are free to operate and free to make decisions for your essentially operating unit or autonomous unit? And in the end, I, at least in my head, I realize that well first and foremost everything is contextual. But an example of describing such boundaries is that they are in at least for me are well described ⁓ as dichotomies. And I would even say strategic dichotomies. So, ⁓ Spectrum within which that you make decisions regarding certain aspects that you find ⁓ important. And this, the agile values an example of that. When we say, for example, people and interactions over tools and processes. That is a strategic dichotomy, is my claim. That you value the whole spectrum to a certain degree, but you need to put that into context and help you guide the decisions that are in front of you. So you say we rather have people ⁓ and interactions over processes and tools. But we need to see exactly where we land on that spectrum, depending on the situation that we're in. So this is one of the things that led me once again to say, well, everything is seemingly strategy. Marco: And I mean, we're going to have to come in to defend ourselves on that point that everything is strategy. which is going to be interesting. I agree with you on the point that it is useful to have such dichotomies. I'm not sure I would call them dichotomies, because that would imply they were opposites, but which they aren't. They're just alternatives. let's see where we land on that. If I get to challenge you a little bit, but I agree with the point. useful to have two like... attractors of decisions and be able to place them. in a kind of tension. So I like that. It is very useful. But maybe this is the time when we start talking about why is everything strategy? What would make someone say such a thing? Joakim von Prónay: What would make me say such a thing or anyone for that matter? Marco: I think I start. Joakim von Prónay: No, I think this is where we refer back to at least Mintzberg. ⁓ mentioned a few times as well, that strategy is pattern in decision making. I think this is to me the starting point of why I say everything essentially leads to ⁓ word strategy. ⁓ we make decisions all the time. And if we try to understand our decisions, then we will end up in something that we could describe as and should describe a strategy. Marco: I agree. But the interesting thing about this is that it seems not to be the way a lot of people think about it. And that's why kind of we need to start challenging that statement in a way, because the way I got into thinking about strategy is very different from how I see it now. And I think it's because we still have that, you know, those old strategy schools from like the analytical style strategy. that kind of dominate what we generally think of as strategy. Joakim von Prónay: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I didn't really start where I am now. And my view on strategy is also where I'm not where I started. I started in a place when I heard the word strategy as, ⁓ that's something that is way above me. That's nothing I have anything to do with. That was my feeling. Marco: Same strategy, someone's problem with a pay grade or whatever. It's not something I should get involved in. And now it's the opposite for me. Everyone's supposed to some degree doing a strategy, whether or not whatever doing a strategy means, but is involved in ⁓ strategy work in some way. And somewhere along the journey, my perception of it flipped. We have to thank Mintzberg for it. So yeah, Mintzberg, as it says, strategy is a pattern in a stream of decisions. Simple, abstract, and what do you even do with that? Well, it turns out that humans ⁓ decisions all the time and patterns in decisions ⁓ becomes very interesting problem to try to understand when you have groups of humans organized into something. suddenly you come across the need for strategy, no matter what you call it. But to me, what's interesting about understanding of strategy is that it exists whether or not you it strategy, whether or not it has a name, and even whether or not it's intentional. which makes the world more interesting for people in our kinds of roles, working with organizations, trying to figure out, well, what kinds of strategies are at play? Which ones of them are named? Which ones of them are effective? Joakim von Prónay: No, I agree. I agree. It's always been very interesting to try to understand when working in organizations as an external consultant, just to understand the pattern or patterns in the streams of decisions that have led them up to the point where they are. that's part of the work to do some anthropological digging to see how have we gotten to this point. And that's very much in the view of Edgar Schein and how he looks at organizational culture. But in preparation for this conversation, we both went through, Strategy Safari, a publication where ⁓ is one of the authors, which kind of paints the broad picture of which different ⁓ schools or schools of thinking around strategy are there and how have they evolved over time and how are they relevant and where are they flawed? And I think this ⁓ this reading at least painted a very nice picture for myself because I'm not well read on the academic side on strategic management. So this to me was very insightful. And maybe just to, maybe I'll just list the different schools because then we can potentially refer to them and see which ones we have stumbled across in practice before seemingly and ⁓ which ones we more so align not align maybe more so agree with because you don't like the word align maybe with the schools that are coherent with our view resonates is also a good way of putting it now what let's i'll just read the the chapter titles and then we can dig into them if we want to or or not yeah Marco: which resonates with our ways of thinking. Good framework. Joakim von Prónay: The first one listed is the design school. So strategy formation as a process of conception. The next one is the planning school. Strategy formation as a formal process. Then we have the positioning school. Strategy formation as an analytical process. The entrepreneurial school. Strategy formation as a visionary process. We have the Cognitive school strategy formation as a mental process the learning school strategy formation as an emergent process the power school strategy formation as a process of negotiation the cultural school strategy formation as a collective process the environmental school strategy formation as a reactive process and then lastly the Configuration School strategy formation as a process of transformation. What did you think when you read about these different schools? Marco: I thought they were very interesting lenses to understand how others might conceptualize strategy. Especially the first schools that you mentioned, they feel like the kind of ⁓ more like the MBA style schools, the kinds that you would... come across in university and that kind of stuff in general. At least that's my ⁓ stereotype of business education. Joakim von Prónay: Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, the authors mentioned that as well. Like this is the type of more classical and that is taught by MBAs. And some of them, I I also realized that I've come across where these different schools have seemingly been the influential way to think about strategy and organizations. Because then you do see the heavy strategy documents left behind. And now it's only about execution and the strategy on paper is correct. And if we just execute it correctly, we will get the intended results and that type of linear deterministic behind it. Marco: And these schools, they cater to a very specific organizational need that we've mentioned a couple of times, that is legibility. if we can just create a model for what our goals are, how we want the world to look in the future, like this linear style of quantizing our understanding of the world and sequencing it into steps, it makes easy to sell. ⁓ It makes easy to... evaluate. Joakim von Prónay: Yeah, absolutely. Marco: So. it seems attractive because it abstracts away the mess. of what's going on in the organization and around it. So that's my main critique. we shouldn't be getting into critique already. But I mean I've used plenty of tools from that toolbox like SWOT analysis and and whatnot. have their place for the right problems. Joakim von Prónay: Yeah, I agree. think that's another recurring conclusion of mine. Most of the theories and most of the thinking around most aspects of organizational behavior and organizational life have useful tools. It's just, there is not one single thing that you wholeheartedly trust in. You should use a diverse set of tools and a diverse set of theories. to get a broad as picture as possible. And think this is where the words from Mintzberg that resonated most with me were the ones where he talked about, how did he phrase it? Intended strategy and realized strategy. Right? So that you have some sort of, the intended strategy is that this is what you want to do and this is what you want to achieve. This is your intention, so to speak. But then there are always things that you can't plan for. Marco: Yep. Joakim von Prónay: So you should essentially retrospectively look at what happened and retrospectively look at the stream of decisions that happened and see what was the strategy that actually materialized? What is the strategy that actually happened? Which was the one that we realized and how far away from the intended strategy was that? And was that a good thing or a bad thing? And can we learn from that process? So this was the approach or at least ⁓ the phrasing from Mintzberg that has resonated most with my own view of it. Marco: Yeah, and it's just the article alone that he wrote It's called Off-strategies Deliberate and Emergent. one of my most cited minceberg texts I'm absolutely resonating with those. And in general, for those who haven't come across Mintzberg, emergent idea of decisions being made, These decisions aren't being made in a vacuum, they're made by individuals with their own background and personalities and unique perspectives of the situation. so he acknowledges, I think on like page 10 or something, at least part of strategy is always going to be emergent, ⁓ is already for me different from most other ⁓ frameworks strategy. But are we getting ⁓ carried from ⁓ the of ⁓ schools? Joakim von Prónay: No, I don't think so. I we are still strategy school adjacent. I can easily see us coming back to them. Marco: Okay, cool. All right. Joakim von Prónay: And we don't have to go through them chronologically in any regard. I think we can refer back to them if we need to. And I think this is also where I can challenge myself because last year at some point, I wrote a few words, not many, where I claimed emergence should be your strategy. And then you can open the book and say, yeah, well, then you can Marco: Mm-hmm. Joakim von Prónay: then you're saying you're wholeheartedly agreeing with the learning school of strategy, where strategy formation is an emergent process. yes, I very much resonate with the learning school of strategy. But I'm also saying that that's not enough. And when I say emergence should be your strategy, I'm also saying And here's this word again. It depends on your context. Because you can't subtract your context. And the context is what industry are you in? What products and services are you selling? What are you producing? What is the current market conditions for those products and those services? What is the history of the organization? And so on and so forth. And what are your goals? And so on. there are aspects of the context where you can pick pieces from all of the schools of strategy. There will be elements from the design school, there will be elements from the planning school, there will be elements from the positioning school and the entrepreneurial school and so on and so forth. And I think this is my response or me saying this is probably an over ⁓ overcorrection because I have very rarely got been exposed to organizations where they deliberately embrace some level of emergence in their strategy formation. But I'm also saying this is not the only school you should be looking at. It's not only an emergent process, but emergence is a very important part of it. Marco: very least you can't ignore it. Joakim von Prónay: At the very least, can't ignore it. Absolutely. And in my experience, so far, most organizations have been trying to ignore it. They have been trying to use the dominant tool for their dominant way of looking at strategy to kind of get around the fact that we can't foresee and control all parameters. Marco: It seems to be a tricky balancing act for a lot of organizations. It's a simplification, I'm aware, but I think of it a little bit of having a strategy budget. So if you fill your budget with your intentions, ⁓ you leave no room for emergence. for variance in both outcomes and how actually get there. So I like to think of it as leaving a little bit of slack. to allow for productive emergence or variation. Joakim von Prónay: No, I find it fascinating, but so far, I think the word strategy for me. is more specifically decision-making dichotomies. What are the things that help you and guide you in your decision-making? That is the strategy or the strategies that you use. And then you should, of course, have a structure and a process around this. Marco: I agree that they're useful, I don't think every, I think of them like the end points that you call dichotomies. think of them as decision attractors. So they attract certain kinds of decisions or they apply some kind of validity to a decision in context. think a lot of attractors useful even without having a contrast like that. Like if we come to the context of goals, commonly deployed strategic tool. It doesn't have to be the case that exist in an opposition to another goal. But of course they exist in a kind of prioritization framework, probably another opportunities. ⁓ that doesn't mean that those opportunities are not desirable. It's just that they're not probably desirable right now. Joakim von Prónay: No, that's a good way of putting it. Yeah. Marco: Yeah. the same way, like also mentioned before, the other part of the ⁓ Agile since we're that as an example here for ⁓ strategy, the principles. And they're just standalone statements that say this is good. So these principles, which are basically binary filters for some idea. that we can try to kind of. measure our decisions against. Hey, why are we measuring our progress in terms of tickets delivered? Shouldn't we be understanding our progress as software, ⁓ is the formulation in the Agile Manifesto? ⁓ Joakim von Prónay: Yeah, true. Yeah. Yeah. No, exactly. But the way you phrased it here as filters is to me at least very useful. it of course painted a nice picture in my head. So I like that, that you can use your underlying principles. Be it from the Agile Manifesto or whatever principles that you're operating under for yourself or your organization. But you can use your principles as filters for your decision making. Yeah, that's... quite useful phrasing. Marco: There's a thinking tool that I use a lot to organize these kinds of statements on different levels of abstraction. Simon produced it and he called it originally the Agile Onion, but I use it generally for that. ⁓ It a hierarchy of decision ⁓ attractors, say. So ⁓ kind of drawn as a Venn diagram. So the largest outer circle. He calls the mindset, which I think is a useless word, but let's it beliefs. The things that we assume about the world. ⁓ Like these things like people are lazy. If that is a belief that we have and that we have internalized, then that will in ways shape how we make decisions. And the level inside that is values. So what is important given what we believe about the world. So if we believe that the world is a dangerous place, we will think that different things will be more important than others. So if the world is a dangerous place, then we will think that physical safety is more important than leisure, for example. If we do not believe that about the environment, suddenly our priorities will be different. And it's in this value space we can start pitching things against each other. So we think that... Well, let's just do the physical safety and leisure. We can put those in dichotomy with each other so we construct this axis that didn't exist before we... couple these together, right? And in the same way, the agile manifesto does that by taking something that is not measurable individuals and directions and ⁓ thing, ⁓ and tools. And think that this is more important than the other. And suddenly we have this hierarchy of values ⁓ that of course contextually contingent. Sometimes we will want processes and tools because automation is actually nice and frees us up from doing people and interaction stuff. it's not always clean cut that way. Anyway, when we have these values then they inform our principles. So do filter if this particular decision was good or not? ⁓ Then we this slightly more concrete idea of principles. And I believe that most people have been in organizations ⁓ where the principles not with the values. So we have these ideas of we value autonomy value we value autonomy but We have rules or principles that subtly undermine that because we haven't checked how these things fit together. that's a tool that I use to see is how do decision-making patterns form and what tools do we use to sort of create coherence. And then the inner layers of the onion just to have them mentioned. So inside principles are practices. So how do we actually do things? inside that, then we have tools. what is it we use to do these things? And together this shouldn't create some kind of coherence to how things take place. So that's kind of what went through my mind when you were talking about dichotomies and values. This is my little organizing system. Joakim von Prónay: Now it's a bit more comprehensive than me just saying, well, they are dichotomies where you pit one against the other and then you use that to inform your decisions. It's a good starting point, but you're a bit further with filters and funnels and stuff. Marco: Well, yeah, happy I could provide. Joakim von Prónay: No, but I find it useful. find both of the perspectives useful. And I still feel like, still feel like the statement, everything is strategy is somewhat true so far. So I haven't changed my view on that yet. Marco: let's see. ⁓ cheekily say everything is strategy that is not culture in organizations. I'm not sure if that's true. It just feels fun to say. Maybe we'll explore that later. Joakim von Prónay: Maybe. Because that also got me thinking, because then you have the old saying, culture eats strategy for breakfast. I don't, nowadays, nowadays, I don't necessarily agree with that. Marco: Sorry for it. I'm pretty sure that's one of the most famous things that Peter Drucker never said. It's one of those invented quotes, I'm pretty sure. Do ⁓ know? Is that what you're... Joakim von Prónay: Yeah, I don't remember. don't remember. But I see it. I still see it all over the place. Marco: It doesn't make it less real. Joakim von Prónay: No, because this touches upon the cultural school of strategy. So strategy formation as a collective process of essentially people working in an organization with shared intentions, making sense of the world together. And out from that, out from those experiences and those interpretations comes strategy. So when you say strategy as everything that is not culture, and also with the quote, non-quote culture eats strategy for breakfast. And then you have the cultural school of strategy formation. Marco: Mm-hmm. Joakim von Prónay: To me, it's more so can't culture, can't culture in itself be strategy? And can't you say that your strategy is culture? You can probably say that as well. But then, yeah. Marco: I I've heard that being said, that we don't have a strategy, we trust the culture to bring us good things. Joakim von Prónay: but then you have a strategy. Marco: Right, it's just that it's not a strategy in the Porter sense. Joakim von Prónay: Exactly. No, you have a strategy because it's something that guides you in decision-making. You don't impose on people what they're supposed to do. No, you have trust, you have certain guardrails and certain boundaries, which is what I mentioned in the beginning, the context. You are all operating within the same context, pursuing somewhat the same goals or goals that are coherent with each other. And I would then therefore argue you have a strategy. But yes. Marco: But you always have a strategy according to Mintzberg. It's just whether or not it's intended or in which way you communicate your intentions. The way I think about the relationship between strategy and culture is that if we think of strategy in terms of objectives or goals or specific ways in which you would like to change the world, Not all strategies are compatible with all cultures. So like if you would take a culture or an organization that's been built on I don't know a church for example and you say you know what now we're going to be a gambling company going to get some friction not all your goals are going to be accepted ⁓ so that will have kind of a dissonance No matter how clearly you intend your goals, will probably not going to end up getting there without drastically changing the culture. Joakim von Prónay: Yep. No, exactly. And this was another thing that came to me when I was reading through and getting an overview of the different strategy schools. Not all of the schools are helpful in all contexts. Marco: Mm-hmm. Joakim von Prónay: because there is a certain level of... historical context within the organization that is very, very relevant. especially if you want to influence and change the way the organization views strategy and if they want to transform as an example. Marco: Mm-hmm. Joakim von Prónay: then you need to understand how they got to the point where they are and what the dominant views in the organization are. You can't just come in and say, now everything must be emergence. It's very likely that it's not gonna work. Marco: Right, and it's not just from an intention point of view. Whoever is allowed to declare a strategic intention must first accept some kind of appetite for emergence. It's also a question of whether or not the culture will accept that way of operating all. Joakim von Prónay: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I remember a few years ago, I don't I don't know exactly which organization it was. But all of a sudden, seemingly out of nowhere, people started to talk about we need to create a learning organization. That was the hottest buzz within that little sphere of influence at that time. And everyone was talking about the learning organization. when you start to read into it you're like yeah this sounds really cool but now I also have the same view like you take it with a pinch of salt yes there are some very useful tools and useful models and theories inside that school of thinking But the way that they went about it back then was that this is the only thing that we can do. This is now our hammer. And everything is a nail for us to learn on. Marco: But I mean, in a way, it's one of those insights that comes when the pendulum has swung too far in one direction. So you realize that this organization isn't learning, it's only acting based on its inputs. So maybe it's a context with a lot of learned helplessness, for example. You're going to be hard pressed to make such an organization one that autonomously learns and acquires new knowledge to solve its current problems. And that's it's more of a culture. see it's more, this is why I make a difference between, between. culture and strategies that the culture becomes some kind of operating system for what kinds of strategies will emerge or be accepted. Joakim von Prónay: and subscribe to that view. So Marco, does that mean that everything is strategy? Marco: I think it's not. I think... gonna put it this way. I don't think everything is strategy, but a lot more than we usually think. What do you think? Joakim von Prónay: everything is not strategy but a lot more than we set out to believe. Yes, I agree with that. And I would also say. I believe we are making strategy more difficult than what it has to be. but then strategy. Marco: You mean not necessarily in this conversation, but as a as an industry. Joakim von Prónay: Not in this conversation, but in organizations, we are making strategy out to be more difficult than it has to be. But strategy is also much more complex than. what we think. So think this is another balance point. To me, a good starting point is, do you have strategic dichotomies that you use to guide your decision making? Can you find the patterns in your decision making? And the other side of it is, well, if we look at all the schools of thought around strategy, you can view strategy from so many different angles and so many different perspectives that you can essentially make it out to be whatever you want. But if it fundamentally does not aid you in your decision making, then that's where you need to work on it. You can look at it however you like, but your goal should be that your, what you call your strategy or your strategies must aid you in your decision making. And think from the organizations I've worked with in the past. I think still it's only Spotify that has had good framing of their strategies that actually helped the organization down to individual engineers to make decisions. Everywhere else, it's just been obfuscated and hard to understand how you should follow what the claimed strategy was. Marco: And I think another mistake that we do is... It's seen too exclusively as a kind of management, action of management or discipline of. Joakim von Prónay: as an example, ⁓ that claim that their strategy is to be the market leader, as an example. I've seen that many, many times. ⁓ we are not interested in going into a new market unless we can be or become the market leader within a certain time period. And that is then phrased as this is our strategy. And I've always seen that as an ambition. It's an outcome. I don't see how that can meaningfully aid in decision making. Marco: Not by itself, I think. think such a statement needs to be accompanied with answers to the question, okay, so how are you going to do that? So a statement, But by itself, it's very helpful, just like you say. So what are our competitors? What advantages do we have over them? Or what are our resources? it doesn't guide individual or maybe not even collective decision by itself. I think it is strategy. It probably shouldn't be the strategy. It needs to be accompanied with other statements. Because the way I think, gave some kind of ⁓ for what is strategy then that seems to have been useful sometimes. That is everything that makes us work in roughly the same direction for roughly the same reasons, in roughly the same way and at roughly the same time. a huge simplification, but it's more useful than most other strategy I come across. I think that point alone needs friends to sort of, okay, so when? Well, said that within a certain timeframe, this needs to happen. Sure, that's a one, but how and why? Joakim von Prónay: No. No, but I think that's a really good phrasing of it. Because you're doing roughly the same thing for roughly the same reason, in roughly the same way, at roughly the same time. I think this is a pretty good contextual boundary. And I think that perhaps is some... Maybe you can use those phrasings as filters. Marco: They're kind of a meta strategy, So is what I'm looking at strategy? Does it help at any of these points? Maybe. Does it need friends to do the other things? That's a good starting point at least. Joakim von Prónay: because then, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Marco: And what's useful about this is that you can use it at any level. Like you can even use it in your family. ⁓ we're going on vacation. Well, what is our purpose for and where are we ending up going to the same place? Joakim von Prónay: Mm That is useful. But I mean, especially in the book Strategy Safari, it talks about strategy formation. How are strategies being formed? And we have here claimed that everything is strategy, where we now say, well, everything is perhaps not strategy, but a lot of it is. How do organizations form strategies? What is the strategy formation process? That is very heavily talked about in the different schools. And you came up with a slightly different vocabulary to this. And when we had this conversation last time that we did not publish, it was essentially our trial run in how to record and publish a recording. We talked about. Marco: Mm. Joakim von Prónay: We talked about the word strategy, right? And then we talked about strategy making and strategy tending. Marco: Mm-hmm. Yeah, and I've since added another term to that vocabulary. Joakim von Prónay: What have you added? Marco: I'll get there. So you use the word strategy formation. want to. first separate that into two things. So Mainsmer makes a difference between strategy formation and strategy formulation. So strategy formulation is the act or the process of creating strategic statements or the intended strategy so that it can be communicated to those who are supposed to sort of act, make decisions based on this. And then strategy formation the emergence of stable patterns. So the formation is what happens in the organization when they are faced with a formulated strategy. So let's take the statement. We're going to be the market leader in this country. That's a formulation. And sounds like we anticipate that it will have a weak forming effect, right? that's the first one. And so ⁓ that me to ⁓ the that you're hinting at. I use the word strategy making to be very to strategy formulation ⁓ that Minzberg makes. this is the act of creating some kind of artifact, some kind of language that is designed to travel. So this needs to be something that can be understood and interpreted by an organization somehow. Mintzberg also uses the word strategy making for this. So it's not novel terms out. So this is like the artifact space of strategy making. Like this strategy document. is a strategy artifact produced by a strategy making process. Now the strategy making process can be centralized into the head of ⁓ a single visionary like a CEO or something of sorts, or it can be a distributed process. it be sourced by the organization. then the second ⁓ that I use is pretty close to what Mintzberg thinks of as strategy formation, which is the ⁓ of strategy work that is ⁓ overlooked in organization, which I use the word strategy tending. So if we have this idea of a strategy that we want to form, Then how do we ensure that it does and how do we monitor which strategies are actually forming work with them? Are they generative? Are they destructive? And we ⁓ get in ⁓ the that create those patterns. So this is a highly kind of cultural activity. Those were the two original words. So strategy making and strategy tending. so both of these are internal to the organization. These are largely based on internal organizational interests ⁓ and processes. And the word that I added to the vocabulary is navigation. So the two first strategy making a strategy tending their concern with internal processes and activities of the organization. The looks outward. So it is essentially the work of interpreting the environment involves understanding customer needs, market dynamics and competitive positioning. are our competitors doing? ⁓ shouldn't be making decisions without that information into our process of strategy making. So I think those three together are... Pretty comprehensive, my understanding of strategy work right now at least, my change. Joakim von Prónay: No, I like it as well. Cool. I don't know what else I have to add. Marco: we'll have to make a strategy part three. ⁓ But I'm sure we'll return to this topic. Joakim von Prónay: Yes, very likely, very likely. Marco: would be interesting to hear someone tell us where we're wrong. Joakim von Prónay: ⁓ yes. Marco: Maybe we'll have a guest of someone that's been either provoked or inspired. see if we can. Joakim von Prónay: that we must have. Michael, do you have any final words? Marco: That's a little neat though. No, it's always a good shot as always. Joakim von Prónay: No, I don't think I have any final words either. More than everything is not strategy, but a lot of it is. And it's also more comprehensive than what we traditionally believe. And it's also easier than we think, but more complex than we want it to be. Marco: Mm-hmm. Joakim von Prónay: very conclusive. Marco: It's a very good summary. Joakim von Prónay: that strategy for you. Marco, thank you for the conversation. Marco: Thank you, Joachim. It's pleasure as always. Joakim von Prónay: Until next time. Marco: See ya. Joakim von Prónay: ⁓