The Joys of Emergent Strategy: Hanging out with Pee Wee, Patanjali, & Pareto

I just got back from the Academy of Management’s annual conference in Vancouver. My head is spinning!

I heard so many great ideas presented— and I took part in discussions that made my inner nerd break into her best Pee Wee Herman dance… TEQUILA!

Here is a link to the famous skit, for those of you who are not lucky enough to have experienced the 80’s!

In some ways, Pee Wee’s experience at the bar is pretty similar to my early experiences with the Academy. Were it not for dear friends and mentors though, I probably never would have gotten up the courage to dance the way Pee Wee did!

My first serious paper submission a few years back was met with a less than welcoming review. Flying tomatoes anyone? Thanks to encouragement from more experienced scholars, I stuck to my guns, revised, and made the cut the following year.

For the past four years, I have been the grateful recipient of mentoring from some truly great scholars in the Academy— Joanne C. Preston in particular. So I have been able to learn the ropes enough that now I feel comfortable throwing out an idea here and there and enthusiastically diving into the rich discussions that usually elicits… Commence the dance!

Like Pee Wee, I can now belly up to the bar, although I haven't exactly been given a motorcycle just yet!

I am making some new strategic decisions about my business and scholarship now that I am finding my comfort zone and it feels pretty good.

Enter Patanjali, who is credited with writing down the yoga sutras in about 300 or 400 C.E. (depending on whom you ask)!

I have known for a while what my purpose is, what I think is my dharma— to put it in yogic terms. I feel compelled to expand my own understanding of complexity, bring in some of the elegant, practical lessons of yogic thought (tested in many, many settings since long before anyone was writing scholarly journals) and add something to the body of knowledge in a way that practitioners can really use.

That’s been the vision for a while now. It’s the execution that’s been difficult.

To have an impactful voice in that arena, I have a whole lot to learn. There is so much to read, so much to explore, so much to write, and the need for many years of meaningful discussions with more experienced scholar-practitioners and peers. All of these people come to the table with fresh new interpretations and rich understandings of topics that are nothing short of awe-inspiring.

It’s too much for any one human being to begin to understand. The body of knowledge is a living, breathing, shifting thing— an example of what David Boje calls systemicity.

To take part, which is at best to add one drop of our own to a rapidly shifting ocean of thought… one must choose an emergent idea (or two or three) and humbly explore them with an open heart, accepting the painful destruction of our preconceptions in order to grow.

Other people’s ideas are sometimes the intellectual equivalent of irritating grains of sand, without which oysters cannot produce pearls. We may not like them at first, but we absolutely NEED them.

Yet a single oyster can’t begin to take in the whole beach, nor can we possibly do it all at once— write, speak, consult, read all we should, and have a life besides! Yet that is exactly what we tend to do as scholar-practitioners in the early days of that experience!

Hello, Pareto!

The picture above is me! It is me in a literal, physical sense— my body, my mat, and my pencils…

It’s also been me in the early years of Gly Solutions as a company and my life as a scholar-practitioner. I love how the picture symbolizes the union of scholar and practitioner in my experience with the sociomaterial blending of mind and body in yoga, as well as the jacket symbolizing the world of business and management.

Geeky, huh???

It also reflects the over-tasked, “spread too thin” experience of my early search for the right tactics to pursue my vision.[1]

Now THAT is something that most of you can probably identify with!

In recent years I have published fairly often— in books, blogs, and conference proceedings, but at the expense of producing academic journal articles, despite the patient and repeated suggestions of my mentors and some peers. I thought that would be the best way to build my consulting practice, looking for that practitioner audience that would ultimately become my clients.

Alas, that thinking may have been a little premature.

When you have wonderful new cookie dough and are still tweaking the recipe, it’s kind of a waste to market it to consumers who want packaged, ready to eat cookies with a long shelf life! Likewise, tailors and designers rarely market to the ready-to-wear consumer. If you need a cocktail dress to wear now and any little black dress will do, then why would you visit a tailor who specializes in custom-made runway fashions? (Tailors of ideas, take note.)

I met a lot of nice people, but the flurry of activity drew my attention away from the baking/designing process of developing my most important work.

I have focused on differentiation as a strategy and made some good progress, but the only way to gain any real traction for these ideas is to allow them to mature and to find their proper context. So I am shifting my focus a bit now, tweaking the tactical picture in exciting new ways that honor the 80-20 rule, as one of my mentors has suggested— “Repeatedly,” she might say with a knowing smile!

For those who aren’t familiar, it draws from Pareto’s ideas about the distribution of wealth in societies and, oddly enough, peas in his garden. The idea is that in complex adaptive systems, like today’s marketplace, the most impact comes from focusing on the 20% of customers, tasks, or projects that are the most impactful first. Then we deal with the smaller matters as time permits.

There are a lot of wonderful business applications of the concept, which is nothing new, and it is consistent with Stephen Covey Sr.’s famous “big rocks” exercise. In it, you are presented with some large rocks, small rocks, and a container of sand or water. If you put the little rocks in first, the big ones do not fit. They symbolize those things that are most important to you in terms of work and life.

So if you put the big rocks in first, then the smaller ones in the spaces between, and finally the water or sand, it may be possible to fit everything.

I would add that if you can’t fit everything, and have prioritized well, the things that don’t fit are just small rocks and of little consequence.

Some would even say not to bother with the small rocks and sand, focusing only on the big rocks. So here I am, sitting with my pile of big rocks, polishing them and adapting my business strategy to best serve my purpose! Carpe alignment!!!

How about you?

What are your big rocks?

Can you dance like Pee Wee, Perceive like Patanjali, and prioritize like Pareto?

I am not there yet, but it sure is fun to try it! What a beautiful journey this is!

Copyright, Gly Solutions, LLC 2015