Build your "non-deformable passenger cell"
Most people haven’t heard of Béla Barényi. I’m going to nerd out on his influential automotive safety innovation, why it matters for strategy development, and then why i’ve moved my newsletters to be substack-first.
Crumple Zones
Way back in the 1920s, a safe car was a rigid car – something that could take a dive into a ditch and still look pristine. Never mind the humans, look at the steel!
Barényi created the design of the VW Beetle; that’s a great story but not for today. Porsche and Mercedes turned him away, but the unemployed visionary was hired by Daimler-Benz after telling a Board member “you’re doing everything wrong” in the course of a 22 minute answer to a simple question. That Board member is credited with hiring him with the words:
A company like Daimler-Benz can’t afford to live hand to mouth. Mr Barényi, you are thinking 15 to 20 years ahead. In Sindelfingen you’ll be working in a world apart. Whatever you invent will go directly to the patent department
He’d explained that every part of the car should be designed to enhance safety for the occupants of the car.
At the drawing board, he divided the car body into three sections: the rigid non-deforming passenger compartment and the crumple zones in the front and the rear.
In a collision, the crumple zones absorb the energy of the crash, leaving the ‘non-deformable passenger cell’ reasonably intact. The car is a mess, the passengers walk away.
OK, safety nerd, what’s this got to do with Strategy?
At some point your organisation is going to hit a wall - or something will drive into you. What’s your crumple zone, and what’s non-deformable?
Many contemporary strategies are put together as a perfect crystal - inviolable, intricate, everything interdependent on everything else. (Look at the interlocking cogs on the cover.) But given that no plan survives contact with the enemy it is worth spending time deciding what will be allowed to fall away.
A few months ago i ran a strategy workshop for a Board of a medical college. A fruitful moment of discussion was to ask they would do with ‘less’ (cash, staff, volunteers, partners, energy, freedom; just ‘less’).Responses included:
We’d still do all the same things, just at a smaller volume
We’d still do all the same things, but lower our quality standards
We’d stop doing [Activity A] completely, and focus on being the best at [Activity B]
They put A in the crumple zone, and B in the non-deformable cell. (By the way, ‘crumple zone’ sounds much cooler in German: Knautschzone.)
(Interestingly, in later discussions the group reflected that they hadn’t directly considered this before, they’d simply evolved the organisation over time to do lots of different things without really prioritising. It’s easy to make things into ‘Business As Usual’ - we’ve always done this - unless you actively question priorities)
Articulating Activity B as their core, the thing the college would stand for even if everything else fell away, prevents them falling into the unstrategic trap…
What if you build you strategy of solid steel, with no crumple zones?
When i began as CEO of Renew, the strategy was clear on our purpose (all Australians live sustainably) and how we would achieve it: membership advice, magazines, events and systemic advocacy. Three days after i started came COVID.
Revenue disappeared, uncertainty peaked, and the existing inadequate systems and processes fell apart. Like many organisations, our strategy had no crumple zone. What would we pivot to? Preserve the magazines, put a hold on the advocacy? Cancel all the events and make better magazines for the people stuck at home? There was no way to decide other than talk it through. This was OK, the Board invested the time.
But it was a huge problem between Board/CEO and the active membership - because every one of them had a different view of what to sacrifice, and there had been no true discussions with members about what they really, at core, wanted their organisation to be. I don’t want to dwell on that time - no fun - but think about how different it was to the College i mentioned above. If a crisis hits, they are already five km along the road in their passenger cell rather than looking for their keys.
Crumple zones and my digital channels
I’ve spent the last three years mourning 2014 twitter, and the little ecosystem i built up with Medium. I ditched twitter when it got musked.
When I set up my consultancy, I experimented with various types of LinkedIn posts, before doing fortnightly ‘newsletters’. Over the same time, Medium became a bit more gated - hard to access if not a member. What would happen to me and my work if linkedin got similarly enshittified?
My response is to treat Linkedin as a crumple zone; this substack the the website i cross-post to are my non-deformable passenger cell.
Fin
First native substack newsletter done - I’m going to be interested seeing how this performs on LinkedIn. See you in another biweek.
