Diagnosing initiative failure via dada and a break-up text to the Board

In the last two months, I have spoken to three different directors about strategy execution failing. While they all said the usual things about weaknesses in communication, capability, pace, two lamented specifically it made complete sense at the Board. The unspoken question: Why don’t staff see the sense we can see?

The problem of strategy execution is often misdiagnosed, and I want to talk about how, but with a detour via dadaist art (obviously). Starting in Zurich in 1916, Dada made no sense. A urinal was sculpture, mumbling was poetry, collages were art. Why was the good sense of the traditionalists– landscapes, stanzas – actively rejected? The context is the story: in the early twentieth century Europe, certainties that had held for generations were falling apart. Freud said the self wasn’t knowable, Einstein and Planck said the physical world was discontinuous and unpredictable, and peace turned into war. But the art traditionalists wanted the arts of the 19th century to continue.

Looking back a century later, Dada can be seen as a reasonable and proportionate response to a world of chaos and confusion. They made random nonsense and called it art; they communicated that the traditions were of little current value. And they expressed their fury and fear, not just their thinking

I spent years implementing major initiatives and sometimes got dadaist responses to my perfect plans and inspirational designs. Prepared amongst experts, approved by the Executive, yes; but still weird questions came back, obstacles appeared, people didn’t do the things. When I discussed these challenges with Execs, the answers were always variants on staff don’t understand, or they are unskilled or they don’t realise this is their job and they’ll be fired if they don’t do it. But this is a poor and unhelpful diagnosis; and is one that persists in Boards and Executive teams as ‘we need to communicate it better’.

Inside the world of the dadaists, their actions made sense. They were communicating to Tradition: no thank you, your view of the world doesn’t resonate with us.

If we treat scepticism about new initiatives in this way, the perspective looks different. Instead of seeing them as incapable or ignorant, ask what is their rejection actually communicating?

I’ve worked with managers when executives aren’t getting traction on their initiatives. Once, I asked the group to write (not send!) a note to the Board as if it was a break-up text. What would you want to say? Alongside what you’d expect (You don’t know how hard we’re already working, we never see you) they also came up with our biggest stakeholder doesn’t want this from us, how come you don’t know that? I asked them what would happen if I communicated that to the Board. They shook their heads, one said [Director] thinks they know [stakeholder group]. But their network is a few mates their age. This was said in angry frustration, and the room had a noticeable release of tension afterwards: the true unspeakable thing was said aloud.

An Exec would never hear that anger – it would be moderated and toned down to avoid critique as ‘unprofessional’ – and would never communicate the emotional tone to the Board for the same reason. It would be massaged into argument and evidence.

But it is useful data. It is both a rational questioning of an approach handed down, and an insight into the emotional impact of the disconnect between the Strategy and front-line experience. Saying ‘break up text’ is very deliberate, by the way: it implies that emotional content is encouraged. It prevents the group trying to write like a Board memo.

(What happened? The CEO took the feedback, and designed a dead-cheap A/B test for the stakeholder group that allowed real-world data, not a Board v Staff argument, to lead a rethink.)

I’m not saying Boards are wrong and staff are right, simply that, like all groups, a Board is highly attached to its own framing and perspective.

Giving credence to only the rational parts of staff feedback and dismissing the rest as ‘just emotional’ is the same mistake the traditionalists made when they called dada nonsense: refusing to engage with a framing that doesn’t fit your own. Managing implementation requires leaders to seek out the emotional content of resistance, not filter it out, and take staff’s own account of the problem seriously rather than translating it into board language first. If staff feedback is confusing, try listening with head and heart.

First published in Strategy, Applied.