MOMENTS OF IMPACT

Virtually all accomplished managers need to call high-stakes strategic conversations with their colleagues at key moments. The reality is that most lack the skills or experience to do so effectively. As a result, most of these so-called strategic conversations are “okay”—at best.

Okay (or worse) strategic conversations carry an immense price: they are a costly waste of time; they fail to generate the insights that they should; they de-motivate participants and undermine confidence in management. Worst of all, they can lead to terrible decisions.

Great strategic conversations, by contrast, can be powerful accelerators of change—key moments of impact in the life of an organization. They lift participants above the fray of daily concerns and narrow self-interest, reconnecting them to their longer-term, collective purpose. By their definition, a well designed strategic conversation involves five crucial components: 1) Objectives in the context of a larger journey of transformation in order to establish a clear sense of purpose; 2) Participants within the context of their needs as individuals as well as those of the stakeholders they represent in order to develop deep empathy for the people affected by the process; 3) Content within the larger context of causes that are evolving over time in order to frame the key issues as future-oriented choices; 4) Agenda within the context of existing organizational processes in order to build follow-through and action into the program; and 5) Venue within the context of the overall space and all its physical elements in order to create an integrated, total environment that supports the larger purpose. The readership for this book is immense: with engaging, accessible writing, they will appeal to both the painkiller crowd (those that really need it) and the vitamin crowd (those who are seeking out new information proactively) who have embraced books like Switch and Blue Ocean Strategy in droves. Between them, they are exceptionally well-connected and positioned to help support a major launch effort for the book that will facilitate a very powerful backlist life. CHRIS ERTEL and LISA SOLOMON have been colleagues and friends for a decade, since meeting at Global Business Network (GBN)—the world’s leading scenario planning consultancy—in 2002.

Chris Ertel has been designing strategic conversations for 15 years as an advisor to senior executives of Fortune 500 companies, government agencies and large nonprofits. He is a partner in the San Francisco office of Monitor Group. . Chris’s approach and perspective is rooted in social science; he holds an MA in cultural anthropology and a PhD in demography from the University of California, Berkeley, where he has also taught graduate courses as an adjunct faculty member.

Lisa Kay Solomon specializes in designing strategic conversations that help leaders address thorny issues that lack clarity or consensus. Lisa spent seven years as a practitioner at Global Business Network, where she ran long-range strategic planning processes for organizations in the private and public sectors. In addition to her consulting practice, Lisa is an adjunct professor at the groundbreaking MBA in Design Strategy program at California College of the Arts. She lectures widely at business schools, such as Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, Berkeley’s Haas School of Management, and University of Virginia’s Darden’s Bratton Institute for Innovation. She has an MBA from Stern School at NYU and a BA from Cornell.