In Open Strategy, Christian Stadler, Julia Hautz, Kurt Matzler, and Stephen Friedrich von den Eichen explain how to master disruption by formulating an open strategy, one exemplified by Nokia. Consider these points made by Gary Hamel in the Foreword: “Nokia’s bet on open strategy paid off — big. First, it produced a strategy that was novel…Second, the highly participatory process produced a strategy that was well grounded…Third, the open approach produced a strategy that was credible and widely understood.”

The authors add, “As Gary Hamel and his coauthor Michele Zanini put it in their new book  [Humanocracy: Creating Organizations as Amazing as the People Inside Them, Harvard Business School Publishing, 2020], ‘an open strategy process is messier and more time consuming than the top-down alternative, but the benefits are worth the efforts’: deploy specific tools and techniques that allow them to handle the complexity of internal and external views, generate specific kinds of strategic insights, and mobile employees in desirable ways — without compromising secrecy unduly.”

Nokia’s great success is best explained by the next reason Hamel cites: “Finally, Nokia’s s all-hands process produced a strategy that was granular, and therefore immediately actionable. Strategies created at the top often lack specificity; they’re more about the ‘what’ than the ‘how.’ This lack of detail creates long lags between strategy formulation and implementation. Nokia’s strategy, by contrast, was built from the moment. Each of the three major imperatives [identified on Page xii] incorporated dozens of shovel-ready ideas that could be quickly operationalized. By the time the strategy gelled, employees were ready to act.”

The most effective strategies are formulated by a process that is collective and inclusive. One that is “open” to contributions at all levels and in all areas of the given enterprise. In their brilliant book, Stadler, Hautz, Matzler, and von den Eichen explain HOW to establish and then strengthen an enterprise architecture as a strategy to maximize communication, cooperation, and collaboration between and among those who comprise the workplace culture. This is a compelling vision, focused on what Jim Collins would characterize as a Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG).

I presume to add one caveat, provided by Thomas Edison: “Vision without execution is hallucination.”

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Open Strategy: Mastering Disruption from Outside the C-Suite was published by The MIT Press (October 2021).