Reaffirming the Name
I've been staring at my blog title; thinking about how it should be changed. "The Ephemeral Strategist". Does that still say what I am about? I am still take my ephemera as seriously as I ever did, but things have deepened.
I'm behind in my third course of the Culture-Driven Team Building Specialization program offered through Coursera by the University of Pennsylvania, but that isn't really an indication of my enthusiasm for the content. I am as interested in organizational culture today as I was interested in strategy in 2008. It seemed like a shift, hence, I was thinking about changing the name of my blog.
But maybe I don't have a problem. "Strategy" is one of those words that many people use without carefully thinking about what they mean by it. The two most common uses, in my observation, are as a synonym for "plan" where the steps for how a goal or objective is going to be achieved are laid out and assigned. Or as a synonym for "approach" to describe the default characteristic that an agent (i.e. any party with agency) will adopt in pursuit of a goal/objective. "Press your advantage" is a strategy which directs that all opportunities will be aggressively pursued without being specific about the circumstances, goals, or objectives at hand.
I remember organizing a strategic summit for the Alberta Environmental Network one sunny afternoon on the back patio of the Environmental Resource Centre on Saskatchewan Drive. Martha Kostuch, Griz, and Cindy Chiasson were among the participants that day. This means I have been trying to understand "strategy" for over 15 years now since we moved out of the ERC in November 2002. I might have progressed faster if it had been my full-time vocation, but it as it was more like a hobby with the bulk of my attention paid to administrative matters and advocacy, my grasp on the topic has been very slow.
Strategy operates at the level of "context", "circumstances", or "millieu". By these words, I am trying to say that unlike tactical methods, strategy does not try to induce change directly. Instead, resources are applied to operating environment in order to induce desired effects through others acting favorably, but fundamentally of their own volition. Understood this way, strategy is about inducing changes in culture and then culture induces change in actors.
Peter Drucker and Mark Fields are both famous for saying that "culture eats strategy for breakfast". I think they meant that any strategy that is at odds with an organization's culture will fail.
Does "ephemeral" still work? Ephemera refers to "printed matter of passing interest", like ticket stubs or printed programs which have value prior to an event, suddenly lose practical value once the event concludes, then slowly reacquires value as a memento or souvenier depending on the quality of a person's experience.
When originally coined "The Ephemeral Tourist", then "The Ephemeral Strategist", I very much had the memento meaning in mind. But events over the past year have shown me how more than printed matter can change in meaning over time.
I was about ten years old the first time my family took a road trip from Edmonton to Florida with stops through-out the American South and Midwest. At the entry to Mississippi, Dad pulled our Winnebago mini-motorhome in for a bathroom break at a rest-stop/tourist information building beside the highway. A young woman sat behind a desk and welcomed us to the state. She asked me if I wanted some fountain pop which I declined.
"It's free," she added, and I quickly changed my mind. I returned to the Winnebago where my mother asked me how I got the soda, and after I explained it I remember distinctly connecting the moment to a stereotype of "Southern hospitality".
That girl in the rest stop was my first real-life encounter with a Southerner, and it made me happy.
One of the only novels my father read when he was young was Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage about the American Civil War, and together we have visited many historic sites and Civil War monuments. I'm familiar with the effect the war had on the movement to establish Canadian Confederation and whose side most of us were on back in the day. I've owned the Star & Bars more years than I haven't. I have a decal from Gettyburg on my iPad cover.
But Dylan Roof and Charlottesville have changed all that, and now the social history ~ the meaning of this piece of my personal culture ~ is different. Meaning is ephemeral.
I'm behind in my third course of the Culture-Driven Team Building Specialization program offered through Coursera by the University of Pennsylvania, but that isn't really an indication of my enthusiasm for the content. I am as interested in organizational culture today as I was interested in strategy in 2008. It seemed like a shift, hence, I was thinking about changing the name of my blog.
But maybe I don't have a problem. "Strategy" is one of those words that many people use without carefully thinking about what they mean by it. The two most common uses, in my observation, are as a synonym for "plan" where the steps for how a goal or objective is going to be achieved are laid out and assigned. Or as a synonym for "approach" to describe the default characteristic that an agent (i.e. any party with agency) will adopt in pursuit of a goal/objective. "Press your advantage" is a strategy which directs that all opportunities will be aggressively pursued without being specific about the circumstances, goals, or objectives at hand.
I remember organizing a strategic summit for the Alberta Environmental Network one sunny afternoon on the back patio of the Environmental Resource Centre on Saskatchewan Drive. Martha Kostuch, Griz, and Cindy Chiasson were among the participants that day. This means I have been trying to understand "strategy" for over 15 years now since we moved out of the ERC in November 2002. I might have progressed faster if it had been my full-time vocation, but it as it was more like a hobby with the bulk of my attention paid to administrative matters and advocacy, my grasp on the topic has been very slow.
Strategy operates at the level of "context", "circumstances", or "millieu". By these words, I am trying to say that unlike tactical methods, strategy does not try to induce change directly. Instead, resources are applied to operating environment in order to induce desired effects through others acting favorably, but fundamentally of their own volition. Understood this way, strategy is about inducing changes in culture and then culture induces change in actors.
Peter Drucker and Mark Fields are both famous for saying that "culture eats strategy for breakfast". I think they meant that any strategy that is at odds with an organization's culture will fail.
Does "ephemeral" still work? Ephemera refers to "printed matter of passing interest", like ticket stubs or printed programs which have value prior to an event, suddenly lose practical value once the event concludes, then slowly reacquires value as a memento or souvenier depending on the quality of a person's experience.
When originally coined "The Ephemeral Tourist", then "The Ephemeral Strategist", I very much had the memento meaning in mind. But events over the past year have shown me how more than printed matter can change in meaning over time.
I was about ten years old the first time my family took a road trip from Edmonton to Florida with stops through-out the American South and Midwest. At the entry to Mississippi, Dad pulled our Winnebago mini-motorhome in for a bathroom break at a rest-stop/tourist information building beside the highway. A young woman sat behind a desk and welcomed us to the state. She asked me if I wanted some fountain pop which I declined.
"It's free," she added, and I quickly changed my mind. I returned to the Winnebago where my mother asked me how I got the soda, and after I explained it I remember distinctly connecting the moment to a stereotype of "Southern hospitality".
That girl in the rest stop was my first real-life encounter with a Southerner, and it made me happy.
One of the only novels my father read when he was young was Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage about the American Civil War, and together we have visited many historic sites and Civil War monuments. I'm familiar with the effect the war had on the movement to establish Canadian Confederation and whose side most of us were on back in the day. I've owned the Star & Bars more years than I haven't. I have a decal from Gettyburg on my iPad cover.
But Dylan Roof and Charlottesville have changed all that, and now the social history ~ the meaning of this piece of my personal culture ~ is different. Meaning is ephemeral.