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7/11/2014 Why Smart People Struggle with Strategy - Roger Martin - Harvard Business Review

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Why Smart People Struggle with Strategy by Roger Martin | 2:00 PM June 12, 2014

Strategy is often seen as som ething really sm art people do — those head-of-the-class folks with top-notch academ ic

credentials. But jus t because these are the folks attracted to strategy does n’t m ean they will naturally excel at it.

The problem with sm art people is that they are us ed to seeking and finding the right answer; unfortunately, in strategy

there is no single right answer to find. Strategy requires m aking choices about an uncertain future

(http://hbr.org/tools/playing-to-win-strategy-toolkit) . It is not possible, no m atter how m uch of the ocean you boil, to

dis cover the one right answer. There isn’t one. In fact, even after the fact, there is no way to determ ine that one’s

strategy choice was “right,” because there is no way to judge the relative quality of any path agains t all the paths not

actually chos en. There are no double-blind experim ents in strategy.

To be a great strategist, we have to step back from the need to find a right answer and to get accolades for identifying

it. The best strategists aren’t intim idated or paralyzed by uncertainty and am biguity; they are creative enough to im agine

possibilities that m ay or m ay not actually exist (http://hbr.org/tools/playing-to-win-strategy-toolkit) and are willing to try a

course of action knowing full well that it will have to be tweaked or even overhauled entirely as events unfold.

The es sential qualities for this type of person are flexibility, im agination, and resilience. But there is no evidence that

these qualities are correlated with pure intelligence. In fact, the late organizational learning scholar Chris Argyris

argued the oppos ite in his clas sic HBR article Teaching Sm art People How to Learn (http://hbr.org/1991/05/teaching-

sm art-people-how-to-learn/ar/1) . In his study of strategy consultants , Argyris found that sm art people tend to be m ore

brittle. They need both to feel right and to have that correctness be validated by others. When either or both fail to occur,

sm art people becom e defens ive and rigidly so.

This does not im ply that sm art people should be kept away from strategy. It does im ply however that strategy should

not be a m onoculture — as it can becom e in strategy consulting firm s — of high-IQ analytical wizards. Great strategy is

aided by diversity of thought and attitude. It needs people who have experienced failure as well as success . It needs

people who have a great im agination. It needs people who have built their resilience in the past. And m ost im portantly,

it needs people who respect one another for their range of qualities , som ething that is often going to be m ost

difficult for the proverbial sm artest person in the room .

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