Strategic Doing as a way of collaboration with Ed Morrison

In this episode of IT Insights we host Ed Morrison, a co-author of the book “Strategic Doing – Ten Skills for Agile Leadership”, a #1 Amazon New Release in 6 categories. For over 25 years Ed has been developing new, network-based models for strategy in open, loosely connected networks. These approaches emphasize the strategic value of focused collaboration and innovation in today’s global economy.
Ed speaks about his approach to teaching the rules and skills of good collaboration to senior managers and PMs, and he explains how his methods differ from the ones most of us use. In the episode we discuss the advantages of implementing Strategic Doing in companies, its influence on the level of partnership and on the management community in businesses, and Ed’s perspective on the future of collaboration and leadership.

Ewa Banaś: IT Insights: talks on business and I.T. challenges with tech leaders. Welcome to another episode of our podcast series.

I’m Ewa Banaś, and today I have the pleasure to talk to Ed Morrison, a co-author of the book Strategic Doing: 10 Skills for Agile Leadership. For over 25 years, Ed has been developing new network-based models for strategy in open, loosely connected networks. Great to have you here, Ed.

Ed Morrison: Oh, it’s such a joy to be here. Thank you very much, Eva.

Ewa Banaś: My pleasure. Ed, could you introduce yourself a little bit to our audience?

Ed Morrison: I’m happy to do it. My first decade after college, I was in Washington D.C. learning about policy, globalization, and renewable energy. I became a senior staff member of the Senate Democratic policy committee.

I left Washington because we weren’t really dealing with globalization problems well. In my second decade, I worked as a consultant with a firm that was an offshoot of the Boston Consulting Group, working with General Electric, Ford, and Volvo.

In the 1990s, I focused on developing a new approach to strategy because I learned that traditional strategic planning didn’t work well in a network-based economy. In the early 90s, a physicist introduced me to the commercial internet and open-source software development.

I spent 10 to 12 years figuring out how to do strategy in open, loosely connected networks when nobody can tell anybody what to do. By 2005, I went to Purdue University to validate this model and eventually created the Agile Strategy Lab.

We published a book in 2019, and I completed a PhD in Economics to explain why “Strategic Doing” actually works. Now, it’s an open-source model we share with anyone wanting more productive collaborations.

Ewa Banaś: You mentioned you were discovering why it actually works. Do you believe Strategic Doing is the answer to the new challenges businesses face?

Ed Morrison: Part of the challenge is that the problems businesses face are increasingly “wicked problems” – adaptive problems we’ve never encountered before, like the pandemic. They aren’t simple technical problems like a car not starting; they have many sources and no simple answers.

Companies are recognizing they don’t have all the knowledge inside the corporation. They have to create cross-disciplinary teams internally and partnerships externally. This is a move from hierarchical, stable structures to network-based, ambiguous environments.

Ewa Banaś: You teach Executives and PMs the rules and skills of good collaboration. How is your approach different from the traditional one?

Ed Morrison: Collaboration is different from cooperation, command and control, or even standard teamwork. We define collaboration as an innovation process of recombinant innovation – taking existing assets and recombining them to create new value. It requires developing trust across organizational and political boundaries.

The process focuses on our oldest technology: conversations. In the knowledge economy, the conversation is the core activity managers must design because that is how we generate and distribute knowledge. We identified 10 interrelated skills that form a discipline, like learning to swim or play the piano.

Most people think they are good collaborators, but they often aren’t; “natural” collaborators often get burned out because the process isn’t made explicit. It’s not rocket science – it’s harder, more like molecular biology, because you are managing networks you can’t see.

Ewa Banaś: It must have been a journey to put this into a repeatable structure.

Ed Morrison: Yes. We ran test beds at Purdue in various situations, from working with NASA and Lockheed to community organizations dealing with complex issues like teenage homicides and opioid poisoning. We learned we could teach the same model to both community activists and NASA scientists without changing it.

I realized we “had it” around 2016 when I was working with Lockheed on a Navy technology roadmap while simultaneously helping an activist in Flint, Michigan, work on reducing teenage homicides. Using the exact same discipline for both convinced me to write the book.

Ewa Banaś: Are there specific rules of conversation that help people collaborate better?

Ed Morrison: Collaboration emerges from conversations with a predictable structure.

Create a Safe Space: You need psychological safety where people feel comfortable sharing deep thoughts without penalty. You also have to flatten power hierarchies for the purpose of the conversation so that everyone is treated equally and no one dominates.

Frame with an Opportunity: Instead of a problem, frame the inquiry as an opportunity. Ask, “If we solve this, how will life be better?”. People move in the direction of their conversations; you want to create a collective visualization of the future.

Ewa Banaś: So, moving away from just defining the problem?

Ed Morrison: Exactly. If you start by defining a “wicked” problem, you’ll spend all your time arguing about root causes. Scientist Carl Popper talked about the difference between “clock problems” (mechanistic, linear) and “cloud problems” (indeterminate, vague). If you apply root cause analysis to a “cloud” problem, you go nowhere.

Instead, imagine a future state – a “framing question” like, “Imagine if every child in Flint could walk home feeling safe”. You then design a new system that eliminates the symptoms of the old one.

Ewa Banaś: What are the benefits for C-level executives who implement this?

Ed Morrison: First, it’s more fun and enjoyable. Secondly, we see a step-change improvement in productivity – not just 10%, but 2x or 3x improvements – because you are aligning people toward a shared outcome using conversation.

Strategy answers two questions: Where are we going? and How will we get there?. Strategic Doing uses divergent brainstorming (“what could we do”) followed by convergent action (“what should we do” and “what will we do”). Unlike traditional strategic planning, which can be a top-down “command and control” system, Strategic Doing engages everyone.

Ewa Banaś: You mentioned metrics earlier. How do they work here?

Ed Morrison: In traditional planning, like under Jack Welch at GE, metrics are often imposed from the top, which encourages people to “game the system”.

In Strategic Doing, we have outcome metrics (the future) and progress metrics (short-term steps). Teams set their own metrics aligned with a large-scale framework. This creates a culture of learning and adaptation.

Ewa Banaś: Why isn’t everyone doing this yet?

Ed Morrison: Fear. Top management fears that letting go of the current system will lead to chaos. But Strategic Doing is an organic process; you can start with small experiments.

If you don’t start, your organization may eventually collapse, as happened with portions of General Electric that lost their innovating capacity. A flatter, networked approach is what works today.

Ewa Banaś: That was a blast! Thank you for the insights.

Ed Morrison: Thank you, Ewa.

Ewa Banaś: And thank you to our audience. Stay tuned for more at itinsights.tech.