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Lance Mortlock: The Outside In, Inside Out of Business
26 Plays29 days ago
In this episode of The Unfolding Thought Podcast, Eric Pratum talks with Dr. Lance Mortlock—Managing Partner for Industrials & Energy at EY Canada, adjunct professor, and author of Outside In, Inside Out and Disaster Proof. Together they explore how leaders can create clarity and resilience in a world defined by uncertainty, disruption, and accelerating change.
Lance shares what decades of advising executives have taught him about why most strategies fail—not because they’re wrong, but because they’re poorly executed—and how his “diamond framework” helps organizations balance external insight with internal capability. The conversation ranges from the evolution of AI and scenario planning to why balance, adaptability, and courage define the best leaders and companies.
Topics Covered
- How Lance’s work as a strategist and adjunct professor shaped his writing
- The continuing impact of AI on organizational design and decision-making
- Why humans remain essential for understanding—beyond data and knowledge
- The “Outside-In / Inside-Out” diamond framework for strategy and execution
- The role of balance: vertical (external vs. internal) and horizontal (strategy vs. execution)
- Why 90% of strategies fail and what great companies do differently
- How resilience and adaptability separate good organizations from great ones
- Lessons from Hari Budha Magar’s Everest climb on leadership and perseverance
Resources Mentioned
- Visit Lance Mortlock’s website: https://www.lancemortlock.com
- Follow Lance on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-lance-mortlock-01b36b22/
- Lance’s first book Disaster Proof: https://amzn.to/4qDroV0
- Lance’s most recent book Outside In, Inside Out: https://amzn.to/47rsXOm
- James Barrat’s Our Final Invention: https://amzn.to/43UqMk0
- Nick Bostrom’s Superintelligence: https://amzn.to/4osxsOA
- Max Tegmark’s Life 3.0: https://amzn.to/3WIThNJ
- Double amputee Hari Magar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hari_Budha_Magar
For more episodes: https://unfoldingthought.com
Questions or guest ideas: eric@inboundandagile.com
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Guest Background
00:00:00
Speaker
Coming make up next. When you take the outside in and the inside out, those first two parts of the diamond, the center of the diamond is we make winning choices, where to play, how to win.
00:00:13
Speaker
But once we've made choices, then we need to execute, which gets into the third and the fourth part of the diamond.
00:00:22
Speaker
Doctor, thank you for joining me. Where does today's recording find you? I am in Toronto, Canada, downtown. And yeah, here for a couple of days, but normally based in in Western Canada and Calgary.
00:00:38
Speaker
Would you mind giving me in brief or at length a little bit of your background or who you are? Sure. Yeah. So I spent the last 25 years working as a strategic advisor for all kinds of organizations around the world, originally from the UK, as you can tell from my my accent, but been living and working um in Canada and really in North America as a strategic advisor working on complex problems.
00:01:16
Speaker
I'm also an adjunct professor at the University of Calgary. And so I teach and do research on advanced strategy. And then finally, I'm a writer.
00:01:27
Speaker
So I've written a couple of books and i write for a couple of magazines. One, chief executive magazine, which is primarily targeted at US CEOs.
00:01:39
Speaker
And I also write for another magazine called CEO World Magazine, which is targeted at CEOs around the world. I'm curious how you got into some of these things, whether it's your career, you know, being a strategic advisor, or if you want to think of your career as a writer, did one thing lead to another?
Journey to Strategic Advisory
00:02:02
Speaker
Yeah, like i good question. I started my career working actually in the Middle East and working in in in energy and resources and on large transformation projects that then led to more, over time, strategic projects.
00:02:24
Speaker
And I'd say as I got involved in more strategic projects, I then started to get like super curious about, why is it that way? And why does that work? Why does that not work? Why is that company failing? Why is that company not you know succeeding or succeeding?
00:02:45
Speaker
And then I ended up doing you know a bunch of learning programs. you know what ah I actually went and visited IDEO in Silicon Valley,
00:03:00
Speaker
which then became like this massive innovation consulting firm. And I did a bunch of training with IDEO, which really helped me But then I was like, you know what, I'm going study a bit further. I did my doctorate part-time, ah got my doctorate.
00:03:20
Speaker
And then in mixed in with all of that, I started to really enjoy writing about some of the things that I worked on, you know whether it was resilience, risk,
00:03:32
Speaker
strategy, planning, and how all these things work. And people were enjoying some of the stuff that I was writing about. And then I started to think, well, maybe I could write a book. And I ended up writing my first book. And then, you know as you know, more recently, wrote my second book. And just yeah I'm on a mission to share with whoever will listen and read um some of the knowledge and insights and you know successes and failures that I've learned along the way. And if I can convey that in the written word, ah but also in the spoken word, like on podcasts like this and my own podcast, I'm happy to do that.
00:04:15
Speaker
And I enjoy it. And actually, you know what, Eric? It makes me, I think, a better advisor because I have this written...
00:04:28
Speaker
backing behind some of the things that I work on with clients, right?
Books and AI's Impact on Strategy
00:04:33
Speaker
You know, when I came upon your first book, so I have it here, Disaster Proof, and, you know, it has these two subtitles or statements on the cover, Scenario Planning for a Post-Pandemic Future, and then also AI, The New Frontier.
00:04:50
Speaker
When I came upon this book, I was really interested in reading this because I use scenario planning quite a bit. And I'll even be presenting at a conference next week on scenario planning. And one of the things that I will often tell people is that I will even use scenario planning when I just don't know what to do or, you know, it in my personal life, to be clear, I just don't know what to do and or am having a hard time seeing things
00:05:24
Speaker
any other way than just the one way that I currently see them. So I was excited to be able to read the book. I found it really interesting and I'm sure there's plenty that we could explore with your first book, but I know that we want to get to your second book. So I'll make one statement or I'll ah clarify one thing for myself. And then I want to ask you about the AI portion of this book. So the first book says Lance Mortlock on the cover. And the second book says Dr. Lance Mortlock. So did you get your doctorate between the books or was the second book part of that?
00:06:04
Speaker
Yeah, I got it between the books. Actually, you know, the... the yeah The first book, yeah I wrote it during COVID. And at the same time, I was part-time doing my doctorate and family and work.
00:06:20
Speaker
i was I was a busy yeah was a busy guy ah during COVID, that was for sure. But like it's interesting, right? We all had... extra time because we were working remotely and I didn't have to sort of travel as much as I travel these days.
00:06:38
Speaker
So in a particular day, I would have like an extra two hours of time to get stuff done. And so I squeezed in a book and squeezed in a draw doctorate. yeah I really liked your first book. I liked your second book as well, but I did i really liked the first.
00:06:53
Speaker
And so the real question, perhaps of substance that I wanted to ask you about was there's some focus on AI in that book. And now we're couple of years past you publishing that book and ChatGPT and other things are...
00:07:14
Speaker
well-accepted now. So I'm curious if you or how you see, whether it's generative AI or AI more broadly, how you see the acceptance or maybe even misuse of AI today and also what your opinion is on how we collectively are thinking of AI and its possibility in the work world.
00:07:43
Speaker
Maybe I'll start by saying it blows my mind how much money we've spent as a society globally on digital and as a subset of that AI. I mean, last year, we spent $2.5 trillion dollars globally on digital and then of that two hundred and fifty billion dollars on ai And those numbers are just accelerating.
00:08:16
Speaker
I think what also blows my mind is if you look at the S&P, one third of the S&P is made up of seven tech stocks.
00:08:27
Speaker
Just think about that for a moment. um i It's interesting. What I wonder is, is that hiding some underlying problems that we don't see? i guess time will tell in terms of the stock market.
00:08:40
Speaker
I'm certainly not an expert in that. But look, since I wrote Disaster Proof and you you know what I really tried to characterize in the book was the importance of leveraging AI, natural language processing, machine learning to make sense of the world.
00:08:58
Speaker
And if you think about what scenario planning is, it's how do I make sense of the world, the way the world's playing out. And with all the information that's out there, um you know being able to process that information um is faster than ever before is really, really important.
00:09:23
Speaker
Rupert Murdoch once said, you know, we we live in this world of massive change, accelerating change. And the big won't beat the small anymore. It'll be the fast beating the slow.
00:09:36
Speaker
So your ability to use technology to make sense of the world, to get that information processed and analyzed and the insights presented faster than ever before is the difference between success and failure.
00:09:53
Speaker
and plays a fundamental role in that. It's changing everything. I think it changes my own profession as a strategic advisor in consulting.
00:10:06
Speaker
I think it changes the fundamentals of organizational pyramids. Three weeks ago, I was in Silicon Valley, i had the opportunity to meet with NVIDIA and various other amazing companies, Eleven Labs.
00:10:22
Speaker
And this the the the capability that's been built in terms of agentic and broader AI solutions is just incredible in terms of we're seeing organizations that are emerged the workforce looks fundamentally different.
00:10:40
Speaker
So, you know, this is a space that I'm watching, you know, very, very closely. when i read that book, I felt like, you know I've seen statements from Satya Nadella, for example. I think, I can't remember if he wrote a book or it was just some things that he put out, it was 10 years ago or something, where he was talking about AI and now seeing where Microsoft is with data centers and Copilot and any number of other projects that I'm probably not aware of.
00:11:19
Speaker
I had a similar sort of feeling when I read your book of you being really sensitive to or realizing that you were sensitive to or very aware of the possibilities of something that only came to the recognition of many of us, you know, a year or two, even after you published that book.
00:11:41
Speaker
I like to think that that was, uh, that, that, that was, uh, premeditated.
The Diamond Strategy Framework
00:11:47
Speaker
it Maybe it was luck. Maybe it was, uh, maybe it was premeditated. Who knows? Something in between, but I, you know,
00:11:56
Speaker
we created 147 zettabytes of data last year. And the frightening thing is 90% of that data we're not using.
00:12:07
Speaker
And if we can use these tools to better make sense of all the data that we're capturing, awesome we can make better decisions uh based on a foundation of um information and and and data and but what it doesn't take away and i talk about this a little bit in my second book is yes you can make sense of the data and drive better knowledge and malcolm gladwell talks about this you know he's got this um the There's this famous saying where he says, you know, where the key to good decision making is not knowledge, it's actually understanding. We're swimming in knowledge, but we're desperately lacking understanding.
00:12:50
Speaker
you know, this idea of of of understanding. um And humans will play a role in terms of understanding, but I think AI plays an important role in helping us gather knowledge and process that knowledge. But there's still a really important role for humans in in in the loop there.
00:13:11
Speaker
You mentioned your second book and I said that I wanted to get to that because I know that that's probably the more valuable use of our time today. So, you know, your second book, I have it here. I also read it outside in, inside out.
00:13:26
Speaker
How would you describe this book? I would describe it as I have tried to distill strategy using a novel framework, which we can get into.
00:13:43
Speaker
um But simplify strategy would be number one. ah I believe that there's a right way to strategize, so I explain that.
00:13:55
Speaker
I wanted to convey clear and effective lessons through numerous case studies. um And finally, we live in this world of risk and uncertainty.
00:14:09
Speaker
and I think given that there's never been a more important time for great strategy and relentless execution.
00:14:20
Speaker
And so I think the book hits the sweet spot there. Like, look, there's a lot of books out there, great books actually, that covers aspects of what I talk about. But I felt we needed something that connected the dots between strategy development and execution, something that was dense in terms of case studies. And, you know, you would have been through it and seen the sheer number of case studies.
00:14:49
Speaker
And it's super easy to follow. Like I used a very accessible language. It's not too theoretical, backed up by research though. And I think it like hits a bun bunch of those buttons in a and know in a way that's helpful for leaders, I hope.
00:15:05
Speaker
Would you mind describing the framework that you present in the book? There's sort of four main aspects to the diamond, which is figure one. And this is fundamental to what I believe, what I've seen, what I've worked on in the 80 or so organizations I've advised over the years.
00:15:26
Speaker
The first part of the the diamond is, okay, what's going on in the outside world, the outside in? How do we make sense of the world? How do we think about our customers, our stakeholders?
00:15:40
Speaker
our clients? What do we think they're thinking? What's happening in terms of competitors? What are the market trends? It's this outside perspective.
00:15:51
Speaker
So that's sort of the first part of the diamond. The second segment of the diamond is, okay, that's great, but what's happening inside the organization? Portfolio, performance, our operating model.
00:16:03
Speaker
How are we performing? or What are the key things happening? Our strengths, our weaknesses. So when you take the outside in and the inside out, those first two parts of the diamond, the center of the diamond is we make winning choices, where to play, how to win.
00:16:22
Speaker
But once we've made choices, then we need to execute, which gets into the the third and the fourth part of the diamond. The third is how do we prepare for for for execution?
00:16:35
Speaker
Do we have the right talent, the right org structure in place, the right allocation of capital, those kinds of things. And the final part of the diamond, which is execution, now we need to execute good governance, manage costs.
00:16:48
Speaker
you know We execute against the roadmap that we've developed. And this this diamond framework, which I talk about and explore all the subcomponents you know as part of the book, is really you know what is deemed a successful approach to developing strategy, but also executing strategy extremely well.
00:17:12
Speaker
And that's what it comes down to. it's super simple to follow, but very effective when done right. Did you have a particular audience in mind when you wrote this book? It's targeted to...
00:17:26
Speaker
obviously leaders in companies, whether it be board, CEO, the management team, middle management, because obviously when you're drawing strategy, it's not this thing that's done in ivory and an ivory tower without engagement of you know middle management employees.
00:17:45
Speaker
It needs to be translated down. That's part of what I talk about in the book is the importance of translating strategy into the organization and And so a business analyst could pick it up.
00:17:59
Speaker
Someone that's running a functional unit could pick it up. And there's something in it for all of these different ah stakeholders that play a role in an organization. As I was reading it,
00:18:10
Speaker
i found that yeah you're 100% correct when you talk about approachable language and you know your terminology is not confusing.
00:18:22
Speaker
It's not dense in the sense that I read a paragraph and then I have to sit and think about that paragraph. But I do think as a whole, the book struck me as dense in terms of it's packed with so much There are so many different frameworks and approaches that then when I would read, you know, one chapter and then another chapter after that, I had to really...
00:18:51
Speaker
think a lot about how do these things work together because you provide so much information. Like it's dense in a good way. It's, it's a challenge in a good way.
00:19:02
Speaker
And I, I'm curious, I suppose, if you've heard something of that nature from other readers and, or if, if that was your take on the book or your intention.
00:19:13
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, that's part of my intention, um, was to, you know, demystify a little bit like this this strategy thing that can be scary to some people. But like, yes, there are different parts to it, but there's a nice way in terms of a diamond framework to explain how it all fits together. And that...
00:19:37
Speaker
I would say is like one of the things that falls down in companies is how you connect the dots between, you know, what you do in terms of strategy development on one side of the framework has to connect to how you execute. So for example, if you're evaluating your portfolio, how you allocate capital should be to the assets or the products or the services that drive the greatest return in terms of how the portfolio is performing.
00:20:13
Speaker
But the money where like you're getting the most juice in the company at the end of the day, So these connection points are super important. Understanding your risks should be feeding into the choices that you make so that you risk rank your choices.
00:20:31
Speaker
You don't want to be putting money and making strategic choices on super risky stuff all the time. There's a balance. And so the chapters of the book connect to each other in really important ways.
00:20:44
Speaker
ways. And I try to talk a lot about those connection points in in the book. um But i also try to, you know and in relation to your question, yeah, it's dense, but the language is super simple to read, and interpret, understand, and apply.
00:21:04
Speaker
i was talking to a client the other day, major pipeline company, And she was saying to me, um Sarah was her name, um you know they were thinking about their operating model.
00:21:18
Speaker
She could read the operating model chapter in isolation of the rest of the book and got something from it and applied it. um So that was also my objective. like If you're trying to manage costs right now,
00:21:36
Speaker
There's a whole chapter on cost management that you could read on its own and get like some really important nuggets and soundbites and then like apply.
00:21:47
Speaker
So that was also my objective. My other objective as well, you talk about the density of the book, was to... back up my assertions with like a lot of sources like i'm a big believer and like you know some of the books that i've read recently which are awesome around ai you know there's one book humans last invention super intelligence uh life uh life dot 20 like some really good books on ai
00:22:20
Speaker
the And these are best-selling, like New York Times best-selling type books in that genre. um One of the things that a lot of those, Max Tedmark, Mick Bordstrom, they do is like really heavily research and back up their assertions with you know strong sources. I think that's really important for the audience the logistic legitimacy of what you're saying. So it's not only my experience, but it's also the experience of a number of other people. And and so there's over 300 sources you know across the book that I felt was important.
00:23:01
Speaker
When you talk about the sources and you know you mentioned case studies earlier, me, at the very least, I really liked that even though you touch on so many frameworks and it's, you know, you've sort of, I feel like you're cutting against the grain of popular business books.
00:23:22
Speaker
You know, there's so many business books that they could be great or they could be terrible. And they're somewhere between 90 and 150 pages. And very often it's just one very simple topic, you know, and you have a lot of different things in about 330 pages,
00:23:39
Speaker
i think yeah So even though there's so much in there from one framework or approach to another one, There's a flow through at least part of the book, if not the whole thing, where you're illustrating what you're talking about with a case study. And the case studies are just long enough to illustrate. And then you're moving on. So that leads me to one of my other questions, which you sort of touched on.
00:24:08
Speaker
I was in, think it was chapter 10, mergers, acquisitions, and divestments or something yeah like that. When I started to wonder, did you intend when someone reads this book that they would sit down and read it straight through and or that someone would open it to the section they need?
00:24:31
Speaker
Because if you intended one or the other, it you would write the book quite differently whereas if you intended it to be approachable you know from both perspectives then that changes how you set up you know the introduction of the book it changes how you try and relate one thing to another did you have one idea in mind No, not really. It just sort of happened organically. And it I think it, mean, you tell me what you think, but I think the book ended up being something that, yeah, you would gain a lot from reading it end to end to understand the importance of how it all fits together.
00:25:17
Speaker
But I also think it's one of those books where you can pick up a chapter and get a lot of value from that. as I said, and and then put it down and then not refer to it for a couple of weeks or a couple of months and then look at a different chapter.
00:25:31
Speaker
So if I think it does a good job of both, um which is good. I mean, it just, it means it's it's accessible and helpful to a broader audience of people, right? At the end of the day, that'd be my sense.
00:25:48
Speaker
It was a very challenging book to read in a lot of good ways. You know, I think by this point this year, I've read about 120 books or so, and we're in early November.
00:26:00
Speaker
So I'm behind where I would normally be. I think last year was 180 something. And this was not like, I don't think I've, I read another book that was as challenging, but challenging like exercises is challenging or difficult and feels good. You know, I felt like a As an author, if I was in your shoes, I imagine that if some leader in a company really puts forth the effort to read the book and think about what I've written, that that would be fulfilling.
00:26:36
Speaker
But you talk about execution, and that comes through really clearly in the book as well. is you know You hear these quotes like, you know, strategy without execution is a hallucination or variations of that.
00:26:51
Speaker
And I have a hard time imagining that someone could read this book and really think about it and not also be the kind of person that would then take action on it.
00:27:05
Speaker
I hope so. um That's that certainly my own intent. I mean, look, as you said, it's 330 pages and half of those pages are dedicated to preparing to execute and execute.
Execution Challenges in Strategy
00:27:21
Speaker
which And we know 90% of strategies fail, not because of um not having the right strategy, but execution that fails.
00:27:34
Speaker
And I've seen this firsthand, like companies that, you know, i he was talking to some someone earlier about this, this idea that, you know, prioritization, like 65% of executives say that they struggle with prioritization, according to a poll last year.
00:27:54
Speaker
And I see it all the time in the companies that I work with, that initiatives that support strategically what you're trying to achieve Let's do them all rather than a few things well. And so a bunch of stuff gets done average.
00:28:09
Speaker
That's one example where execution fails. Another example is having the right talent in place. Predictive Index in 2023 said that 36% of organizations have a talent management strategy.
00:28:24
Speaker
It's an abysmal result. But what it tells you is, again, in terms of execution, you know When you don't have the right talent, you don't have right the right prioritization, you don't have the right roadmap, you don't have the right governance to execute, you're not going to realize the mission, the vision that you're focused on.
00:28:45
Speaker
In your conclusion, you cite a study, and I'm forgetting who it was, but it's i um I'll reference it in the show notes if it's appropriate.
00:28:56
Speaker
You cite this study that only 28% of managers can name even three strategic priorities for their organization. Why do you think it's so difficult for organizations to stay clear on what actually matters?
00:29:13
Speaker
Because I think that is a contributing factor to what you're talking about around hiring the right talent and executing and so on. Yeah, I think there's a few things at play. One, around not being able to stay clear around what really matters relates to just the sheer amount of risk and complexity, uncertainty, ambiguity that we're faced with. Yeah.
00:29:40
Speaker
um One of the things that I've been talking about recently is this idea that when you look at the world, the percent, according to the World Economic Forum's study last year in 2024, the um the percentage risk of instability and the risk of global catastrophe is at 54%.
00:30:05
Speaker
And that's pretty high. Executives are having to deal with tons of risk and uncertainty. Tariffs, for example, war, AI, you know an increasingly aggressive China.
00:30:20
Speaker
There's just an I've talked about this quite a bit. Like if you look at big disruptive events that have happened in history, if we go back to the OPEC oil crisis, the tequila crisis, you know, the sovereign debt crisis, the dot-com, the global financial crisis, the war in Ukraine, the war in the Middle East, ai like tariffs, these disruptive events keep happening with increasing regularity.
00:30:51
Speaker
um And that is a challenge for leaders. And we see that in the results. of According to the CEO turnover index, 1.5 in CEOs last less than ten two years now.
Opportunities and Resilience in Business
00:31:09
Speaker
If you look at and data around the longevity longevity of companies, 15% of companies in the top growth quartile um, sustained performance for at least 30 years. So the number of companies that last longer than 30 years, it's just getting harder.
00:31:28
Speaker
So we're in this world where it is harder to lead, harder to sustain performance. We have risk and uncertainty, but also opportunity at the end of the day. I mean, mentioned to you earlier, I was in Silicon Valley. It blows my mind.
00:31:44
Speaker
Like the speed of development, the opportunity that's coming with ai some of these companies that are emerging and into mega companies, um like super interesting and exciting and tons of opportunity.
00:32:03
Speaker
I think there are some related ideas that I'd like to explore, though I'm sure we won't have time for all of them. So going to ask you about one and we'll see where we go.
00:32:16
Speaker
Are there patterns or characteristics that separate companies that can execute their strategy well from those that maybe never quite get there or can't do it consistently?
00:32:29
Speaker
Yes. I mean, I i think... great companies prioritize the critical few things that they want to do well. I also think, secondly, and I've seen this firsthand, is great companies um build agility and and flexibility into their strategy. So that, you know, the the quote that Mike Tyson once said, you know, everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.
00:33:01
Speaker
Great companies have that strategic flexibility, that adaptability to be able to face adversity. Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to spend some time um interviewing a yeah ah guy. He was a British Gurkha.
00:33:21
Speaker
And when he was in Afghanistan, he stepped on an IED and it blew both of his legs off above the knee. His name's Harry Magar.
00:33:34
Speaker
And, you know, he suffered from all kinds of PTSD, mental health. He became an alcoholic, very suicidal. He had a whole world of pain, as you can imagine.
00:33:46
Speaker
But one day he turned his life around and decided that he was going to climb Everest, the highest mountain in the world, and make something of his life. And he became the first double amputee to climb Everest.
00:34:00
Speaker
Amazing story of resilience, adaptability, resilience. um And it really reinforced this idea of those great companies, those companies that win in the market, have that resilience, given all this disruption that I described to you, but also that ability to flex and adapt so that when you're punched in the face, you get up again and you keep going and you keep going until you succeed.
00:34:29
Speaker
And those are the special organizations that I see out there that have been able to do that. Are there stories or beliefs or I guess stories that leaders or organizations as entities tell themselves that keep them from enacting change?
00:34:46
Speaker
I think part of the challenge from from a story perspective is is you sort of drink your own Kool-Aid and like the sound of your own voice, so to speak, and paul part of the challenge is like how do you surround yourself with not a lot of people that are just like you but surround yourself with people that think differently that are diverse in their perspectives and background and experience to then have all of that on the table to say, okay, then let's let's make sense of it. And what do we need? I do see some companies, you know, you meet the management team and they're all pretty similar.
00:35:29
Speaker
So you get, you know, pretty similar, sit decisions and and outcomes and that that's pretty average versus let's challenge the status quo let's wallow in the ambiguity which I talked about before there's a great American psychologist called Joy Guildford And she talks a lot about you know the and the importance of um diverging before you converge on the answer.
00:35:58
Speaker
And in that divergent process, because we converge too quickly sometimes, how do you stay long enough in that divergent thinking process? to sort of wallow in that ambiguity to think about all different possibilities it feels uncomfortable and then you know once you've done that you make some decisions and then you you converge on the action and and drive the outcomes if a reader took only one thing from the book and remembered and used it do you think you could name that one thing
00:36:33
Speaker
If I was to say the one, the one thing that is important is this word balance where success in strategy is how you balance different competing factors.
00:36:55
Speaker
So, and I talk about vertical balance and horizontal balance. Vertical balance is this idea of balance the amount of time you spend on the outside,
00:37:11
Speaker
with what's happening on the inside. That's the vertical balance. And the horizontal balance is this idea of spending equal amount of time or the right amount of time on strategy development versus ah execution. And I think if you can balance those two you know competing complementary dimensions, you will truly drive you know successful outcomes and not only be a good company, but be a fantastic company.
00:37:43
Speaker
As you say that, to me, it seems obvious that it relates to some of that first book you know around the scenario planning, at least in my mind, because When I, at the very least, talk to some people about, you know, let's just imagine that everything went well.
00:38:07
Speaker
What might 10 years or 25 years look like ah from now? what What might things look like? And let's imagine everything falls apart or we have a transformation scenario or whatever. let's Let's look at and and very deeply describe these different futures.
00:38:26
Speaker
There's one group of people that's quite common, but it's not everybody, certainly, that feels like this is just navel-gazing or, well, why would we imagine a scenario that is our business falls apart or supply chains fall apart or whatever?
00:38:45
Speaker
You know, that's not what we're planning for. And I will sometimes have difficulty saying we might widen our perspective and gain an appreciation for things we hadn't been thinking about or looking at.
00:39:02
Speaker
And then you have other people who just love to do creative thinking or imagine new scenarios or deal with abstract ideas or whatever. But not always, but very often, those people will have a sort of analysis paralysis aspect of their behavior in that they have all of the possibilities in their head or in front of them and they struggle to choose just one and i feel like as you're describing this vertical and horizontal axis that at least the picture that's coming to my mind is widening our perspective and having an appreciation for everything that's going on on the board or in the world
00:39:45
Speaker
And yet you talked early on about execution and, you know, whether it's because of your culture, your talent management strategy, or any number of other things. At the end of the day, you still have to play some bets and take some action.
00:40:00
Speaker
That's what I feel like you're evoking in my mind. which Which is why choices as the center of the diamond. It's the center of the framework. and the whole thesis of, uh, and that, that diamond is that framework is the whole thesis of the book.
00:40:16
Speaker
Yeah. You have to make a move. Um, you can't have analysis paralysis, But don't make choices not like based on just gut and intuition.
Balancing Strategy and Execution
00:40:27
Speaker
Gut and intuition plays a role, but have a fact base as well, which is the outside-in and the inside-out analysis that I think you know i should be done.
00:40:37
Speaker
And you know one more thing that I ah ah wanted to say on on this piece and and what you were describing there, i mean this then goes back to how we started the conversation around scenarios.
00:40:49
Speaker
that I think you know that creative process of saying, well, what's good, what's bad, what's ugly, you know there's different scenarios that could play out, really challenges the person, the leader, the organization,
00:41:04
Speaker
to sort of get outside their comfort zone to say things could be really good or they could be really bad or in between, what would we do in each of these different situations? And what would stay the same regardless, the sort of foundational elements of the strategy? And then what would we dial up or dial down based on the good, the bad, and the ugly?
00:41:26
Speaker
And that creative process, you know going back to my Harry Magar guy that you know without two legs managed to climb Everest, super flexible, super adaptive, that builds that adaptability in the organization that in today's world full of risk and uncertainty is super important to success.
00:41:49
Speaker
Well, Lance, we're coming close to our time. As I said, there's a lot more that we could explore, but fortunately you get go on other podcasts and ah that you get to talk about this other places. So you have plenty of opportunities.
00:42:07
Speaker
Where would you direct me if I want to learn more?
Guest's Resources and Final Insights
00:42:10
Speaker
If I want to find some of those articles that you write, do I go to your website? Should I go to LinkedIn? Yeah, a bit of both. So my my website is www.lancemortlock.com.
00:42:24
Speaker
And I'm sure you can you can put that in the yeah in the podcast notes here. Or find me on on LinkedIn. um A lot of my articles, a lot of my writing, my speaking is posted through LinkedIn. So that's another way great way to connect.
00:42:42
Speaker
Whether it's something we didn't get a chance to talk about or something we mentioned that you want to double down on. Do you have any words of wisdom or things you would want me to remember be thinking about?
00:42:56
Speaker
You know, maybe the final thing that I would just sort of reinforce is the importance of the speed of change. And so this idea that um how do we react and adapt in a world that's changing fast and never has there been a more important time to have, you know, winning strategy, relentless execution.
00:43:23
Speaker
and And if that resonates with your listeners, I think, you know, there'll be something in in my book and in my writing that could be helpful. As I said, I ah really liked both of your books and I do recommend both of them.
00:43:40
Speaker
I know your, let's see, Outside In, Inside Out was published in, was it September or October? It was recently, correct? Earlier this year, yeah, i like in Okay.
00:43:51
Speaker
Well, I was late to get to it, but i I did read it. So I appreciate that. And I appreciate you joining me here, Lance. i As I said, there's a lot more that I would love to explore, but I appreciate the time that we had here.
00:44:05
Speaker
Yeah, you can always invite me back to, you know, come come and and we can we can cover some other topics. But no, I appreciate you giving me the the platform to talk about a topic that...
00:44:17
Speaker
I think is is so important. So thank you for the opportunity. Thank you.