Sherpa Alliance

Bringing Journey Orientation into focus.

Change has changed, becoming much more like a dynamic journey on a shifting landscape. The longitudinal dimension of journey orientation has emerged as a 3^rd and primary dimension around which we must reframe our approach to translating strategy and execution into traction. This is essential for a new mindset/chassis of business acumen for organizational agility.

The new Rules-of-the-Road:

• These days, the devil is in the dynamics, not just in the details and we must be mastering both detail complexity and dynamic complexity (The Traffic of Dynamic Complexity);
• We must understand the anatomy of dynamic complexity at multiple levels and the corresponding higher order strengths of journey orientation we must be developing as executives (Organizational Agility);
• We must keep in mind the complexity of the whole problem and solution of organizational agility, not just parts of the problem and solution, in a whole-brained way, seeking elegant simplicity which embeds complexity rather than stupid simplicity which ignores complexity (Simplicity & Complexity).

What creates Wheel-spin?

• Conventional forecasting, planning and analysis methods together with traditional approaches to "strategic planning and implementation".  Conventional approaches don’t work in unconventional times - they are designed to handle detail complexity and are not equipped to handle dynamic complexity.  Unconventional times demand unconventional approaches;
• The stupid simplicity of "we tried strategic planning and it didn’t work" or  "its too complicated" or "our business is too fast-moving and we like to keep things organic around here" and/or a half-brained approach, either too left-brained (logical, linear, numbers oriented) or too right-brained (creative, simultaneous, ideas oriented);
• Productivity tools and techniques, both organizationally and individually, which are inadequate in staying on top of wave after wave of dynamic complexity which are washing over us.

What creates Traction?

• The discipline of divergence and convergence path-finding, planning forwards from the present and backwards from the future;
• The discipline of creating extra-ordinary alignment, seeing the parts in the whole and the whole in the parts, bottom-up and top-down;
• The discipline of patience and persistence for the different phases implicit in architecting breakthrough journeys (The Five Phases of a Breakthrough Journey).

The Breeakthrough Leadership Challenge

• Practicing these disciplines on the journey to mastery of Journey Orientation will not come easily and will be under assault from dabblers, obsessives and hackers (Dabbler, Obsessive, Hacker or Master?);
• In particular, you and your team can easily veer off track on some dangerous detours and need to sustain mindsets to avoid them (5 Dangerous Detours & 10 Mindsets to Avoid Them);
• Succesfully navigating a middle road of multiple "and" propositions, which are integral to the longitudinal dimension of Journey Orientation, is very challenging (Mastering the Challenge of the "and").