The Role of the Knowledge Café in Open/adaptive Strategy An ideal tool to help implement open strategy

The Knowledge Café can play a central role in the formulation, communication, and execution of an open or adaptive strategy.

There is no prescription for applying the Knowledge Café to open/adaptive strategy-making or policy-making.

The idea is to take a more conversational approach to the interactions that help formulate and execute a strategy compared to more traditional ways.

The Café provides a set of principles and a method for doing this.

Some guidelines

Guideline #1 All conversations/meetings should consider the Café principles.

Guideline #2 Where ever appropriate, the Café process should be used or adapted to run meetings.

The various adaptations of the Café should be studied to learn how it may be used for different ends. The types of Café listed below are probably the most relevant.

• Future Café
• Ideation Café
• Sensemaking Café
• Decision-making Café
• Questionstorming Café

Benefits of the Knowledge Café

1) Better involvement of more people in the formulation of the strategy

The Café can be used to help formulate the strategy. Meetings concerning the strategy development could be conducted in the Café format or draw on the Café principles.

Different groups can explore the implications (risks and opportunities) of the issues facing the organization through several Cafés.

2) Improved communication of the strategy

The Café can be used to better communicate the strategy to the whole organization by running a series of informational Knowledge Cafés rather than through traditional presentations.

A potential Café question might be, “What do you make the strategy?”

3) Increased commitment and engagement from more people to the delivery of the strategy

Once the strategy has been communicated, more specific Cafés can be run that are tuned to the context of different business units or departments.

A potential Café question might be “What does X mean for the business?” (where X is a feature of the strategy)

4) Improved planning for the implementation of the strategy

Once every business unit or department understands the strategy and what it means for them. They can ask start to plan their role in the strategy in more detail.

A potential Café question might be, “What do we need to do to make this strategy a reality?”

5) Better implementation and adaptation of the strategy

Once the execution of the strategy gets underway, there will be problems, roadblocks, and overlooked and unintended consequences (both good and bad). New opportunities will also emerge. These need to be overcome or taken advantage of, and the strategy adapted accordingly.

The Café can play an essential role in bringing people together to discuss these issues and creatively make decisions.

Potential Café questions might be “How do we overcome this problem?” or “How do we seize this opportunity?” or “How might we adapt our strategy in light of this new knowledge?”

Adapting the process

Even if you need to adopt a more conventional approach to the strategy formulation stage, you can use Knowledge Cafés to achieve all the other benefits of better communication, engagement, planning, implementation, and adaptation.

Improved decision making

There are also several decision-making benefits of the Knowledge Café.

• increases cognitive diversity
• helps reduce groupthink
• helps reduce group polarization
• creates an environment of psychological safety where people are not afraid to speak up and speak their minds

We need more strategic conversations. 

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Resources

• Havard Business Review: How to Have an Honest Conversation About Your Business Strategy

Posts that link to this post

•  Open, Adaptive Strategy Make employees partners in the strategy process

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