Strategy Meets Reality Podcast

Open Strategy in Practice with Julia Hautz: Turning Participation into Strategic Advantage

• Mike Jones • Season 1 • Episode 10

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What if strategy wasn’t a closed-door ritual—but a way to build commitment from those who deliver it?

In this episode of Strategy Meets Reality, Mike Jones is joined by Julia Hautz—Professor of Strategic Management at the University of Innsbruck and co-author of Open Strategy—to explore what really happens when leaders invite participation into the strategy process.

This isn’t about consensus. And it’s not about giving everyone a vote. It’s about designing strategy so it’s recognised, understood, and owned by the people closest to reality.

Julia shares insights from years of research and organisational engagement, unpacking the myths, the structural discipline, and the leadership mindset required to make openness work. From crisis response to long-term strategy shaping, she lays out why open strategy isn’t soft—it’s a strategic advantage when done well.

🔍 In this episode:

  • Why open strategy isn’t democracy—and why that matters
  • How participation creates psychological ownership and commitment
  • The risk of surface-level engagement and ‘black box’ decisions
  • What leaders fear about openness—and how to manage it
  • How to create structure without killing initiative
  • Why “just involving people” usually backfires
  • The power of openness in times of crisis

🎧 Keywords: open strategy, strategic participation, leadership, decision-making, legitimacy, organisational culture, strategy execution, transparency, inclusion, commitment, strategy process

📘 Learn more in Julia’s book Open Strategy (co-authored with Christian Stadler, Kurt Matzler and Stephan Friedrich von den Eichen) https://amzn.eu/d/8RpROIT

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Julia Hautz (00:00)
open strategy is not about distributing decision rights I would say it's not democracy. It's not like suddenly we all have a say in the decision.

Mike Jones (00:07)
Mmm.

Julia Hautz (00:12)
having employees engaged in several discussions in debates in

In whatever kind of initiative you might choose as an organization, those people develop a better understanding of what's going on, why we might even engage in finding a new strategy

Mike Jones (01:03)
Hi Julia, great to have you on Strategy and Reality podcast. I've been a great fan of your work, but for the guest, it'd great to introduce yourself and give a bit of context about what you've been up to lately.

Julia Hautz (01:15)
Yes, sure. First of all, thank you for the invitation for this talk today. I'm happy to be here. My name is Julia. I'm a professor of strategic management at the University of Innsbruck in Austria. And lately, and I would say also for the last couple of years, my work has really focused on

strategy processes within organizations and how those processes can be made more open. And with open, we mean here really being more transparent to the world outside, but also within organizations and then most importantly, being more inclusive to, I would say, everyone outside of top management teams.

Over the last years, my work really has focused on better understanding how those open processes could work, what might be challenges, what might be a false. And here my work has really focused, I would say, first of all, on the academic side, really understanding this phenomenon as researcher and also the mechanisms behind, but also working a lot with organizations and talking a lot to

people engaging in different kinds of open strategy efforts through many different types of organizations and really better understand what's going on in those organizations, what might be needs, to engage in such form of open strategy processes, what are learnings, what are challenges.

combining those insights from academia and practice. that's really what I've been up to in the last couple of years, I would say.

Mike Jones (03:00)
Definitely a lot. And there's a lot that I can't wait to explore. It's definitely around what it really means and the challenges. first of all, open approach to strategy. Why do you think it makes a difference?

Julia Hautz (03:12)
Basically, I think it makes a difference for two important reasons. On the one hand, the first one might be a little bit more obvious than the second one. The first one is really quite simple. You get new insights. So if we think of those who typically engage with developing a new strategy, you could say it's a quite small amount of people, a small group.

top management teams, maybe some strategic advisors, let's say strategy department that is doing the analysis and bringing information together. But typically those people are people who have engaged with this over a long period of time, have a lot of expertise in this area, experience within a company, within a specific industry.

And therefore I would argue because of this experience and because of this expertise, which is really good, there might also be some kind of limitation in terms of overcoming established thinking processes, overcoming established assumptions. There's a lot of literature on those cognitive biases and limitations that might

might affect us over a long period of time or if we are all having quite similar education, similar experience. And if you open up your strategy processes and you engage what we call non-managerial actors, so basically everybody within organizations, employees, customer, clients, experts.

suppliers, whoever might be interested or relevant for your strategic issue or question, you just get new insights. You got cognitive diversity, fresh thinking, outside of the box thinking, thinking that goes beyond established assumptions, established routines. So I think that is very useful in the first place, especially today where we have all these

volatility, unpredictability in our environment where it's more than ever required to act quickly, to act in new technological developments, to changes in customer preferences. I think it's very helpful to get all of those different perspectives outside your own thinking routines. So I think that is the first big reason why opening up a strategy process.

Mike Jones (05:41)
Yes.

Julia Hautz (05:49)
might make sense and there is a second one if there is a first one there is a second one which might be not necessarily as obvious in the first place and really refers if you are if you are involving your employees in your strategy development process and this is really that by involving them by having employees engaged in several discussions in debates in

In whatever kind of initiative you might choose as an organization, those people develop a better understanding of what's going on, why we might even engage in finding a new strategy

in the first place or in a strategic change, for example. And then by being involved in the process, they develop a kind of psychological ownership, a sense of ownership.

Mike Jones (06:39)
Yeah,

yeah.

Julia Hautz (06:40)
an attachment towards the processes, towards what's going on. And this is then subsequently linked towards a higher level of commitment. So people are much more committed towards a strategy, a strategic initiative. And commitment always is the antecedent of behavior, of becoming active, of engaging. And therefore,

Mike Jones (06:51)
Hmm.

Yes.

Julia Hautz (07:05)
By opening up, you're not getting only all of those ideas, but people are much more willing to work on realizing those ideas. I would put it in a simple

Mike Jones (07:14)
Yeah,

yeah, so much there. Really good points, especially when you're thinking around the sort of the traditional approach to strategy, which is very much you get a, big consultancy in, they come in and they do some stuff, but you've got really challenged around their assumptions that they're making and how congruent that their thoughts and assumptions are of reality. And it's those people that are the edges of your organization.

that are seeing it, they're seeing the interactions with the customers, they're seeing how things are changing, how things are with suppliers, they're really in tune. And the other part is that, which I like in your second point, was where you're really dismantling that perceived wall between the strategy developers and the people that are going to execute the strategy, which are the people on the front line. And if you've got them involved, not only you've got great commitment,

but they understand it. If they understand it, then it gives them more of that intuition, more of that initiative to go, I understand what they're doing. The choices are a lot more clearer for me. So think that's some great points there. What challenges have you found with this approach?

Julia Hautz (08:22)
So I think the first challenge is even to raise awareness among organizations that that might be useful or that might be something that might even be a little bit required today to be able to approach all of those difficulties for organizations today. And I think...

Mike Jones (08:32)
Mmm.

Julia Hautz (08:45)
We see quite some variations. There are organizations and especially leadership teams that are really seeing the value of openness and are really getting active themselves and say, we realize we have to do that in a different way. We see all of those challenges, those complexities out there. We are no longer able to do that within our small team. can't get all...

We don't have all the answers and all the insights and we need them on board. So there is a high awareness that that might be useful. And I would say there are also organizations that are still doing it like it has been always done. So especially for leaders, would say it's sometimes quite, it could be a little bit scary and frightening openness sometimes has the notion of

Mike Jones (09:30)
Yeah

Julia Hautz (09:40)
losing control and not being in charge of the direction and not being able to control the direction where the conversation is going. Even though that might not be true, can perfectly, I would say, manage and moderate and control what's going on. But still, think some leaders might be a little bit, I would say, or...

is cared about, about what that brings also for their own role within the organization. Very often like strategy, that's the domain of top management teams. that's deciding on the strategic direction. That's really part of the job of the leaders of the organization. So it might sometimes feel, they might sometimes feel that it, it, it,

Mike Jones (10:07)
you

Yeah.

Julia Hautz (10:30)
They compromise a little bit of their status or control. And then some even might not be convinced that somebody at, I would say, at lower levels of the organization, at the shop floor, even outside the organization might be able to contribute in a helpful way to a strategy development process. So some...

Mike Jones (10:54)
Yeah.

Julia Hautz (10:54)
might be skeptical in terms of the value of the contributions that are brought in but I would say once they've tried it and once they are ready to experiment a little bit nearly all of them are just very much convinced about the outcome.

Mike Jones (11:11)
Yeah, it must be dawdling because no doubt, you you're a lecturer, you your student no doubt will get the great idea and more modern thinking around openness to strategy. traditional MBAs that a lot of executive goes on, you know, still very traditional in their approach. It's, you know, it's all about a four box strategy aimed for the top right and you'd be OK type approach.

Julia Hautz (11:31)
Yeah.

Mike Jones (11:34)
And to think where you've got to actually, you don't have to, but by engaging people in your organisation, you're going to get richness. You're going to get a lot of insight. And I've seen this done terribly in organisations where they've tried, they've probably tried to engage their people and ask them for opinion, but then it creates cynicism straight away because the end result bears no resemblance to what has been spoke about.

And everyone's like, well, what's the point? And you see this a lot. Yeah, we've done it. We've ticked the box. We've engaged people, but this is what I'm going to do anyway. And they've gone for that.

Julia Hautz (12:02)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah,

and I think that's the worst thing that you could do. Then it's better to do it in the traditional way, I would say, which still has its... I mean, it's still useful. It doesn't mean that open strategy should completely replace traditional strategy present, but raising expectations and telling people, yes, now that's your chance, let us know what you think, give us your opinion, give us your time.

Mike Jones (12:14)
Mmm.

Julia Hautz (12:37)
and then not referring back to it. mean, even if you can't consider, usually you can't consider all of it or you might not be able to include all of the suggestions that you get, especially if you are involving a lot of people in the process, you won't be able to show exactly what's in and what has made it into your final strategy. But

Mike Jones (12:44)
Mmm.

Julia Hautz (13:01)
but not referring back to them and letting them know maybe that their ideas will be considered in later steps or that was just a first move or what will happen with their ideas or that they have been seen, that they have been considered, that not everything could be considered in a strategic direction of an organization, but their effort is still appreciated.

then typically people are fine with this. mean, the worst thing that you can do is to create a black box where people are submitting time and resources and effort and they have no idea how this might be correlated to the outcome. So if you just transparently let them know that's what we did, that's how we reflected on your input, that's how we further translated it to our strategy.

Mike Jones (13:39)
Yes.

Julia Hautz (13:51)
then that's perfectly fine. But once you ask for the input, you really have to carefully manage the expectations and you have to appreciate the effort. Because otherwise people are more frustrated than before. Then it's really better to not involve them at all.

Mike Jones (14:08)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, and you know, even when you're doing your communications outwards, you can tell a story, a narrative around some of the inputs and saying, you know, this is how we got here. These are the inputs we've got. This is, for these reasons, it wasn't feasible at this time, but we can assume that after we do these, these things can be taken in. And I no doubt this openness approach to strategy gets richer with time. Yeah, and you know, not all organisations, but...

Like you said, there's going to be lot of cynicism if stuff like this happened before and the voice sound being heard. But once you've done it, you've done it well. No doubt that next time you do it or the continuous element of strategy, it gets richer and richer. You get more people willing to share more, willing to express more, willing to sort of get in the rhythm of inputting and help supporting the Strategic direction.

Julia Hautz (15:05)
Exactly, exactly. But I think that's an important point because we are currently seeing that organizations have to learn somehow how to do that in the long run and how to do that on a continuous base, as you mentioned. And we are studying organizations, especially observing them and exploring them over the long run, because it can be a little bit of a challenge. Usually.

Mike Jones (15:16)
Mmm.

Julia Hautz (15:31)
People are very enthusiastic and willing to spend a lot of time if it is a certain defined amount of time, a time spent, let's say a one week initiative, a three week initiative, even if you say, okay, we have several initiatives over a couple of months, but it is really a challenge to do it in the long run because you can't do it in very, let's say, time and resource intensive way.

Mike Jones (15:51)
Yeah.

Julia Hautz (15:57)
over a very long period of time because you can't talk about strategy always, you have to put it into practice, you have to do your business and not only talk about it. it's really at the moment I think organizations are learning how to balance this need to engage in conversations about strategy and then...

Mike Jones (16:04)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Julia Hautz (16:18)
maybe close down the process again a little bit and focus more on what we have done and discussed together and now act on it and realize it. But it can be a dynamic process with opening up, with closing it down and doing it in a way that I think all the people are not strange. it can become very effortful, especially if people are enthusiastic and are really...

Mike Jones (16:29)
Yeah.

Julia Hautz (16:44)
investing a lot of time usually on top of their actual day-to-day job in engaging in those initiatives and then it can become very, very time consuming and effortful for them to do it over a longer period of time. So that is something that organizations I think are currently trying to balance out and test what works best.

Mike Jones (16:59)
you

Julia Hautz (17:05)
to not lose the momentum and the understanding of people but not to overstretch them and overburden them, I would say.

Mike Jones (17:12)
Yeah, I suppose that puts the onus on leaders to step down several layers of the organization and to engage. You're not there to challenge them, but just have those conversations and see what the difference is, if there is difference between what information is going upwards and what's actually being done in reality and get those real narratives around.

Julia Hautz (17:25)
hehe

Mike Jones (17:36)
how's the strategy going, what challenge are they facing, what they're learning, all that good stuff can then can go up to the thinking to make that sort of less effortful procedure moving forward. So how would you recommend to leaders to get started? What sort of stuff do you recommend that you must consider first?

Julia Hautz (17:47)
Definitely,

Mike Jones (17:55)
really get this process working.

Julia Hautz (17:57)
That's a good point. What I would do is, I mean, if you really would consider to engage in open strategy, I would at first look at other organizations what they have done. mean, there's more and more conversation going on so that you can read about examples or even get in touch with other organizations and

get ideas about what's going on because with open strategy the good thing is that there are many different ways to do it but again the bad thing is there are many different ways to do it because you have to find the one that is the best for you. So I think the first step is really to get clear about why do I want to open up? What might be the biggest reason for me? Is it

Mike Jones (18:35)
Yeah, yeah.

Mmm.

Julia Hautz (18:47)
because we really want to get new ideas about new futures, strategic directions, new ideas about maybe even establishing new businesses, being really very bold about where we should go in the future. Or is it more about engaging people in...

refining a current strategy and getting their understanding. Are we facing a crisis maybe even and realise we have to do something, have to change substantially, we have to change our strategic direction quite fast and we need to have everybody on board. So what is the biggest reason to do that? Because that might then give you also some ideas about

Mike Jones (19:15)
Mm-hmm.

Julia Hautz (19:31)
Who would be the best people to include? Do I just want to include people from my own organization? Do I want to go outside? Do I want to involve different stakeholders, maybe even suppliers or clients, customers? Would that make sense for my organization? Maybe it might help to start small.

Mike Jones (19:34)
Hmm.

Julia Hautz (19:53)
to say, I'm doing some kind of pilots where I can learn a little bit. Because you can start with small workshop settings and invite people to be part of one, two, three day workshops to engage in some kind of discussions and tasks. Or do you want to be quite broad within your organization and then it might be helpful to use digital tools. Or maybe you have already a kind of

Mike Jones (20:18)
you

Julia Hautz (20:19)
employees, social network, platform within your organization that might be quite useful. So it's always good to not invent something new, but use the procedures that you have established to engage with the people within your organization because people are used to it, they have the knowledge, the capabilities to engage with those tools maybe. So that could be useful. And then of course you always have the option to get support.

Mike Jones (20:27)
Hmm.

Julia Hautz (20:45)
mean, more more consultants are supporting organizations, not necessarily developing the strategy itself, but supporting them in opening up the strategy process and just being kind of moderators, facilitators in doing and setting up such open processes. So that's always an option. But I would say, become clear, what's your goal? Why you want to open up?

Mike Jones (20:56)
Yeah, yeah.

Hmm.

Julia Hautz (21:11)
because that would give you then a lot of subsequent answers on how to do it.

Mike Jones (21:17)
Yeah. Yeah. I like that real, the point around, are we in a crisis? Because you see organizations that are in a crisis and they do the exact opposite. go really insular, pure strategic. Everything's like cloak and dagger. No, we don't know what's going on. where actually it's counterintuitive to just push out, push out and be honest with people and engage people in the crisis because

Julia Hautz (21:23)
Hmm. Yep.

Yeah.

Mike Jones (21:42)
you've probably got so much untapped intelligence in your organisation that probably have part of the answer or, you know, some steps forward and the fact of inviting external people to the organisation. We know in the strategy process, we're always making assumptions around, well, if we do this, how would they respond? They may respond like this, but if you've got them in the room, you can ask them.

Julia Hautz (21:46)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mike Jones (22:06)
this

is what we're going to do, how does that impact you? What do you think your likely response would be? Is that something that would work for both of us or not? It will cut a lot of the assumptions out.

Julia Hautz (22:17)
Yeah, definitely, definitely. And especially, and we have done specific research on this in the last couple of years because there is research that has been funded also by the Austrian National Bank to get a better sense how organizations can use open strategy processes, especially when they are facing crisis and even crisis that they need to restructure under financial distress. So really in a situation where they might even be close to insolvency.

how can we handle this, and especially in those situations, as you said, the first instinct is to close down everything, focus on the top of the organization, just having a few people, maybe some external advisors, and then make it as secretive as possible so nobody realizes what's going on, and then try to find a solution quickly within this small team. And that's...

Even though it might make sense under the time pressure and the critical situation that you are facing, it might even make more sense to be open here as well. Because people will realize something is going on. are rumors, there is something. And especially in this situation, you might need this insights from your employees. They might have some observations, ideas. You might need inputs from your suppliers, from your biggest customers. You might need a way to

Mike Jones (23:16)
Yeah.

Julia Hautz (23:36)
restructure your processes, to restructure your business model, to find new customers, to position yourself in a different way. And the most important thing is you have to do that quickly. And in order to be able to do that quickly, you just need the acceptance and the commitment of your people. You won't be able to do that without them. But in those situations, then if you do it in a traditional way,

Mike Jones (23:46)
Yes.

Julia Hautz (24:00)
You have to argue a lot about why is this necessary. If people are surprised that they are in a crisis, you have to explain them. People might even lose trust, you might lose credibility, they might even feel a little bit betrayed and all those emotions are setting in and it will be very difficult to get their commitment.

But we have seen organizations that have already been quite transparent and inclusive in their processes before they came into a crisis. Of course, employees, they feel negative emotions and they feel insecure about what's going to happen. And we have seen in those organizations that they even had to lay off half of their workforce. But still, the acceptance of people was quite high because they saw

It's necessary. They knew about the numbers. They knew about decisions that have been taken before. They were just aware, okay, that's the situation. It's not nice. It's not good. But they didn't feel surprised or something like overwhelmed. They were quite realistic about what could be done. And therefore they were also quite quick in working together on the solution because they worked on it together.

Mike Jones (24:59)
you

Yes.

Julia Hautz (25:16)
They were part of it, they had all the information. And then we even saw in this organization that we were studying the people returned quite quickly when the situation got better because they still had a good relationship with the organization. So I think that's a good way to share information transparently and get quick buy-in rather than secretively developing something in your own small team and then forcing everyone to do that with you.

Mike Jones (25:29)
Yes.

Yeah, it makes sense. It's the same that we've looked at in change. we see change that, to get openness or what we're talking about, people expect resistance. That's how they base all their change that, we're to get resistance, so let's manage resistance rather than going, how do we get people ready for the change? How do we get them involved? How are we transparent? How do we show that the procedural justice of the change is fair?

Julia Hautz (25:56)
Yeah.

⁓

Mike Jones (26:11)
And that by doing so, you get better commitment. People evaluate the change a lot more positively, even though it may impact them in a way, but at least it seemed fair. I could see a lot of the correlations between that and the open approach to strategy and how actually it can have great benefit for the organization.

Julia Hautz (26:12)
I'm not.

Yeah.

That's definitely true, definitely. But the important point here is to be able to draw on, I would say, such mechanisms in a situation of crisis or situation of change. Usually it's too late to introduce openness in the moment of crisis or change. You have to build up, I would say, some kind of openness upfront. people, it has to be established already.

Mike Jones (26:54)
Yeah.

Julia Hautz (26:57)
Because in the situation of crisis or change, you are facing so many other pressures and needs that it will be very difficult to then say, and now for the first time, let's open up, let's people engage. They might be overwhelmed by the crisis situation. So it might be just too much. I would say investing in openness during times of, I don't think we would have stability, but during quite a time.

times where the situation is better, then you can draw on this in the case of changing.

Mike Jones (27:30)
Hmm. People are probably quite surprised because when they think of like the military, they probably think military is very much top down and it's all think, but it's the exact opposite. You know, we have a very open approach to strategy development because we have all the key people in and we have, but we have the luxury of long planning cycles. So we can sit there and plan quite well. So that works. Well, I see it. Well, what,

Julia Hautz (27:39)
Yeah.

haha

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mike Jones (27:56)
What is not an open approach to strategy?

Julia Hautz (27:59)
You mean what's not open? What would be...

Mike Jones (28:02)
Yeah, so what are the, yeah, that's probably poorly worded question. So we know the benefits of open approach strategy, but where do people get it wrong? What's the myths that people think? So when you first go to leaders, open approach, what's the myths that they think open approach is but is not?

Julia Hautz (28:13)
Yeah.

Yeah,

I got your question. yeah. So open strategy is not about usually not about distributing decision rights I would say it's not democracy. It's not like suddenly we all have a say in the decision.

Mike Jones (28:30)
Mmm.

Julia Hautz (28:35)
It's not like you allow your employees to vote on your, I you could, but it's typically not.

involved in opening up the process that they also are involved in the decision making process. And I would even argue that most of them don't want to because then making a decision also comes with having the responsibility for this final decision and being responsible also if the decision doesn't work out in a way it was intended. So openness is really about getting

the idea, getting the knowledge, getting the information, getting diverse perspective, bringing this all together, synthesizing it. Even the synthesizing could be done in a larger group and not only within the top management team, but usually then the final decision is made in the top management team, in the typical structure that we know.

And if we talk to people and if we talk to employees and involve people, they are also fine with this because by being involved in the process, they realize that there might be many different perspectives to be considered. And it's not so easy and not so clear as it might only seem from their individual point of view. But there are many different point of views that are relevant and that might sometimes be contradicting. And that it's not so easy to come up with

the final decision and once they realize it, of course then find that they are not involved in making a decision or having the responsibility of making the decision. So I think it also raises some awareness that the chop of the leadership team, so to say, it's not an easy one. So it's easy to say, okay, if I could decide or if they would ask me, they should do that.

But if you are in the position, you realize that. I think that's very important. And that's also important for the leadership team, that they realize, OK, we get a lot of more input. It's not that we are losing our decision-making authority, so to say. ⁓ So I would always say open strategy is not democracy. And I would also say open strategy is not chaos. It's not just saying, OK, tell me.

Mike Jones (30:39)
you

Julia Hautz (30:49)
What should our strategy be? And then getting a lot of ideas. And we know from the internet, if you get a lot of ideas, you also got maybe a lot of not so really good or relevant ideas. it's also opening up has to be a structured managed process, a moderated process where you clearly define what is expected. What is the task? What shouldn't be expected?

Mike Jones (31:02)
Yeah, yeah.

Julia Hautz (31:17)
You need to moderate it. It's not just asking a question and let people throw in everything they might come up with. So it's a clearly structured and designed process.

Mike Jones (31:19)
Yeah.

that's great to think about because, you know, when you say people engage your people straight away, people think, it's just going to be a consensus madness drama, but it's not like that all actually. listen to people's perspectives. I think it's fantastic. when there is no structure around it, like you said, it must be a structured process.

I find that you don't get to hear people's perspectives. You just get to hear almost, it's almost like noise. And we don't want that. And you want to actually, would you go down as far as, this is the challenge we're facing and then have it more bounded that way. So you get a bit more focus in the input.

Julia Hautz (31:55)
Yeah.

Yep.

Yeah, definitely. I mean, you can clearly specify a specific question. mean, again, that really depends on what you're looking for. If your goal is really to say, OK, what do you think is the future of our industry or the future of our organization that we stay within this industry? That's also fine. But of course, then you have to be aware that you will get very broad answers and a lot of different answers, which will be fine if that's what you're looking for.

Mike Jones (32:31)
Hmm.

Julia Hautz (32:36)
But the more you specify what is the specific question, what is the specific task, course, the more specified answers you will get. And I think that's also important because people, if people know what you're looking for, then they also can adapt their expectations about what they can contribute and what will be the outcome afterwards. And I think just very clear expectation management is so essential.

that you don't get frustration on both sides. So really, you don't want the frustration that the organization is saying, now we did all of this and we get nothing that is helpful. We just get a lot of broad ideas and we invested so much time and effort in this process. And on the other hand, you don't want that people say, I gave all of those ideas and nothing is considered. So you really want to specify what are you looking for? What do you want to...

Mike Jones (33:05)
Yeah.

Julia Hautz (33:27)
What input do you need from the people and what will happen? So clarify your goal and the process. I think that is very important.

Mike Jones (33:35)
And I see how this can work in execution as well, because they've been involved, they understand the higher order of what's going on. And we have a very clear thing around how we do execution, which is, we state the intent, this is what we want you to do. Here's a couple of constraints you need to consider, but how you do that, that's up to you. You can go away and figure that out. And then you can backbrief.

Julia Hautz (33:41)
Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Jones (33:59)
what your findings are, we can see if we're aligned or not. But I think it's seeing that the open approach can really work in both, one in the development and then two in the execution. But the fact that if you've opened up in the development, it's gonna be a lot easier in the execution.

Julia Hautz (34:12)
you

That's a good point. it refers to something when CEO, when I had a talk with her, I said, okay, what did you learn in the whole open strategy process? And she said, I think that really brings it down quite nicely. She said, I learned to be patient and finally patience paid off because yes, of course we all know that the more people are involved in the process, the longer it takes to get.

the ideas to process them, to make sense of them, to engage in all those discussions and to listen. That takes time. So definitely the process up front will take a lot longer than just having a few meetings. I'm saying just, I'm exaggerating a bit, but having those few meetings in a smaller group of executives.

Mike Jones (34:58)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Julia Hautz (35:05)
But, and as she said, this patience upfront really pays off afterwards because you are so much faster because people are just, they are on the same page already. They know why is this happening? What's going on? You don't have to engage in all of this, I would say, advertising and selling of strategy. There's no need to do that. People know they have been engaged. They have discussed it already. They knew why it's this direction and not the other one.

Mike Jones (35:27)
Mmm.

Julia Hautz (35:33)
what were the reasons behind it. So it's much easier to just follow up afterwards because you don't have to engage in all this effort in these road shows and explaining and telling, which is so difficult and so time consuming afterwards. would say patient-based office is a good summary of the process.

Mike Jones (35:51)
Yes.

Yeah, I think you're right. And hopefully then we can sort of divorce the marketing away from strategy. Yeah, and I'm not talking about business marketing. Yes, that comes after, I'm more about the the internal comms, internal marketing charade that comes in. And that's because they're too busy trying to sell this rather than being clear around what is the strategy. Yeah.

Julia Hautz (36:02)
Yeah.

Yes.

Yes. Yes.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly. And I think at the moment, so much effort and time is really really dedicated to to selling strategy and marketing and communicating strategy. And I think there is this easier way of having the people involved.

Mike Jones (36:27)
Mm-hmm. ⁓

Julia Hautz (36:36)
so that they know about it already. I mean, a good thing is because you might never be able to involve everybody within your company and some people might not want to be involved actively. The good thing is what you can communicate then is that there is this open strategy initiative. What is it about that it's taking place? How many are involved? What is happening with the outcome? So you can communicate around the open strategy process.

Mike Jones (36:48)
Yeah.

Julia Hautz (37:04)
because we have seen in our research there are those very interesting spillover effects so that you have positive consequences also for those who are not actively involved because they might have been chosen, they might have chosen to not be involved but they still have the feeling we could if we want to and just having the opportunity gives them let's say has a positive effect on understanding, on acceptance, on buy-in

because they have the feeling, yes, if I would want to, if I would have an idea, I'm so busy at the moment I can't, but I know I would be considered or there is a chance. And that's interesting that you get the spillover effect within your organization.

Mike Jones (37:44)
can imagine as well, it's like even those people, because like I said, not everyone, there's no point kidding yourself. Not everyone is wanting to be involved in the strategy and that's fine. And I think some leaders we go, well, I don't want to get involved because they probably just don't for a number of reasons. But the output of the strategy, even though they haven't been involved, probably is more recognizable to them. Yeah. And they feel more buy in the fact that they can

Julia Hautz (37:56)
Yeah.

Yes. Yes.

Mike Jones (38:13)
relate to it, they can see the peers being involved.

Julia Hautz (38:14)
Exactly.

Exactly. It feels more relevant for them. They do their roles and their input and reflect it and they can easily relate to it. As you've said, that's a very good point. And yes, we see that a lot. mean, a lot of people just don't want to be involved. And it's always also easier. We all have that, that we say, if I could be involved, I don't know, in politics. But if we get the actual chance to be involved...

Mike Jones (38:18)
Mmm.

Mm.

Julia Hautz (38:43)
we might choose to not do it because of all several reasons that might be be relevant here, but just having the opportunity to do it and see others are considered and my peers are considered and my colleagues are considered, that already makes a big difference.

Mike Jones (38:59)
Yeah.

And hopefully it starts to break down those barriers that perceived worker and management barrier that's there and realize that, we're not, we're not separate, we all have a role and we can all have input into that role. ⁓ and this, this, the output, the strategy can be perceived, less corporate, you know, the, you you know, it's like the, you know, the, management team have, have gone away to some Swiss resort.

Julia Hautz (39:14)
Exactly.

Mike Jones (39:27)
for a weekend of strategy offsite. They've thrown some tennis balls at each other, played some games, and then come back with this vision statement that means absolutely nothing. Yeah.

Julia Hautz (39:30)
Yeah. Yeah.

Exactly,

mean, and then having all this mystification around and nobody really knows what's happening in those summits or in those strategy meetings. I think it's really good to go beyond that.

If we consider ourselves, really not so rocket science in the end, involving people, giving them a part in the process and then increasing their understanding. But we find that in the context of strategy, it's just not how it's done on a large scale. So we think that's quite surprising because writing about it, you always have the feeling, okay, that's such a new idea about...

Mike Jones (39:58)
Mm.

No.

Hahaha.

Julia Hautz (40:18)
involving

people, giving them participation to take them along. But especially with the strategy process, it's just not part of how it has been then.

Mike Jones (40:28)
No, and I was laughing there because a lot of my writing and the reason why I got this podcast together, you know, I often sit there and think, but I'm not talking about anything new. don't, you know, this, but it is because when you look around the organisations, still are very much trapped in this old orthodoxy, the very rigid structure, structured. But what I see about this is that, know, what I advocate, you advocate, is essentially putting the hard work up front.

Julia Hautz (40:38)
Yeah.

Yes.

Mike Jones (40:57)
to make it easier in the long term, where I think a lot of the traditional approaches do the easy work upfront, and then they fight the hard stuff in the execution point.

Julia Hautz (41:06)
Yes.

Yes, definitely,

definitely. And I mean, have to be, we have to be, or to consider here that, I mean, that's just the way how it has been done for a very long time. This is how it has been taught in business schools, in executive programs, especially with strategy and how we teach strategy and how strategy processes have been described in textbooks. It just...

Mike Jones (41:18)
Mm-hmm.

Julia Hautz (41:32)
has not changed a lot. mean, we have seen a lot of changes in innovations and how we communicate, but the strategy and how strategy is developed, hasn't been a lot of changes over the last decades. So maybe we see more and more changes when we see more and more awareness. We can already see that around the world in organizations that awareness is changing.

Mike Jones (41:34)
Yeah.

Julia Hautz (41:56)
leaders realize there might be another way to do that which might have some beneficial consequences. But of course we have to be realistic when you learning something new you are always learning from failures and we have to also find and speak about those failures to just make them visible and let organization know what to avoid in such processes.

Mike Jones (42:08)
Yeah, yeah.

Yes.

Yeah. And that's why I recommend anyone, you know, get your book open, approach strategy. I'll link that in the show notes. But the, I think really bring a heart of how we teach strategy and the models we're using for strategy. I think we're still trapped in this 1980s typology.

I joked earlier about just aim for the top right corner of the four boxes or, you know, we're either going to be a cost leader or differentiator. When you look at the strategy approach like that, then you can sort of understand why do I need to involve people where we know in the volatility, the complexity that we're facing, that that's not stra... We're not trying to go into a typology. We're trying to shape our relationship with the external environment and to do that.

Julia Hautz (42:47)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Jones (43:10)
it takes a bit more cognitive creativity than just picking a box.

Julia Hautz (43:15)
Exactly, I mean, definitely all of those frameworks are useful and we would never imply to say, okay, forget about what we have learned there and just focus on open strategy. I think it's just a good complement to what we have learned already and what we know. And approach changes in our environment with this new approach because it just...

Mike Jones (43:28)
Yeah, of course.

Mm.

Julia Hautz (43:40)
allows us to get this additional information, get this additional buy-in and then combine it, what we already know, combine it with these traditional approaches, I think that's the way to go and therefore I also said it's always an opening up, closing down, it's always something dynamic and it's definitely not one approach or one recipe that works in every situation and for every organisation.

But having it in your toolbox, I think, can be very beneficial.

Mike Jones (44:05)
Mm.

Yeah, definitely. I asked to change the quotes as the change quote that people don't resist change. They resist change being done to them. We'll have to change that now to people don't resist strategy. They just resist strategy being done to them. There you go. Yeah, we'll have to have that. This conversation has been absolutely fascinating. And I really like the fact of understanding why would we need to do this? And I mean, you argue that case very well and I'm an advocate for it.

Julia Hautz (44:19)
Yes.

Exactly. Yeah.

Mike Jones (44:38)
And, it's, really about getting people involved in, and it really breaks it, that gap between strategy and execution. How'd you close that gap and actually that involvement, that openness, transparency really helps. So if you were to leave our listeners with something to think about from, from this podcast, what would that be?

Julia Hautz (44:47)
Yeah.

I think what I would leave especially to organizations and people in these organizations is just try it and especially try it now. I know a lot of organizations are currently facing difficult situations for various reasons, various changes in the geopolitical environment, in the technological environment. see changes that are just...

Mike Jones (45:06)
Mm-hmm.

Julia Hautz (45:20)
I think we are all trying to make sense of it and it's very difficult to predict where the direction is going. And especially in such a situation where it's so difficult to predict what will happen next. And with all this uncertainty and volatility, it's good to make this step to open up. So really not resisting instinct to close down and do it in a small team.

but really try to experiment and learn, especially in such a difficult situation as we are facing at the moment. I think that is something that I would encourage everyone to do, although I admit you need to be brave and also confident as a leader to try it, but I definitely think it will pay off.

Mike Jones (46:05)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, I definitely think leaders will be surprised what information they can get from the edges of organizations. But I'd echo your point about being brave. Some of those stuff you may not want to hear, but unfortunately, yeah.

Julia Hautz (46:18)
Yes. Yes.

Yeah, exactly. definitely. mean, one

of the one of the organizers in one organization said, and I think that's also such a nice frame, it's like magic. You don't know what you have within your organization. But of course, you can get that in both directions. It's like, yeah, yeah. But if you expect that.

Mike Jones (46:40)
Yes, I, yeah.

Julia Hautz (46:45)
That's fine. mean, you just need to know that you will get a lot of information, but hopefully also a lot of useful and great information.

Mike Jones (46:53)
Yeah, yeah.

And again, like you said before, I think the more we do it, the less surprised you will be by, not less surprised by the information you get. I think you're always going to be surprised by that, but I think you're going to have a more welcoming, honest conversation rather than a cynical, quite aggressive. I actually, really think that people try it because I think the

Julia Hautz (47:10)
Yeah.

Mike Jones (47:20)
perceived hostility is probably greater than what you actually get. Yeah.

Julia Hautz (47:25)
Yes, yes,

definitely, definitely. People are surprised how constructive and helpful and also relevant the contributions are that you are getting. So it's always a surprise on the positive side rather than

Mike Jones (47:31)
Mmm.

Yeah, definitely. And for our listeners, please read Open Approach to Strategy. It's a fantastic book and it will give you lot of insights on how you can adopt this. And obviously, if you've got any questions, you can reach out to Julia. And if you don't mind.

Julia Hautz (47:57)
Definitely, welcome any questions, suggestions, experience with Open Strategy are always welcome. think the more we understand it, the more we learn about it, the more organisations will be able to use it and leverage it.

Mike Jones (47:57)
Yeah.

Awesome. Thank you. been great. Thank you very much, Julia, for coming on the show.

Julia Hautz (48:16)
Thank you for the talk. It was really a lot of fun to have this conversation.

Mike Jones (48:21)
Awesome. So if you like this episode, please like and subscribe and share it to ⁓ your friends and maybe they find it useful too. See you next time. Bye.

Julia Hautz (48:33)
Bye.