Not everything has to be a suc­cess to ul­ti­mately be de­cis­ive for the strategy

What do a post-it note and the story of the ugly duckling have in common? This is what the "Museum of Strategic Projects" at CBS offers with an exhibition on strategic projects from various companies.

In a display case, a yellow duckling sits on a stack of post-it notes as an illustration of a project in the late 1960s at the company 3M. Here they worked on producing a very strong glue for the aerospace industry. It did not succeed. The project resulted in a very weak glue that was not used. Not until an employee several years later had an idea. He was also a choir singer and needed a product to mark pages in his hymnal, and that's how 3M became the manufacturer of the note, which can be attached to anything and easily removed again, and which has therefore become one of the best-selling office products, explains Carsten Lund Pedersen, who is an Associate Professor at the Institute for Strategy and Innovation at CBS and one of two initiators of the museum.

"With the exhibition, we would like to discuss how projects determine a company's strategy - regardless of whether they are a success or a mistake. A project can be an ugly duckling in one context and a beautiful swan in another, and there is a lot of learning in that understanding," he says.

"Everything does not have to be planned and a success to ultimately be decisive for the strategy," adds his colleague Thomas Ritter, professor at the Department of Strategy and Innovation.

Projects clarify the strategy

At CBS, Carsten Lund Pedersen and Thomas Ritter research and teach business development together, and the museum builds on their understanding of strategy as a portfolio of projects.

"If you ask a company which projects they are working on, you get a picture of their strategy. If you simply ask about their strategy, the answer can be very airy. It is important to understand strategy as a living portfolio of projects in order to ensure the necessary resources in the organisation and to find out whether there is a fit between the projects or whether they compete with each other," says Carsten Lund Pedersen and adds :

"If you can't say which projects are part of the strategy, you don't have a real strategy, but maybe just a plan."

According to Thomas Ritter, a project focus can resolve a potential discrepancy between a management decision and the employees' perception of the company's strategy.

"An employee says: 'I don't understand why the management has announced that we are going one way, and yet you spend ten million kroner to go the other way.' But it can make good sense if you have a project vision , because then there is room for projects that point towards innovation and renewal, and at the same time the organisation can invest in future-proofing the existing. A company is more complex than one agenda can cover, and the project portfolio makes the strategy more inclusive and practical.”

Carsten Lund Pedersen gives a suggestion on how to ensure that an organisation does not work in many different directions:

"There must be room for employees to take the initiative by experimenting with a hobby project that can develop into an essential project. The organisations that are good at getting alignment and autonomy to interact manage to stay focused 80 percent of the time, and then they open up for employees to experiment 20 percent of the time.”

Under the radar

Thomas Ritter highlights a favorite from the museum: A department in an unknown company asked the finance department for money for a chimney. However, an employee in the finance department wondered why they only wanted one chimney. So he flew out to the production unit, and here he was surprised: There was a brand new factory with all the equipment. The production unit had bought individual parts and built everything under the radar. But they could not cut the chimney into smaller chunks, and therefore they had to apply for money.

"The new facility was a great success. And everyone agreed that if the unit had asked for money for the development through the formal route, the idea would have been killed in business plans and committee meetings. The unit took a big risk and is a clear example of what we call project enthusiasts: people who fight for their projects 'against all odds'," says Thomas Ritter.

In another display case in the exhibition, the sheriff doll Woody from Toy Story has Donald Duck tied on his back to illustrate the story of a Disney employee who was fired because he was adamant that digital animation would be the future. Instead, he continued to work on the project in a new company that ended up becoming what we know today as Pixar. Since then, Disney bought the company and made the fired employee the boss.

"It was an expensive way to buy back a project enthusiast and shows what can happen if you don't give employees space. On the other hand, the process was also positive for Disney - they didn't take a risk and only struck when the idea had been tested," says Carsten Lund Pedersen.

The autopsy

The museum's exhibition also describes tools for strategy development, for example the psychologist Gary Klein's "Project PreMortem".

"'Post mortem' is an autopsy. The proposal is to instead do a 'pre mortem' - a report before the project is dead. Companies must ask: 'If our project is dead in three years as a colossal failure, what will be the reason?' It's a good method to start thinking," says Thomas Ritter.

It is quite deliberate that the museum also focuses on projects that were not successful from start to finish.

"Among other things, the museum should be like an accident commission, where we create an understanding of what has gone wrong and what we can learn," says Carsten Lund Pedersen.

"We learn most from mistakes, but are most motivated by successes. Therefore, the museum is a mixture of both parts to provide ample opportunity for reflections on strategy," says Thomas Ritter.