The 40/70 Rule..I'm a mathematical genius

Last evening, at the former Japanese ambassador's residence on 3 Lady Hill Road, Professor Kathy Pearson treated us to a presentation of ideas.  The title of her talk is Strategic Vigilance: Managing Uncertainty in an ‘Unusually Uncertain’ World".  One of the first things this energetic, almost jumping out of her own little body with enthusiasm, woman asked was 'How do leaders make decisions these days?', and "Why are they clamming down and not making decisions?"

She cited that Colin Powell has a 40/70 rule, of which making a decision with only 40% info/data, then you do not have enough to properly analyze, however, if you have 70% of the info/data, too much time has been spent on learning and not deciding.  Well, I am no mathematician, but that leaves us with knowing between 40.01% and 69.99% of info/data to gather.  It seems still quite a daunting task, no doubt.

She also went onto tell a story about who makes strategy and why most organizations are flawed in it's attempt at making strategy.  Usually, there is a team 'up there' in the ivory towers putting together powerpoint presentations to each other about strategies for the whole organization without asking anyone else.  She suggests that the role of strategist within a firm is to collate 'weak signals' and gather and analyze them to categorize them into major trends then act upon these to present the future of action for a firm.  People (everyone) who has externally facing responsibilities should feed strategists, they need to to out here and talk to these people..

Kathy is still jumping up and down.. she tells a story of a woman who sat next to her on a plane, when she pulled out her Kindle, she was surprised to find that the woman next to her jabbering away is on the executive committee of Borders (RIP).. what was their e-book strategy?  Why did they not do anything about it while Amazon had the Kindle, Barnes and Nobles had the Nook, and Apple had their platform through iTunes?  When is it too late to listen to these weak signals that will make or break your company?  

How we we attempt to gain a holistic view of all that is happening? How does our experiential framework cheat us of real data, how does one predict in these 'Unusually Uncertain Times'?

She suggests the following - to build vigilance is to build mindfulness, to collect data and interpret them in meaningful way - build flexibility, adaptability - all the buzz words that we see often across headlines on business news columns. Building in Optionality (I like the new term..)

So, you take your strategic initiatives and test them against a list of uncertainties and rate them - overall, you'll find some trends, and potentially avoid major catastrophes yet survive the risks you take along the way and be ahead of competition.

Standing between the crowd and cocktails is a seriously difficult position, so we ended the session.  The crowd roared, as this is a topic that is on a lot of people's minds, as leaders, as externally facing employees, what is our duty in saving your company?

Over glasses of chenin blanc, Kathy and I chatted, we spoke about Second Life approaches by INSEAD, Wharton and Duke, comparably, Duke won as they spent $1000 on something when they didn't know what to do, whereas INSEAD spent millions of Euros on nothing.. 

We also spoke about knowledge is becoming 'open source', look at Yale and their posting of all lessons on YouTube.  What is one to do?

She reminded me of the style of Linda Applegate, assertive, american, funny, incredibly amount of energy.. 

Then after a few smoozy conversations with others, i scooted off to dinner with Fad at PS Cafe Palais Renaissance..

Philip Chin, the owner was there, greeted me with such incredible warmth.  I will miss Singapore for that reason, it's small, like as if it is only still a Kampong, but repopulated with sophisticated people who treats you warmly, and buys you dessert when you enjoy a great evening catching up with love, life, work, celebrations, disappointments, we reached deep into our hearts and shared many pieces that only great girlfriends are able and willing to, despite not seeing each other for almost a year.. Thank you- for such wonderful experiences, my experiential frame run nth over last night.