Release date: March 18, 2021
Speakers: Kathleen M. Eisenhardt (Stanford University)
Description: Just before one Christmas during the Iraq War, a massive bomb exploded at a U.S. base in northern Iraq. Surrounded by casualties, the medics had to quickly decide a humane yet effective strategy for treating the many injured soldiers. Their strategy was simple rules. While most executives are not in a war zone, they often face a world of complexity, confusion, and change. The pandemic has made this dilemma even more acute. The insight here is that simplicity (and simple rules, in particular) is the path toward action and strategic effectiveness in a complex world.
This presentation by Kathleen M. Eisenhardt, Stanford University, will explore why simplicity and simple rules work, including how they drive flexible opportunity capture, rapid decisions, and superior coordination across tens or thousands of employees and partners. We will draw on concrete examples from large companies like Google and Amazon as well as at mid-tier enterprises from Europe, Asia, and North America. We will consider where simple rules come from (including interplay with AI and machine learning), how to make them work, and how they become more strategic over time.
We will also take the conversation a step further to how “strategy as simple rules” can lead to novel strategies and strategic transformation. The latter is especially critical for re-thinking strategy, post-pandemic. Here, we go beyond simple rules for critical processes like hiring and M&A. That is, we link the action-emphasis of simple rules with the role of vision, scaling profitable growth, and the fundamental economics of the business.