Is Your Strategic ‘North Star’ Actually a UFO?

     In strategy sessions, I’ve watched executives exult their vision statement as the organization’s “North Star.” Though most vision statements are pap, having a North Star can, nonetheless, be valuable on the way to success.

     Subsequent discussion about and use of those visionary North Stars, reveals not everyone—including the noisy executives—agrees to the value or even purpose of the North Star. At the very least, North Star and Vision get synonymized. Which may seem petty, but it’s important.

     Again, we must concede that anything providing cohering direction to an organization is typically good.

     And that may be true…. But concern about North Stars’ immediate impact may be less material than its effect on the next step or even two or three steps down the road. Foundational inadequacy today becomes manifest tomorrow.

     It’s like exercise. You may achieve 10 pull-ups with bad technique. But the trainer knows you are recruiting the wrong muscles for the task, thus not developing the appropriate ones. Inevitably you’ll hit a “wall” and fail… because the muscle doing the job, not being designed for it, has maxed out its capability. (Injury follows.)

Strategy is Navigation

     Strategy is navigation. Essentially: How does the organization achieve its objectives in the circumstances presented by environment, context, assets and attributes, competition, etc.? The term North Star implicitly acknowledges this, making it worth digging deeper into the seafaring analogy.

     Anybody at sea (or lost in the woods) personally discovers what we’re all cautioned: without markers (i.e. when all you see in every direction is rolling ocean or more bush) you are likely to be constantly turned around, getting nowhere except by dumb luck.

     To navigate and not stray too far, too often requires steady points from which to mark bearings. Near shore, that’s any unmoving landmark like a lighthouse. One such landmark lets you maintain a course… to it. To plot a course not to that specific landmark requires a compass and some simple geometry to pinpoint your location, your target, and a bearing from one to the other.

     That’s near shore. Far from shore where the surroundings are more ambiguous… like the strategic environment, there is no land let alone landmarks. Now what? The North Star now proves its value. What we know about Polaris (the North Star) is that because of its location relative to Earth (i.e., due north and REALLY far away), it is effectively unmoving. Other stars move with the seasons, but Polaris stays put. It is a landmark without land.

     So far so good, but… unlike the star that allegedly guided Magi by moving to and then hovering atop a manger in Bethlehem, nobody is headed to Polaris or to what rests immediately beneath it. (You’re thinking of rainbows.) Magellan, Columbus, Pissarro, Frobisher… none of them EVER said, “We’re going to the North Star,” nor was their imagined destination the same as the North Star.

What’s in a Vision

     For a straightforward tactical plan, Vision and North Star could be the same, particularly if the project’s North Star is the strategic Vision. The strategic Vision could not, however, be the strategy’s guiding light. Presumably it is the goal. To navigate to it through strategic ambiguity requires its own unmoving navigational star. As the previous paragraph pointed out, these cannot be the same thing. (I concede, this paragraph may warrant sketching out the relationship between these two levels of consideration.)

     Vision statements I’ve seen lauded as North Stars are, in fact, not visions at all. Anodyne statements of 8–15 words—all the rage among corporate strategists and management consultants—are rarely visionary. At best they are bombastic declarations of some future intents, often not specific to the organization, purpose, or strategy at hand: for example, “Provide the world’s best customer experience every day;” “A computer on every desktop;” and “Create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce.”¹ Note how they’re all future looking (check), audacious (check), and highly specific to the organization and strategy at hand (che… er… sort of, if I squint, maybe). That alone may disqualify them as appropriate North Stars.

     Typically a “vision” (i.e., a manifestation of the goal/objective being realized) drives strategy. This vision is quite a different beast than the type of organizational vision I’ve just poked fun at. For the organization, 8–15 anodyne and trite but memorable and inspiring future-forward words may be appropriate. It is an aspiration not necessarily an objective to be reached; that would make it a North Star.²

     For a strategy, the vision ought to do duty as an extremely visceral description of the goal. It is what the future specifically looks like, how it operates, and so on because a strategy must have a clear destination in addition to navigational aids. Even Columbus had a clear vision of his destination (which was not the North Star…).

The North Star Metaphor: Source v. Application

     For clarity, let’s put the North Star seafaring metaphor source head-to-head with its application in organizational strategic thinking.

Sea Navigation	Strategic navigation
North star is separate and distant from navigator.	North Star is separate and distinct from strategist and operation: a purpose or moral imperative.
North Star is separate from and NOT the objective.	North Star distinct from strategic objective except maybe as a very distant or evolved goal: a visionary aspiration.
North Star is effectively immovable: a steady point.	A North Star cannot be subject to the variation of goals, technology innovation, etc.: must be grounded and stable.

Careful application of North Star is valuable;
sloppy application is… cold comfort

     Bad strategic/organizational understanding of a North Star vision is too clearly echoing the goal/objective—or perhaps some evolution of that goal. Doing so sets the North Star up to move as goals shift, as knowledge evolves, or as circumstances change. It is then no longer the North Star; it is Sirius, a wandering star. Dramatic and awe-inspiring… but unreliable for navigation.

     The organizational (the strategist’s) North Star is and ought to be a defining purpose. It is much more closely related to or actually is a principle than it is a desire or even a goal. The guiding light of that North Star ought to have the power of a moral imperative. (Moral imperatives until relatively recently being unshakeable steady poles.)

     Institute X is a transformation leadership consultancy and leader coaching firm. One of its online presences is The Change Playbook. Check out the abundance of pragmatic guidance for making change happen. Subscribe to be notified of new, fresh content.

Timothy Grayson is a Canadian (digital) transformation consultant, coach, and writer. Among other things, he has provided thechangeplaybook.com as a practical resource for change and project managers and leaders. Find him at institute-x.org.

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1. The Visions for Amex, Apple, and LinkedIn at one point or another. ↩︎
2. See what I did there? ↩︎