Five Things Stephen Hawking Teaches Us About Strategy
Lime CEO Classics March 2018
I am a closet science geek, and have been fascinated about astronomy, physics, and the mysteries of the universe since I was about 10 years old. Hearing of Stephen Hawking’s passing this week stirred in me both sadness for the end of an era, as well as deep affection for how his work helped so many of us make sense of our vast and uncertain world. His books, such as A Brief History of Time and The Universe in a Nutshell, made esoteric tenets of quantum physics more accessible to people like me. Over the years, as my colleagues and I faced various business and strategy challenges, the echoes of Hawking’s work led me to wonder: Maybe some of our approaches and frameworks are violating the laws of nature—perhaps that’s why we’re struggling?
So, in celebration and tribute to a great contemporary scientist—who coincidently passed on Einstein birthday and Pi day—here are five ways Stephen Hawking helped me rethink business strategy:
- The glass may be 100% full. Our Western habits often leave us pitted in an opposing battle for dominance—red versus blue, play it safe or take a risk, specialize versus diversify, niche or mass marketing, and so on. We take sides either as pessimists who say the glass is half empty, or as optimists who say the glass is half full. What the cosmos reveal to us is that space is not space at all—it is not emptiness. Rather, our universe is full, a mix of matter and dark matter. This finding suggests a new frame of reference. In other words, perhaps, the glass is 100% full as it contains both water and air. In pursuit of business strategy, we often find ourselves caught up in the dichotomy of options, forgetting to step back and to explore new frames by which we can consider the customer and the opportunity. Many times, successful strategic disruption comes about by taking a new way of viewing the problem. In our strategic exploration, how can buck dualism, dissolving polar opposites and bridging divides? How can we use wholeness or fullness as a frame for strategic opportunity?
- There is no “IS”. Often when developing business strategy, we pursue truth as an absolute, something out there for us to uncover. We act as though there is an “answer key” to our business problems, and that through our smarts and hard work, we will get an “A” on the profit and growth exam. Quantum physics offers instead that there’s no absolute “is” out there. Light, for example, acts as both a particle and a wave. The famous thought experiment—Schrödinger’s cat—suggests that the cat is simultaneously dead and alive at the same time. Removing the burden of truth—of needing to find that one correct answer—releases potentiality and opens the doors for new possibilities. How do our ideas and decisions change when we acknowledge that multiple truths are possible?
- Everything is entangled. Common business practice tends to examine discrete factors in separate silos—first, an environmental or PESTLE analysis, then on to the market, next the competitor, and lastly the customer. We fill out a SWOT grid. From there, our subsequent strategies and plans tackle individual issues, one by one, or perhaps, by company function, such as sales strategy, marketing strategy, R&D strategy, and the like. (Just think about that last strategy plan you saw presented!) Hawking would challenge this approach. For him, space and time play more than a passive background role against which events take place. Instead, space, time, and matter are entangled, all serving as active participants in the dynamics of the universe. Even more, quantum physics show that just the act of being studied—the use of scientific instruments in research—alters the outcome. Hawking inspires the idea that our business strategies should be built on the presumption of a relational system, where we treat things as interdependent and where we acknowledge inherent, uncontrollable bias. As business strategists, we must account for, rather than control, how things are endlessly interconnected. What if instead, our strategic analysis wove a compelling story, where all of the various character came into play as one? What new themes or insight might arise?
- Uncertainty as the new norm. In many ways, traditional business models and strategy frameworks see the world as deterministic, where we try to measure, predict, plan and explain everything that happens. However, Hawking would say this would be a faulty premise. The fate of Schrödinger’s cat relies on something random that happens at the subatomic level, an event that can’t be controlled or predicted with reasonable certainty. Hawking reminds us of the importance of the Heisenburg uncertainty principle, which says that the more accurately you try to measure the position of a particle, the less accurately you can measure its speed, and vice versa. As such, quantum physics attempts to predict the number of possible outcomes, rather than the outcome itself. For business strategists operating in a world of big data and predictive analytics, the premise and purpose of our questions set the one direction of travel. Yet, oftentimes we find that the more we try to answer one question, we miss out on another dimension we actually know even less about. As executives, we should be rejecting any business and strategy frameworks that rely on an absolute or deterministic view, as these frameworks simply don’t follow the laws of the universe. Moreover, like the universe, business continues to expand around the world with accelerating disorder. How can we embrace ambiguity—thriving within the increasing disorder and volatility—as opposed to seeing it as something that we must control or overcome in order to have success?
- The value of exuberant curiosity. Finally, so much across the business press and in social media seems to dwell on the problems and frustrations of our times. A typical weeknight newsfeed can feel pretty doomy and gloomy. Despite Hawking’s personal challenges, he approached his life and work with verve. He saw the mysteries of the cosmos—that overwhelming complexity—as a source of learning and wonder, tapping into the thrill in discovering even a little piece of something new. He once said, “The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.” As we’ve grown into successful businesswomen and businessmen, we often find ourselves consumed in the weeds, seeing knowledge gaps as shameful shortcomings and forgetting why we fell in love with strategy and business in the first place. As we develop our strategy together, how can we celebrate more of the things we can’t explain or don’t know, rather than cover them up with conjecture or the façade of justification? Over the course of our business conversations, how do we highlight the small things we stumble upon—about our competitor or customer, or how they interact, for instance—and put forth without apology that which we have left to learn? How do we dream together and inspire each other in what we do?
“Remember, look at the stars and not at your feet.”
—Stephen Hawking (1942-2018)
© 2018 Lime LLC
