Summary Observations

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4.6 Summary Observations

I became directly involved in KYF2 as a participant when I was requested to perform a feasibility analysis regarding the use of geospatial maps to tell stories. It began for me with a late-afternoon invitation from my director, the Chief Information Officer for the Department, to speak with the Deputy Secretary. There was no agenda, no direction, and the topic of the

conversation was unclear; I had previously spoken with her several months prior during a short, and seemingly informal, discussion supporting another executive’s mission issue. One was not permitted in the Secretarial suite without specific business. Therefore, I was not prepared for the

conversation that transpired the Tuesday before Christmas week. I was asked about the probability of developing a new method of collectively projecting all USDA projects pertaining to KYF2, representing, as it turned out, more than four dozen agency programs. Maps were a smaller part of the items we originally explored in the brief 30-minute exchange. The Deputy Secretary asked for my response and confirmation of my level of confidence within 24 hours. I accepted the unknown risk; I assumed

several very murky “facts” about the likelihood of achieving this enormous goal. I was not alone.

There were designated lanes, no formal rules, no referenced footholds leading to next steps. The practice of strategy management looked and felt like spontaneous combustion; one minute yesterday’s decisions were working fine, the next minute, simply a fumy residue left behind on the wall-mounted dry board. I observed the underlying, formative approach of my case study participants but naively mistook my first perspective for the real strategy. As a participant explained in reference to the study area strategy, “It has fuzzy boundaries and is complicated because of its

multiple outcomes…. [That fuzziness] is inherent in the nature of the work but also why it’s so powerful.” It seemed that something else was being

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enacted, or was formulating the enactment, that was not readily disclosed:

a type of lateral invention amid the fog of daily events.

My initial thinking about the appropriate orientation or emphasis for the case study was premised on the speculative assumption that participants acted out of a place of chaos. This assumption proved false.

Contrastingly, the subjects of my study apparently employed inherently improvisational techniques for sensemaking at several levels of processes.

The patterns were vague to the casual viewer but emerged as I continued to collect data through participant observations. As I compiled various data sources in a single case narrative structure, the attributes concerning minimal structures, concealed in the KYF2 strategy management processes, also began to reveal themselves when isolated in the strategic episodes.

KYF2 success seemed to become symbolically associated with larger issues and then divide and re-multiply. I observed that the “Farm-to-Institution relationship is more inspirational than real; challenge of beginning farmers and ranchers, still huge; challenges to rebuilding infrastructure for local institutions, daunting.” My observations led me to conclude there is no simple strategic management solution for which everyone has a moment of epiphany. Emotions and images embed themselves (in)conveniently into our strategy recognition filters; they fill space. As one participant expressed it,

I think the main strategy has been, Use what you have and make stone soup. It brings together existing programs and people…. [D]on’t feel like you have to start something brand new if you can kluge something together from what you already have… and the power of bringing things together you already have.

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Furthermore, my synthesis of the case study data opens fertile space to consider the nature of sustained productivity. “So much in creative building mode we haven’t had the courage, the breath of air, the time, the

confidence to say, What does this look like two years from now, five years from now.” The Deputy reflected this may be the time for the enterprise to “allow people to expose what went wrong, how we would have done it differently…just reflectively, and we don’t do enough of that.” Of course,

“there is political risk in that, but we have created risk with the compass so we better start thinking about it.”

Two tables are created to begin structuring emergent ideas, themes, and constructs for further validation and refinement in the next chapter. First, Table 4.8 unites for the reader these cross-case, diverse strategic episode data themes into a single view, which also begins to focus and summarize content to be used for further empirical analysis. The table offers initial examples of my reading of the case study narrative in relation to my

research questions. Second, to push emerging theoretical possibilities into the light of analysis, Table 4.9 offers the reader an early sketch of my growing sensitivity for what the case data may be saying about strategic management. The two constructs are supported with examples of concepts still embedded in the five episodes. My experience affirms both of these attributes of minimal structures, and with interest in the surprising manner in which individual values.

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Table 4.8: Alignment of Themes to Research Questions

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Strategic

Episodes Q1: How are minimal structures created and used to frame strategy in practice?

Q2: How do minimal structures contribute to strategy coherence

• Work within structure to break down boundaries and smash barriers, then figure it out

• Make space appear, to emerge as open areas where convergence occurs

Episode 2 • Identify connection points outside comfort zone

• Uncertainty in a strange space, outside looking in to improvise and not block with others surrounding us

Episode 4 • Reposition values with the values chain

• Cast out beyond expertise and limits to unfamiliar

• Permission to explore a thin space in new territory

Episode 5 • Mediate between positions to create space and

distance

• Constant groping and testing for edges

• Be present to understand right pace and see obstacles coming

• Agile frame of mind to allow comprehension and coupling of the known

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Table 4.9: Consolidated Table of Emerging Theoretical Constructs

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