Building an Adaptive Strategy
Filed under: 
The Media Consortium began its strategic visioning by looking for what “game changers” it could create (definition below). During the research process, we realized that the most effective aim was not to introduce new game changers, but to identify strategic responses to a game that has already changed considerably.
“Game changers are developments (projects, initiatives, strategies, new models, innovations) that can ‘change the game’ for independent media by increasing their impact and influence in the next five years.
These are not incremental strategies, but rather big, bold moves that The Media Consortium could develop to take advantage of a rapidly changing media landscape.”
—TMC’s working definition
“How much more of the game needs to change, really?” asks David Weinberger, a journalist, author of Everything is Miscellaneous and fellow at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for the Internet and Society. “There’s a lot of handwringing about the future of media,” Katrin Verclas, co-founder of MobileActive says, “but look around, it’s kind of happening.”
To make sense of these new realities, we use the “Strategic Dissonance” model created by former Intel CEO Andy Grove, which we modified. Terms are defined below.
Explaining the model
Inflection point: The starting point when one type of industry dynamic or existing paradigm gives way to a new one.
Strategic recognition: Identifying the importance of emerging practices and approaches after they arise but before unequivocal environmental feedback is available to make their significance obvious.
Dissonance gap: The gap between the inflection point and strategic recognition when diverging ideas, practices and approaches cause conflicting opinions.
New strategic intent: Leaders’ ability to make sense of conflicting information generated by dissonance to create a new strategic direction that fully takes advantage of new industry conditions.
Source—Andy Grove
The above model demonstrates what happens when industries change. A ten-year gap is not unusual before incumbent players—independent media organizations, in this case—recognize the strategic importance of an inflection point. Other industries have taken similar time to adapt. Grove called this gap “strategic dissonance,” where changing dynamics cause tension with many conflicting opinions about how best to react. Yet, this very tension can help create a new strategic intent. In this time of strategic dissonance, independent media have an opportunity to establish a new operational approach to the new paradigm rather than be ruled by a tyranny of how they believe things still “should be.”
This blog is an excerpt from The Big Thaw, a guide to the evolution of independent media, written by Tony Deifell of Q Media Labs and produced by The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets. Learn how your organization can use this report. For more information and recommendations from the study, click here.
[...] In our last post, we discussed strategic dissonance, which describes the tension caused by differing opinions about how an organization can best react to changing industry dynamics. For more information about strategic dissonance and the model below, click here. [...]