Playing To Win
Artistry & Strategy
The Wisdom of Elliot Eisner
Readers liked the piece I did on Fred Hirsch and positional goods. So, I decided to do another one on a thought leader from outside business — in his case, the field of education — who has powerfully influenced my work on strategy. This Playing to Win/Practitioner Insights (PTW/PI) piece is called Artistry & Strategy: The Wisdom of Elliot Eisner. All previous PTW/PI can be found here.
Who was Elliot Eisner?
Elliot Eisner (1933–2014) was a longtime (1965–2006) Stanford University professor in its Faculty of Education. He earned his PhD from University of Chicago, which still has a reputation for producing independently minded thinking iconoclasts but did even more so in his era. And his career most certainly reinforced that reputation!
I was introduced to his work in the mid-1990s by Hilary Austen, his PhD student at Stanford. She somehow managed to convince Eisner — a giant in his field — and Jim March — also a giant but in the field of business — to be her joint PhD supervisors. Getting either one would have been a coup for any PhD student. Getting both to sign on is nearly unimaginable. But Hilary is both brilliant and persuasive, so credit to her.
Eisner is known most for being a champion of art in education. He argued that the de-prioritization of the teaching of art across the formal educational system is bad for students and for the world in general. That was decades before my friend and former MIT Media Lab Director and Rhode Island School of Design President, John Maeda campaigned to have an A for Art added to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) to make it STEAM.
Sadly, their fight (and mine too) has been like attempting to hold back the tide. Art was continuously deprioritized throughout Eisner’s career and has continued to be ever since. The things with greatest sex appeal in business today are data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI). Quants and coders dominate — and the education system has followed suit. It is sad but true.
Insights for Me & My Work in Strategy
With a big thank you to Hilary, Eisner’s work has influenced me in at least three important ways.
The Importance of Qualitative Research
Eisner’s most controversial stance was as a champion of qualitative research. It made his field of education — which as with all the social sciences developed a terminal case of hard science envy and had begun worshipping the god of quantitative research — super mad. That was especially the case when he declared that there is nothing useful about what goes on in a classroom that can be measured quantitatively. Lots can be measured quantitatively and is on an ongoing basis. But in Eisner’s view — with which I have great sympathy — it is useless.
To Eisner, qualitative elements — and the relationships between them — are the only things that can help one understand the quality of the educational experience. These might include the quality of the interactions, the sensitivity to students, their sense of comfort, the atmosphere of learning, and more. They are all quantitatively measurable in some sense, but the quantitative measurements provide authoritative sounding conclusions — garbage but authoritative sounding.
Perhaps what was most outraging was that Eisner argued that it is possible to be rigorous in qualitative research. That is an anathema to most: rigor is associated solely with quantitative research. And I felt that way when I was first exposed to his thinking. But in due course, I came to appreciate that he was right and virtually everything I had been taught about rigorous analysis was substantially wrong.
It took me on a long journey of connoisseurship. For the three decades since, I have been working on my ability to make ever finer qualitative distinctions in my field of strategy. In some sense, I have been working to become a sommelier of strategy. That is, I want to be able to determine that this strategy is superior to thatone in these subtle ways — like a sommelier can make distinctions between different wines. My task requires the ability to understand how qualitative dimensions relate to one another — i.e., this aspect of customers interacts with that aspect of competitor dynamics in this particular way.
When I think about my journey since graduating from Harvard Business School in 1981, it has all been about enhancing and using my qualitative skills. The quantitative skills I learned there are just an ever-diminishing piece of the puzzle. Are they irrelevant? No, just an ever-smaller piece of the puzzle. That has been the vector of my journey since the insight from Eisner by way of Hilary.
The Pursuit of Multiple Good Solutions
We are all taught to converge on the ‘right answer.’ If you get the right answer, you get a red check, a gold star, and/or full marks. The quest is for that singular right answer. It characterizes powerfully our entire educational experience.
In contrast, Eisner argued that in most domains of human endeavor there are multiple solutions to problems. There isn’t one answer that is obviously ‘right’ and the rest therefore ‘wrong.’ There are different solutions each of which with its own set of benefits and drawbacks. Very little is like the times table, where the correct answer to 7 times 7 is always 49. Perhaps it would be handy if that were the case in, say, business strategy. But it is not. There are multiple strategy choices that could work and produce multiple positive outcomes.
On this front, Eisner’s insight has caused me to always consider multiple possibilities in strategy. I am never comfortable in converging on one solution quickly. I always want to keep multiple possibilities in play for as long as possible. I don’t seek to find the single right answer but rather the one for which the most compelling argument can be made. And because there is no data about the future, much of that argument will be based on qualitative features — which of course links back to the first insight.
The Superiority of Flexible Purposing
We have all been taught to have a clear goal and then work relentlessly toward achieving it. It makes lots of sense. You must have a goal — an objective function that helps you decide what and what not to do.
Instead, Eisner concurred with John Dewey (another of my favorite thinkers) in arguing for what they called ‘flexible purposing.’ I have to say, I don’t love the term — but I like the insight! The point is that you should always have an end in mind but be flexible in modifying that end because of insights you develop along the journey.
I had a lot to learn — or more properly, unlearn — on this front. I viewed it as an act of strength to stick to an upfront goal in the face of challenges and setbacks. So, it was hard for me to embrace flexible purposing — really hard.
But I tried it over time in little increments and learned over time the value of flexible purposing. During the strategy journey, I started encouraging clients to revisit the Problem Definition with which they started. Instead of sticking with a goal even though as insights build, it becomes less and less relevant, I encourage them to update and improve the purpose of their work.
I encourage them to revisit their Winning Aspirations based on what they learned as they considered their Where-to-Play and How-to-Win choices. I help them revisit Possibilities — all based on what they learn along the way. That is flexible purposing in strategy.
Practitioner Insights
Your career will be advanced more by exhibiting qualitative appreciation skills than quantitative manipulation capabilities as I have written about before. Except possibly in the most junior levels of your career, those in a position to promote you or to fund you will pay more attention to your skills in understanding your customers or managing your team than to your ability to crunch the numbers — whatever numbers. That may get you a couple of steps, but not to the top, or even close.
Given the extreme bias in the education of businesspeople — mainly economics, engineering, business, or a combination thereof — most will need to do major remedial work on qualitative capabilities. Work hard on that. Look for mentorship from those capable of making finer qualitative distinctions than you. Pay attention to that branding expert as she understands consumers better. Listen carefully to that veteran investment banker as he interprets the feedback from the M&A target. Glean insights from the software designer on how to manage the complex task of pulling together a new product.
Do not ever challenge those mentors to prove their point of view with data. If you do, they will give up on you. They won’t invest in you — I promise. Instead, explore by what means they came up with their conclusions. Go deep on the qualitative inferences they made. It will be hard but try to ferret out the insights.
When people challenge your numbers, don’t defend them. Instead, ask what additional non-quantitative features you should be taking into account. Learn from that feedback. Build models of how to make better decisions by integrating qualitative features and your assessment thereof. It won’t be easy, and it won’t be quick. But your skill will build with practice. Fully reject anyone who pushes you toward fully quantitative research and analysis. They are delusional, and will lead you to inferior outcomes.
Stop searching for the right answer. There are multiple drawbacks to that framing. Half the time, you won’t make a decision because you are still searching for the singular right answer. The other half, you will converge too fast; you will anchor on your first conclusion and convince yourself that your perfect answer is correct.
Work to keep multiple possibilities alive for longer. It may feel uncomfortable, indecisive. It is not. It is smart. Let the best float to the top. Commit to the strongest — but always keep open to modifications.
Always have a clear, unambiguous goal. Never operate without one. That is random, useless activity. But adjust your purpose flexibly as you learn new things and understand the challenge better. A changed purpose is not a weaker purpose — it is a more valuable and effective one.
Pursuing a more valuable purpose while keeping open multiple possibilities and paying attention to the qualitative aspects of the problem at hand is what will make you more valuable today — and even more valuable tomorrow.
