If you are willing to work through a confusion of frameworks and mythology, there is gold to be found. But not about strategy, instead about how we can think more effectively. Which, nonetheless, may be just as valuable.
Pages: 199 | Chapters: 12 | Published: 2020
First, let’s explain the title, Janus was the two-headed Roman god, forever looking in two directions at the same time. And from that we understand that Janus Strategy is about succeeding by focusing on competing ideas to achieve a single ambition. As the Professor of Strategy & Organisation at Warwick Business School, Heracleous sits atop a wealth of strategy case studies from which he can draw. Strange then that he only draws on four.
Where other books on strategy, amongst other topics, fall over themselves with examples – On Grand Strategy and Good Strategy, Bad Strategy have over a dozen each, even the P&G-centric Playing to Win has ten plus; Heracleous is cautiously reserved in sharing. It is here we see Janus Strategy fall short of my hallmark of a truly great book – the right combination of theory and example. And it leaves one feeling like it’s a nice idea, but without the evidence to back up its viability.
All the way back to Michael Porter, in many ways the father of modern strategy, we are taught to be single-minded in our endeavours. That, at its heart, strategy is about being choiceful, the paths we don’t take matter as much as the ones we do. Not so, suggest Heracleous, in fact the very best strategies work by simultaneously embracing competing ideas to achieve unrivaled success.
In place of case studies to learn from, we are treated to a who’s who of Greek Mythology from Janus and Daedalus to Icarus and King Minos. Though entertaining, one feels Heracleous is leaning too much into the ‘Janus’ and not enough of the ‘Strategy’ part of Janus Strategy. When we do get there Heracleous’ framework for understanding each case study is opaque. Where other books on strategy distil their position into succinct concepts – think Porter’s Five Forces, Rumelt’s Kernel or Gaddi’s Three Guides – Heracleous leaves us with six elements, all of which are so broad as to be untenable. Be a Janus strategist; Design an agile organization; and Leverage business networks are three.
At its heart Heracleous is trying to argue that the best organisations can embrace ambiguity and paradox. By letting competing ideas play out you will be stronger, yet this is anathema to most other voices in the field of strategy. And without sufficient evidence to support his point, it fails to land.
But there is another field where the ideas of paradox and ambiguity are core: creativity and problem solving. And this is where, in the last few chapters, Janus Strategy finds its feet. Eventually even Heracleous drops the word ‘Strategy’ and starts talking about ‘Janus Thinking’. Turning away from strategy-led case studies, Heracleous takes us through the four stages of creativity and the idea of integrative thinking. Strategy this is not; creative thinking, though, is rarely explained so clearly and rationally.
At this point Janus Strategy can hold its own with the likes of Metaphors We Live By and The Practice of Creativity, detailed studies of the building blocks of creativity. Plus, Heracleous brings a business edge to his discussion of creativity, highlighting the impact on the bottom line. Something often missing from other discussions of the genre. When applied to strategy, Janus Strategy is a round peg in a square hole. But reapplied to creative problem-solving and Heracleous’ contributes positively to the discussion. Heracleous champions what Eric Weiner calls ‘homospatial thinking’: conceiving of two or more disparate ideas in the same mental space. An idea that weaves it way through nearly all thinking on the topic be it Team of Rivals, How We Decide or Creativity, Inc. The embracing of opposites is the starting point of metaphor – the engine of creativity – the mastery of which was a sign of natural genius to Aristole and the test of a first-rate mind for F. Scott Fitzgerald. In other words, by the end of Janus Strategy Heracleous has found his rhythm.
Verdict: Consider