The conflict about building a mosque near Ground Zero dominates the media. Those on both sides present compelling and passion-filled reasons that their point of view is the better one. I’d like to offer another perspective.
This is a classic business case of conflicting priorities that we in strategy see all the time.
For example, speed and accuracy are conflicting priorities. You can have one but usually at the expense of the other.
Same with low price and high quality.
So, in this case, which is the higher priority?
Building a mosque at Ground Zero? That seems achievable.
Building a beacon of peace and harmony someplace in NY? Tougher, but still achievable.
Building a mosque at Ground Zero as a beacon of peace and harmony? Won’t happen any time soon.
In this case, they have put the tactic before the strategy.
If the higher priority is to be the beacon, they could achieve this by building elsewhere. Five years from now tourists would pass and say, “They could have fought the tide and built at Ground Zero, but they didn’t. Let’s see what this is about.”
If they build at Ground Zero, five years from now the tourist will say, “Did they have to build here? The (insert unkind word of tourist’s choice)”
I wouldn’t take this work unless the client explained which priority was higher. Otherwise, nothing I can do will help them improve their condition, and our strategy efforts will fail.
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I think the problem is the unspoken objective: build a victory shrine at the site of the “victory.” Most thinking people understand that this is the real goal. I’ve seen this happen in business as well: a project or change plan is introduced with the stated goal of “X,” but an unspoken goal of “Y.” Some people get on board, but the bulk of the employees are confused and seem to mill about until a few of the square pegs figure out the real objective. Then there is mass revolt. The project is either killed or gets forced through with questionable results.