I’m wondering whether organisations are ready to move beyond the formulaic approach to strategic planning and build a focus on improving the quality of strategic thinking – the thinking that goes into the decisions and the subsequent actions that are then documented in a plan. We spend a lot of time on the plan now, but taking the time out to do some strategic thinking still doesn’t appear to be considered a valuable strategic activity in most organisations. Try organising a two day planning workshop, and see how much excitement you generate! You are more likely to be greeted by “I’m too busy to take that much time out”, or as I was once asked “Why two days, can’t we do this in an hour?”
Yet, if we are to build strategic agility into our organisations, we need to build a strong understanding of the external environment, and to change the way we work to respond to changes ‘out there’. It takes time to build this understanding. Strategy is about the future – where do we want to go, and how will we get there? Yet, most of our plans read like tomes of operational activities today rather than a roadmap into the future.
I said once that we should consider all strategic plans as disposable, which was greeted with some consternation by the group I was working with. If we spent the money we now spend on producing glossy strategic plans on processes that helped us build a strong strategic thinking capacity across our organisations, we would be on the path to being strategically agile and ready to respond to whatever challenges we encounter in the future.
I’m still pondering the shape of what might be beyond strategic planning, but the more plans I read, and the more planning frameworks I review, the more certain I am we have lost our way. We are immersed in planning processes that are often compliance focused, seeking absolute certainty in what we will do next year, and just plain boring. By comparison, strategic thinking processes are template free, open to possibilities and require open minds that can deal with incomplete information and embrace uncertainty. They are processes that tap into what we think about the future and finding new ways of doing business that will increase our long term sustainability.
We need to integrate the thinking with the planning and give each equal attention. What do you think?
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I couldn’t agree more that “we should consider all strategic plans as disposable”. By the time we have documented our strategic approach, changes have washed over us rendering them largely useless.
We need not just a strategic planning process, but rather a dynamic system of investigation, analysis, interpretation, action setting, review and improvement. This system would incorporate the developmen of management skill to utilise it, mechanisms to capture the knowledge created, and reports that can distil the desired actions and results so that the organisation can see what is going on.
When you find one let me know.
Cheers,
Greg
Hi Greg
Your description of the process we need to replace strategic planning is spot on: ‘dynamic system of investigation, analysis, interpretation, action setting, review and improvement’. We also need a new mindset that understands why we need to change the way we view the future so that we can look broadly for knowledge about what’s happening, rather than assuming it will be business as usual – and then looking for confirming evidence of that point of view. We need to be comfortable with disruption rather than continuity, and that’s a new management skill that needs to be incorporated into education and training.
Maree