---Art Boulay, MBA and William Maloney

A key to successful planning is to treat it as a project unto itself. Strategic planning requires a leadership focus to set a direction, a systems focus to build a path to move from plans to results, and a customer focus to determine what is important and where we need corrective actions. The cachet of strategic planning has come and gone over the years, in part because one or more of these key elements was overlooked. Like other management miracle cures strategic planning was oversold as a cure-all and undersold as a focused activity to gain the desired result.

Organizations do not plan to fail, they fail to plan. Ask the CEOs and stockholders of companies that have reinvented themselves to meet a changing market: Ford, Nucor, Florida Power & Light and Sears. Planning is the foundation for meaningful change, without it there is no breakthrough, no learning, and no improvement.

Vision and Strategic Thinking. Recently we attended a meeting where the organization was rolling out their strategic plan. The consultant rose to explain what was in the 250-page report, and pointed out all the things he had recommended to the organization. This is the expert model. How far do you suppose the organization will go in implementing the plan? We guess, not far. The organization does not own the report; they probably do not understand all the nuances of the report. It is reasonable to assume that if the organization could not itself define a direction, they will have a tough time implementing someone else’s recommendations.

Frequently organizations bring everyone together in a retreat for 1 to 3 days, generate lots of paper, lots of excitement, but six months later there are no results. This is the other end of the spectrum from the expert model. The retreat facilitator does not pretend to have the answer; the organization has the answer. Unfortunately this model may generate many answers, but many directions can be as bad as no direction. What this approach shares with the expert model is that you’re still left with a Now what? The sizzle evaporates quickly, and everyone is waiting for someone else to make it happen.

Recently, we challenged the president of a client firm who delegated the writing and presentation of a vision and mission statement to the management team. While the creative and talented individual he chose came up with an excellent document—what message was communicated with the president himself did not invest his time into the crafting or presentation of the document? We were told that the management team proceeded to "unravel” the document, and debate the merits of every word and phrase. Of course! The only person emotionally and personally engaged in the vision and mission is the author—in this case a junior level manager. As we commit this story to paper, we thought of a wonderful rhetorical question: What would the delegates thought if Thomas Jefferson had delegated the writing of the Declaration of Independence to a junior staff person?

The answer is to begin the process with strong leadership. Leadership sets a direction. Leaders invest their credibility communicating with stakeholders their vision and ideas. Stakeholders in the organization begin to understand the direction and own the implications for operational changes within their sphere of influence.

Henry Mintzberg writing for the January-February 1994 Harvard Business Review makes a similar point in his article, The Fall and Rise of Strategic Planning. Strategic planning failed because it is not the same as strategic thinking. Planning is about analysis—about breaking a goal into steps, formalizing those steps, and articulating the expected consequences. Strategic thinking, in contrast, is about synthesis. It involves intuition and creativity. The outcome of strategic thinking is an integrated perspective, a-not too precise articulated vision of direction that must be free to appear at any time and at any place within the organization. [Executive Summary, p. 163.] Strategic  thinking must precede strategic planning. Before getting everyone together to formalize the process, make sure there is an overall vision that the organization has had a chance to grapple with and understand.

Business Planning and Implementation. Eventually plans must be developed, goals established, assignments made. These plans represent an evolution from a not too precise articulated vision of direction. The organization must be careful not to succumb to the fallacy of prediction that Mintzberg talks about. Prediction of business cycles and future conditions may have been reasonably certain through the 1950s or 1960s, but since the 1970s, and certainly since 2000, the ever-increasing speed of change makes prediction extremely difficult. The answer is flexibility. Flexibility is built into action plans by including those who are closest to the work when developing plans and supporting it with a process that evaluates effectiveness.

Both a vision and a plan are necessary for change, and the vision must be the final arbiter and ultimate guide for the organization. Plans that are not evolving and keeping pace with changes in the market place may be achieving results, but not results that our customers care about. Results that move us closer to our vision should drive actions taken in the name of the organization. Plans, goals and assignments are tools of the trade and not sacred in their own right.

Measure & Monitor and Continuous Improvement. Systems must be in place to alert the organization when progress to the vision is slowing down or moving in the wrong direction. This presupposes a clear articulation of the critical few issues that are important to the organization. All the stakeholders should know what those critical factors are and how the organization is doing against each one.

The link that makes strategic planning useful is continuous improvement. Information that indicates a faulty product or process should trigger a call to action to ferret out the problem. This requires both a problem solving system and team attitude that we can make a difference and will be heard. Attitudes are artifacts of the environment. Attitudes will change if the reality of the situation changes. Employees and stakeholders who are part of meaningful conversations about the direction of the organization will become more engaged in that conversation. As more employees and stakeholders become involved the quality of the conversation and impact on the organization grows. The key issue is that strategic planning like any other change project will not have a chance in an environment with poorly developed communication links. Communication is key and leadership sets the tone. The success of strategic planning depends on the involvement and attitude of leadership throughout the organization.

Summary. Strategic planning involves all the issues of any major change project. There are people issues of leadership, communication, attitude and motivation. There are systems issues for customer service, problem solving, evaluating progress and reviewing results. Strategic thinking and direction setting requires visionary leadership, business planning, effective tools and focused management. Strategic planning is a system requiring leadership focus, systems focus and customer focus. Taken as a whole, strategic planning is the foundation upon which all meaningful change takes place within the organization.

Photos:

John’s Lane Church, Dublin, Ireland

Glendalaugh, Wicklow County, Ireland