Is strategic planning dead? Or maybe a better question is, should it die? How many leaders have read a strategic plan, fallen asleep, woken up hoping you didn’t snore too loud, and then tried to get through it and fill your part of the boxes in? Strategic plans read like Ikea directions. You know they were written by smart people, but what how on earth is the average Joe supposed to interpret it?
We love to promote workplaces that involve the frontlines, get everyone involved, engage our employees…but has anyone ever been engaged by a strategic plan? I am sure they have been disengaged by one, but I doubt their engagement has increased.
When we spend too much time planning, and not enough time doing, we have a problem in our organizations. And that is my main frustration with strategic planning. Strategic plans vortex thousands of man hours into producing pretty documents and spreadsheets, and forget that someone still has to lead. If the leader is spending most of his time reading and producing those documents and spreadsheets, is he actually leading? If she is leading effectively, does she actually have time to care about the strategic plan itself?
My theory: Strategic planning is simply an invention to justify the existence of middle management, and not a useful tool for those doing the actual leading or for the guys at the bottom doing the real work.
If I’m wrong, please send me examples of its usefulness. I really want to hear about them. If I’m right, please save a few thousand trees and stop producing more plans no one will read. My future kids will thank you for caring so much about the environment.
Tim Vanderpyl is a Certified Human Resource Professional (CHRP) with Canada’s largest catholic healthcare organization. He holds a Master of Arts in Leadership from Trinity Western University and is working toward a Doctorate in Strategic Leadership at Regent University. He can be reached by email here or at his website www.timvanderpyl.com.
Very true on many fronts! Plus, everyone’s reading the same magazines so the strat plan is largely a copy-and-paste of most others.
What I do find very useful, though, is the strategy execution part. I see so many cases where people are all trying to “take action” that they’re working at cross-purposes on largely redundant projects and getting into a bad mood because their projects are in status “red” for lack of business or IT resources. Having a common plan – very short – with a bit of a Program structure allows for like-initiatives to be clustered together and set up for success, demonstrating that they can, indeed, shift the needle on some critical measures that the organization is depending on.
Good article!
You raise a great point about resource allocation. Someone/something has to regulate finite resources for the “right” projects. I’m just not convinced traditional strategic planning actually helps us find the right future projects. It may actually hinder it.
I think sometimes we’re scared of short-winded plans because of the ambiguity involved. We’re scared to entrust control to the people we hire to execute plans, so we fence them in with 200 page treaties. I do like your mention os “strategy execution”. The people who ignore the plans and “get things done” are the innovators in most companies. But how do we train and reward for that?
I’ve found it useful to remind ourselves that we reserve the right to be wrong. A strategy is just a set of hypotheses of cause and effect.
So, don’t sweat it. We’re paid to express our opinions. Provide them and then get on with it. At least everyone will be pulling in the same direction.
For rewarding people, I like using some kind of personal balanced scorecard so that there is a needle to be measured and discussed if it’s not moving in the right direction. Action without results isn’t very satisfying!
I don’t disagree Tim. However, you made a mistake in negating all strategic plan. I counter in that MOST strategic plans are worthless — because they’re not created properly. As you say, they take hundreds of hours to create because too many well-intentioned but ill-informed consultants and/or “leaders” don’t know who to create a plan they can & will actually implement. They focus too much on creating a massive detailed plan — only to become overwhelmed with all the “stuff” they now have to track — they become depressed instead of motivated. This is why I guide my strategic planning clients through a very focused, straight-forward process that invariably generates about 4-5 sheets of paper that will guide the company forward for the next 3-5 years. Are all the details in the plan? Absolutely not. It’s a Plan, a direction, a clear focus. The details will develop, ebb, flow & change as time ticks on. However, the focus, direction, etc will continue to be the leaders guide. AND, here’s the cool part – middle managers “get it” as well as front line staff. They know “the plan” and how they fit in. Strategic planning is important Tim. It just needs to be done right.
I like the 4-5 sheets of paper target. Unfortunately, most Strategic Plans are much longer than that, thus my opinion. But if you can take people on a focused journey and create a plan that is engaging, short, and usable, then that is really exciting! I am sure the readers would love to hear more about how you do this, if you have time to share.
I am guilty of this too, but sometimes it is easier to write more rather than less with projects. It feels rewarding to write a 10,000 word article, but a 800 word one is usually harder to write. Planning documents can be like that too. We like to produce books that sit on shelves, rather than usable documents that will actually get used by the people who need them. Ironically, we forget that the plan itself must have an ingrained strategy: to get people focused and engaged enough to actually use it. If we can’t do that, then there is no point in the process and we are wasting paper, time and money.
I know how you all feel. I always hated not the planning part but how we never really lived our plans after the fact. We just created SPOTS (Strategic Plans On The Shelf) –in nice fat binders. Recently, I’ve been doing some consulting work for a company called eBOARDsolutiions and they have a very realistic and useful tool that helps you MANAGE and update the plans in a way that makes them more useful. It works a bit like a Wiki (but better) in that those responsible for the initiatives and action steps in the plan have the permissions and responsibility to keep their portion updated. I’ve used it and find it very helpful to make me know exactly how my items in the plan relate to others and where we ALL stand! Not sure if this link will work but I’ll put a link to a video about how it works. http://bit.ly/grU8dy
I love the concept of open source organizations and a wiki seems like a perfect framework for futuring / strategic planning exercices. EBoard seems to be on the right track, with the ability to constantly update the plan. One issue with SPOTS (love that term) is that they have a publish date. Once a plan is published, the world can change the next day…and…the plan gets shelved (figuratively and literally) until the next year when people cram to read last year’s version before creating next years.
Thanks for sharing the idea. I love the concept and think open source/wiki ideas for organizations are under-explored in leadership. If anyone from EBoard reads this, I’d love to hear more about your experiences.
Catchy title – and I see where you’re going – but let’s face it, strategic planning is simply figuring out where you want to go and how to get there. Period. Whatever we want to call this – and there are a host of buzzwords out there – this is essentially what SP is about. What’s also interesting is that 80% of America’s churches are not growing and 80% of them do not engage in strategic planning. Your point is so right on in criticizing the utter inaccessibility in most SPing models. I am all for your work in streamlining and helping us get to the meat of it all. Check out http://www.growmychurch.com as a resource – its a course whose first 2 sessions are all about what you’re getting at. Good post, thanks.
Chris, on paper I agree. But I wonder if it often becomes a way to put on paper where the organization is already going (as opposed to where it wants to go). I’m not convinced SP in its traditional form actually does anything to change the course of an organization (although it may slow it down from doing the real work).
It will be interesting to see if the organization you mentioned will be able to break the traditional SP mould. I wish them luck.
I started using the “one page” strategic plan 25 years ago. Worked like a charm.
One page would be amazing. A former instructor of mine used to work for Pierre Trudeau (former Prime Minister of Canada). Trudeau would force all briefings to be 1-2 pages, and would throw out anything longer. His theory was that if you couldn’t make your point in those two pages, then it wasn’t worth wasting his time.
Tim,
Agree with most of your assertions re. strategic planning but we believe that strategic planning is necessary but it will only be successful if explicitly linked to tactical implementation – documents by their nature do not allow for simple adjustment and change and crucially do not link ‘intent’ to ‘action’. We have developed a system that we think provides a solution which allows a visual plan to be created quickly from scratch or from the experience of others, and then linked, through software, to those activities that are essential to deliver the strategy. It demands transparency and drives accountability but ultimately shows how the team/organisation is progressing against its set goals. We thin kit works wellbut if you are interested have a look at this video if you want to know more http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=assEiMu4ODQ. The system has been used by schools, charities and companies of all sizes.