Strategic Planning – an Oxymoron

Strategic planning is an oxymoron as practiced by many
organizations, maybe even the one you work at.  Why? 
It’s an oxymoron because planning without follow-up,
without results and metrics to check assumptions… is not strategic.

Strategic Planning isn’t typically strategic.  That’s a good one, isn’t it?

But think about it.  You see it wouldn’t be very strategic if in
our strategic planning we:
1. Didn’t identify and put in place a process to verify the assumptions
about market drivers, capacity and personnel that are embedded
in every strategic plan, or
2. Didn’t include a way to measure progress and/or wrote the
plan in such a way that it wasn’t possible to easily measure, or
3. Didn’t actually assess whether or not we had the capability
or will or focus to fulfill the strategic plan, or
4. Didn’t actually link the strategic plan to projects and actions
that directly effect the strategic outcomes.

Yet this is exactly what makes up most strategic plans I see.

Make sense?  I think many of us fall into the traps above, and as
a result strategic plans generate little value after that “off-site”. 
I can think of a number of descriptions for such plans, but
strategic wouldn’t be in the top 10.

Here’s a different way to think about strategic planning that you
can use to immediately make it more strategic and effective at the
organization you work at.

1. Strategic planning is much more about learning
than knowing.
When you get your private pilot’s license, they tell you it is a
license to learn… not that you are there yet.  The same holds
true for strategic plans.  Think of the plan as your license to learn,
and it will immediately become less stuffy, more interactive and
of more value. 

Instead of the plan being a set of high level 30,000 foot goals,
think of it, and structure it, as a set of initiatives to invoke
highly visible and critical learning.  And remember, learning is
impossible without comparing performance and the causal drivers
to plan… so you have to have a regular review process.

2. Check your assumptions at the door.
Thinking, planning, working and managing strategically all require
that you bring  a set of assumptions to your world of work.  You
make choices about what you focus on, how you spend time and
money and who’s responsible, as well as what you expect in return
… all based on assumptions.

Think of all strategic plans as essentially a mixture of well-informed
and poorly-informed assumptions.  Without recognizing them as
assumptions, instead of facts (checking them at the door), you’ll
never be in the position to test and verify which is which.  That
puts you and the organization in peril, and/or makes the plan
obsolete before it comes off the printer.

Bottom Line:
Strategic plans, as typically constructed, represent something
significantly short of strategic.  In fact they are an oxymoron.
Breath life into your strategic plan and planning process by
approaching your strategic plan as an exercise to learn, not a
statement of facts, and actively, regularly verify your assumptions.

Links:
Strategic Planning as Action Learning by Peter Smith & Abby Day
Why is Strategic associated with Planning, not Action? 
Strategic Execution Software

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10 Responses to “Strategic Planning – an Oxymoron”

1. julian mendoza Says:
   February 25th, 2010 at 8:14 am

   Very on point. Being strategic is about how we get to the goal: it is distinct from merely setting the goal. The increasing complexity (dispersion; interconnectedness; fluid environment that act and react continuously) indeed requires a new sensibility of learning rather than statically knowing. Reality checks: feedback loops: the jet fighter pilot training on OODA behavior.

   Practical, effective leadership triangulates amongst goal, resources, and stakeholders (which includes self): and it means continuously navigating, adjusting – not only internally within that triangle, but most especially within the external context.

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   August 27th, 2011 at 8:45 am

   Interesting, I wonder what the statistics are on your first point there

7. admin Says:
   September 2nd, 2011 at 6:32 pm

   I haven’t seen any stats on this, but in my experience fully 90% of strategic plans don’t have the basics of regular measurements and alignment with current projects.

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