Planning in the business world has largely been based on believing the continuance of past trends and the combination of customer needs, environmental factors, funding sources, and staffing will remain fairly constant. However those things have become far less dependable. Today, change is largely unpredictable, often comes in big waves, with great speed and is most often discontinuous from the past.
Today’s organizational leadership is expected to read the tea leaves, lay out a road map to the future with a believable vision and a constancy of purpose, to build competency of staff, gain commitment from the workforce and stay awake to find the early warnings and opportunities derived from change.
From Alvin Toffler’s “Future Shock” in the 1970’s to Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his 2007 book “The Black Swan,” we have been told time again that change is the only constant in today’s global climate. Success in a organization today is more about developing management techniques, processes and commitment to manage and adapt to change for strategic growth and impact, than in predicting the future. Furthermore, today’s success does not constitute grounds for optimism about the future.
Principles of Strategic Management:
- To embrace change as opportunity and to stem the tide of threat. To be willing to change everything about itself, except its basic values that underpin the conduct of the organization. The very mission and vision of most organizations evolve over time as their reach and impact progresses.
- To engage the Board, Management, Staff and Volunteers in a strategic process to periodically evaluate the evolution of the impact on, and changing needs of those they serve. This involves developing short and long-term horizons of clear vision and objectives.
- To build a strategic framework (or plan) from which to view changes in the external and internal environment, assess opportunities and threats and measure progress against all objectives. This framework will serve as the guiding document for “renewing” strategy and evaluating progress against key objectives. It is a tool from which to evaluate new ventures, projects, or significant undertakings for strategic “fit.” It should keep decisions focused within the context of the vision, mission and purpose of the organization.
The Strategic Framework should be tight enough to focus resources, yet loose enough for organizational units to be opportunistic, but accountable. It serves as the document to communicate the vision and mission of the organization to the employees and in defining their role / engagement in achieving that vision.
There are several key principles that underpin the success of a “change management” oriented strategic planning process:
- The organization must stay focused on the customer (target segments) it serves and be vociferous in measuring the impact of their works. The growth of its impact will come from staying close to the “customers” and their evolving needs. From this focus the evolution of the services provided will evolve, within the mission.
- The doers must be the planners. Strategic planning is in large part a line task to be undertaken by those responsible for the plans implementation. Wide participation in the process creates ownership of the organization’s strategy and their role in fulfilling the vision and mission. It also creates a greater ability to identify and manage change. It also delivers “discretionary effort” whereby staff and board will put in extraordinary effort to achieve the objectives.
- Measurement is essential to recognizable achievement. Vision and mission statements must be qualitative if they are to survive in a rapidly changing world. However, they only become practical to implement if they have quantified objectives that define their accomplishment in any given time period. These objectives are unlikely to be reached unless they have equally specific strategies (i.e., resource commitments) focused on their achievement. Most failures in strategic planning can be attributed to the lack of rigor in one or both of these steps.
- If the effort does not result in action plans, it is probably wasted. An action plan consists of a set of tasks, the responsibility for undertaking it, and a time frame for accomplishing it. Even the greatest strategy with the most precise quantification is generally futile if it is not reduced to its individual steps, accountabilities, and necessary timing. Without these steps the plan is merely aspiration or intent left to individual discretion.
- Strategy implementation is more about commitment than correctness. An excellent strategy with adequate implementation will always lose to an adequate strategy with excellent implementation. However, the adequate plan must have deep personal and organizational commitment if its implementation is to be truly excellent. When a plan has that commitment, minor imperfections in strategy will easily overcome the sheer momentum of the organization.
- Change will occur, either by chance or design. It is never the case that everything is running smoothly. Strategy is the deliberate attempt to evolve, be opportunistic. In a dynamic environment, the management of change is, therefore, the central purpose of strategic planning.