STRATEGY CENTRAL

How does arriving where you’ve already been sound?  Depends I guess.  If you like where you’ve been, you might want to go there again.  After all, there are places we’ve been that we love going back to.  At the same time, as a metaphor for vision…most of us are dreaming of arriving somewhere we’ve never been.  And arriving where we’ve already been is the last thing we’d set out to do.

And yet…when it comes to strategic planning, we’re often hung up by the fears of the agents of status quo who prefer consistent, predictable outcomes.  “Will it pay for itself?”  “Will we get buy in from the core?”  “Are you sure this will work?”  Sound familiar?  These are the sound bites of those seeking reliability and “the goal of reliability is consistent, predictable outcomes (p. 37, The Design of Business).”

On the other hand, if you’re dream of arriving somewhere you’ve never been, a desired objective,…then you’ll be looking for a different route than you’ve taken so far.  You’ll be looking for a path that goes to a different place than you’ve been before.  That route or path is found in the search for validity, not reliability.  And the discovery of what is actually valid is the only way to get from where you are to where you want to go.

How well does what your organization is designed to do…fit what you’re trying to do?  Oh…you might already be pushing back.  You might be saying, "We didn’t design anything" or "it was already like this when I came!"  But every organization has a design.  It just might not be a very good one.  Or a very relevant one.

Reporting in from the Internet Ministry Conference, Kent had this to say about the steps in creating a relevant organization.  You’ve got to understand the what, the who, and the how:

• What are you trying to do (what is your calling)?
• Who are you trying to reach?
• How can you best reach them?

Very basic.  Very essential.  If you’re in an organization that is ineffective, chances are it’s been a long time since anyone asked these questions.

What is your objective when you do long-range planning?  What are you hoping to accomplish?  One of the whiteboard drawings that I often include in my work is a version of what you see to the left.  The point?  There is no problem-free solution.  Instead, every possible solution is really an opportunity to choose the set of problems you’d rather have.  This is a key assumption at the beginning of any planning session.

Once you’ve arrived at the conclusion that there really is no problem-free, the next step might be to clarify the purpose of long-range planning.  In determining that purpose, I love this quote from Peter Drucker’s Managing for Results:

"Long-range planning does not—and cannot—aim at the elimination of risks and uncertainties.  That is not given to mortal man.  The one thing he can try is to find, and occasionally to create, the right risk and to exploit uncertainty.  The purpose of the work on making the future is not to decide what should be done tomorrow, but what should be done today to have a tomorrow (p. 173)."

What’s the point?  There are several really good ones:

• Long-range planning isn’t about eliminating risks and uncertainties (there is no problem-free)
• Long-range planning is about finding the right risk (you can choose the problem-set you’d rather have)
• Long-range planning is about making decisions today that will make tomorrow possible.

Take the pebbles from my hand, Grasshopper.  Gotta love Drucker!

P.S. For more on Problem-free check out this previous post: The Pursuit of Problem-Free.

When you carefully examine the likely scenarios for your organization…are there some things that get ruled out right away because everybody knows that that can never happen?  Word to the wise?  Be very careful that you don’t casually exclude some things because it’s common knowledge that those things can’t happen.  Puzzled?  Here’s a little to chew on.

A look at history will show you that it’s usually something that could never happen that turns out to be the game-breaker.  A personal computer.  More households with only a cellphone than households without a cellphone.   Bottled water.  BOTTLED water.  Think about it.  Who would have guessed even 10 years ago that Americans would spend more on bottled water than on iPods or movie tickets.  Okay…if they could have guessed that then they’d be pretty smart.  Most of us would have said, "iWhat?"  But you get the point.

The point is "what everybody in the business knows can never happen should be examined carefully (Managing for Results, p. 170)."

How aware is your organization of the need to thoughtfully develop your plan?  As you can probably tell by now it’s a little bit of a hobby horse with me…frustrating when there’s really no thought to consequences or effects of what is done.  Recently I wrote about the upside of constraints.

There’s a great parallel in an interesting interview that Guy Kawasaki did with Tim Berry about developing a business plan.  In talking about the important qualities of a plan, Berry says that a plan sets "priorities with the understanding that you can’t do everything."  He goes on to say that "after
all the buzzwords and analysis, strategy is focus. What can you do
better than anyone else? What’s your core competence?"

When you think about your organization, is there an awareness of the fact that you can’t do everything?  Or is there the attempt to actually be all things to all people?  Do you know what you do better than anyone else?  What your core competencies are?

These questions are along the same line as a couple of great ones that I found in Drucker’s The Practice of Management.  "What have we done well—and without any great strain—while somebody else has failed to do the same job?"  The corollary is good as well.  "What do we do poorly—while someone else seems to have no difficulty with it? (p. 114).

These questions are at the heart of good planning.  Can you talk through those questions with your team?  Do you ever reserve time to slow down long enough to wrestle with this kind of discussion?  Without it, you’re toast.

Looking for a way to jiggle your organization out of the status quo?  How about this exercise from Turning the Future Into Revenue?  This will be a killer if you’re locked in a discussion about whether you’re actually keeping up with the times…or how quickly you’re becoming irrelevant.  Here’s how it works:

Spend some time pulling together a good snapshot of all the ways that the culture is changing around you.  Once you’ve determined the major ways that the world is changing around you, ask this question:

"Ten years from now, what do we look like, assuming that the external environment changes in the ways that we have forecast and imagined, while internally we make no fundamental changes?  What if we just keep doing what we do now?  Describe our enterprise at a future date if we maintain the status quo?" (p. 147-8)

Can you imagine that conversation?  Helpful?  Or frightening?

This is a great book.  You can order your own copy right here.

What’s your practice when you plan for the what’s next?  Are you reactive?  Inactive?  Or pre-active?  This is potentially a key insight about a reality of your planning DNA.  Clearly understanding your organization’s tendency is the first step in moving toward a healthier, more productive, planning perspective.

According to systems theorist Russell Ackoff there are three main perspectives in planning:

• Reactive: focusing on the past.  This is a major challenge for organizations that have succeeded in the past.  After all, if it worked 30 years ago…why wouldn’t it work now?  This is also where "best practices" come in.  Think about it.  When you adopt a best practice you’re attempting to use a practice that was developed by someone else, often somewhere else, and it’s all about looking backward.
• Inactive: staying focused on the present.  Often, too busy to even think about the future.  No time to really look at what might be next.  Only staying current with the inbox.  What’s the problem?  When you focus entirely on the present, and you’re not setting aside time to think and plan for what’s next, you’re setting yourself up to miss the next step in your puzzle.  While you’re keeping up with your own operation…the world is changing.
• Pre-Active: "making an accurate prediction of the future, and then preparing for that future better than anyone else (p. 98)."   Both aspects are important.  Not just predicting the future.  You’ve also got to prepare for it.   If you don’t prepare as well, you run three risks: (1) The challenge of predicting the future, (2)  you simply act without preparing and then end up in a future you really didn’t want, or (3) you predict by simply extrapolating what’s going on now and instead of ending up where you’d like to go…you end up with "a more efficient past rather than a truly new future (p. 98)."

So, what’s your style?  Can you tell? 

As with many things, the key to developing strategy is asking the right questions.  There are several questions that are wrapped up within the process of developing a strategic plan.  Think about your organization as you look over these questions:

• What?  This is the vision question.  What will our future look like?  What will we accomplish?  What is our dream with a deadline?
• Why?  This is the mission question.  Why do we exist?  Why is our vision important?
• Who and When?  These are the goals questions.  Who will do what?  When will they do it?
• How?  Strategy answers this question.  How will we achieve our goals?  How will our vision bring our mission to life?

Now here’s my question: When you think about your vision and mission, does your strategy answer the right questions?  More often than not I’m finding that organizations have a vision statement and may even have a sense of their mission…but they’ve never really defined a workable strategy that will get them to their dream.  Instead, their what (vision) gets hijacked by urgent opportunities that don’t necessarily lead to where they dream of going.

How about you?  Does your organization have a well thought out strategy that leads to vision?  You’ve got to have it.  Because vision without strategy is just a pipe dream.

One of the speed bumps in choosing a strategy is the search for problem-free.  In fact, the notion that there is a problem-free solution almost always delays the implementation of strategy.  Why?  As your team discusses how to do what they’ve decided they need to do…there will almost always be sides chosen around at least a couple possibilities.  As the discussion/argument develops both groups will make their case based only on the upside of their plan (and ignoring the downside).

Is there a way around this pattern?  What if you enter the discussion with the assumption that there is no problem-free?  What if instead you begin the discussion determined to list the problems of each solution and choose the problem set you’d rather have? 

We’ve all seen it.  Usually marked with a red star, alongside the words, "You Are Here."  Maybe you’ve seen it at the mall.  Or the airport.  Or Disneyland.  But you’ve seen it.

When you’ve seen it you’ve done a few predictable things.  Look around for landmarks…so you can see whether you are looking at the map the right way.  Examine the map for some hint of where you’re going.  Maybe you’ve thought about where you’ll need to turn once you leave the map, landmarks along the way that will help you know whether you’re still going the right way and are going to end up in the right place.

We all do those same things.  When we’re trying to get from where we are to where we’re going.  In the mall.  At the airport.  Or at Disneyland.

But what about when you’re trying to get to a new place strategically?   What about when you’re trying to help your organization get from where it is to where it needs to go?  Ever looked for the "You Are Here" sign?  Or examined the sign for landmarks along the way to where you need to go?

One of the best books I read in 2006 was Turning the Future Into Revenue.  As I’ve mentioned before, don’t check out of this conversation because of the title!  The back half of the book has a great discussion of strategic thinking, and it’s all anchored by the drawing on the left!

Let me point out three things for today.  See the circle at the bottom that says, "Present"?  That’s the "You Are Here" spot on the map!  Same as at the mall.  And just like at the mall, you need to look around where you are and take note of your surroundings.  Without an accurate understanding of exactly where you are, just like at the mall, you could start walking toward Starbucks only to realize later that you were looking at the map upside down!  Dohhhhhh!  But if you take some time to make sure you understand exactly where you are first you’ll be much happier with where you end up.  And probably you’ll get there a lot sooner!

The second thing to point out today are the three circles near the top of the diagram.  The circle marked "Probable" indicates where you’ll most likely end up if you do nothing different.  In other words, if you simply do what you’re currently doing, that’s where you’ll be in 10 years (or 5 or 50…however distant you’re thinking as you think strategically).

The circle marked "Possible" represents EVERYTHING that is actually possible in the way of potential outcomes.  But notice that you’ll clearly have to DO some different things in order to get there.  Doing what you’re currently doing will not get you to that destination.

And the circle marked "Preferred" indicates where you’d like to go.  But check it out.  You’ll have to do some things differently in order to get there.

The third thing to point out are the arrows along the left side of the diagram.  They represent actions that are necessary to shift to the new trajectory that will help you arrive at a different circle.  One of the key ideas is that the sooner you begin to act differently the easier it is to move over to the new trajectory.

So…where are you?  And where are you going?

P.S. I made the diagram over at Gliffy.com!