A Bit of A Rant About Strategic Planning

I heard Peter Senge speak a while back and he talked about being in "a bubble." His conclusion was that bubbles (like the dot com bubble) are not destined to grow and grow and then burst. They can avoid this fate, however, ONLY if the people inside the bubble can communicate effectively with people outside the bubble. Otherwise, people in the bubble simply talk to each other, which reinforces the status quo assumptions and world view.

My sense is that is what's going on with associations and strategic planning. The Journal of Association Leadership article about consensus guidelines for association strategic planning is a bubble article: people in the bubble working with other people in the bubble to articulate and codify the bubble party line.

Those of us outside the bubble are incredulous. And we do posts like this one that have the message of "they just don’t get it." I said in my last post that I want to change the conversation, so I feel guilty posting this, but I still want to get this one off my chest. This was my raw reaction to the article. I quote the article extensively, pointing out either flawed or circular logic, and highlighting that the strategic planning party line is really much more about planning than strategy.

Warning: this is basically a cranky rant. I’m not going to edit that out of it. As I said, I just want to get this out of my system. I think the points are valid, of course, and I welcome dialogue about them, but I just wanted to warn you that the attitude is there.

Here it is:

"The panel agreed that the essence of the strategic planning process is focused on ends, or desired outcomes, and the means by which they are accomplished. By framing the discussion around ends and means, clarity of purpose in strategic planning is achieved."

What?! That makes little sense to me. What else is there besides means and ends? That doesn't sound like a "focus" to me, because focus implies narrowing down on one thing and leaving other things out.

A big problem with strategic planning is that it assumes you can capture the whole enchilada into one process. That you can get your hands around it all and control it.

You can't.

I know you want to, but you can't. Lying to yourself about that makes it worse.

"Strategic Planning is a critical management process for creating and sustaining organizational effectiveness. It involves a systematic way to answer the following questions:

1.    What are the compelling reasons for our continuing existence?
2.    What is the nature of the environment in which we exist and how is it changing?
3.    What are the organization’s current strengths and weaknesses?
4.    What must we accomplish to sustain our effectiveness?
5.    How do we seek to achieve our desired outcomes?
6.    How do we best deploy the necessary resources?
7.    How do we track our progress?
8.    How do we know whether we have succeeded?
9.    What did we learn about the process that can help us determine what to do better the next time?"

Again, "why do we exist" and "how do we deploy our resources" are supposed to be systematically answered in a single process of strategic planning? Am I the only one who sees how ludicrous that notion is? I think the nine questions they ask are okay (although there are other huge ones missing), but why on earth would you suggest a single process to answer all of those questions?

Advocates of strategic planning simply assert that truth. They assert that because those questions need to be answered (true), a single process should answer them (false). That false assertion then makes the rest of strategic planning fail! But they don't see that.

And you can see, of course, that they start to mold the questions over time to fit the process they have chosen. I am particularly interested that the only question about "learning" is focused on learning about how to change the strategic planning process. Let's look at some of the questions individually.

One. Why are we here. No comments, except that they say responsibility is with the Board. I disagree. The who's in charge dynamics can be more complicated than that.

Two. Environment. "Formal environmental assessment and forecasting, or future-focused research and deliberation, should be incorporated into the periodic review and creation of a strategic plan." No, no, no! Yes, you need a deep understanding of the environment (and your own capacities, etc.), but once you relegate that to a formal assessment that happens on a schedule, you're doomed! Include formal assessments (budget permitting) but for goodness sake, understanding your environment is not part of a process, it is a critical organizational capacity.

Three. Strengths and weaknesses (SWOT. Are you kidding me?!). "An analysis of the organization's strengths and weaknesses is key to evaluating its performance and its potential." NO! There is a place for examining strengths and weaknesses, but it most certainly NOT is when you are doing strategy work. When you examine your strengths and weaknesses, you turn your back to the future. You look at what is and what has been. And strengths and weaknesses are not objective. It depends on what you're trying to do (the huge muscles of a body builder would be a weakness if he were trying to win a marathon).

Strategic planning is chained to a myth that success can be devised through a rational, objective, and linear process. We have plenty of evidence to the contrary, but the advocates of strategic planning cling to that myth, and that's why they fail so often. Advocates don't see it. They keep trying to change the process and tweak it, and make those rational parts even better, and it makes people feel better in the short term, but the plans still fail most of the time. For example, I've heard the argument that the SWOT process works better if you look at Threats, then Opportunities, then weaknesses, then strengths. I agree that's better—because you would be defining your strengths based on threats or opportunities that need your attention. But it's still rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Four. What must we accomplish to sustain our effectiveness. Okay. Why is this question four? Isn't this the big one?

Five. How do we seek to achieve our desired outcomes. This is "what do we do." Again, the frame of picking an outcome and then mapping a path from here to there has already been completely de-bunked. The world doesn't work that way. When you frame it like that, you are setting yourself and your plan up for failure.

Six. Deploying resources. "All too often, the issue of resources is overlooked in the planning process." I think it is critical that strategic planning advocates talk about the "planning process." Note that they don't shorten it to the "strategy process." Hmmmm. Deploying resources is much more a part of planning. It's a part that will make strategy setting almost impossible. I've long argued for a greater separation between strategy and planning, and this is why.

Seven. Tracking progress. I love that one of the questions they have is "Are we doing what we planned?" How about are we moving the needle? Are we making a difference? Are we having an impact?

Eight. How do we know whether we have succeeded? How is this different from tracking progress? Oh, I guess progress is in-process and success is end-process. This one too is circular and plan focused: "Did we accomplish each objective? If not, why not?"

Nine. What did we learn about the process? Okay, but before you do that, what did we learn about our organization? Our culture? Our environment? Our capacities? About the way we did things? Learning is such a fundamentally important organizational capacity, I can’t believe it is only mentioned in the context of making the strategic planning process better! Strategic planning has been described as a kind of rain dance that doesn't affect the weather in the future, but makes the dancers feel like it did, and then most of their work from then on is focused on making the dance better, not the weather.

Then the article lays out the elements of a strategic planning process. Do the assessment, set the goals, figure out what you will do, implement the "event sequences" (do you REALLY think the world is that linear!? Really?!), and change when necessary (I love the notion of "stick to the plan, except when you don't"). Oh, and in all that, make sure you align all your organizational systems to the plan and get broad stakeholder participation (those are WAY TOO HUGE tasks to be mentioned as an afterthought).

I love at the end they identify "common problems and mistakes that organizations should keep in mind." Did it not occur to them that these are common flaws inherent to the strategic planning process?

• Inadequate preparation
• Confirming the "what is"
• Broad goals that never lead to specific measurable objectives
• Focus on how before agreeing on what
• Plan with no execution
• The plan does not consider capacity
• Board does not buy into the plan.

They list these things and say "Oh, don't do that." Those are common problems because of the flawed assumptions and worldview inherent in strategic planning. Trying harder not to do these things won't work.

So that’s my rant. Now I will go back to figuring out how to change this conversation.

Comments

[Maddie Grant]

Hmmm. This is awesome. You know which side of the debate I fall on, obviously - maybe you and I should write a book about it : )

I want to know more about how you would separate strategy and planning. My totally simplistic take on it is that there should be strategy everywhere, at every level. That we should all know why we make the decisions we make and what each of our roles have to play on an organizational level. That we should internalize it completely. And we should be free to develop our strategic imagination...

[Chris Rodgers]

Thanks, Jamie. It doesn’t sound like a rant to me. It’s spot on!

Sadly, this linear, painting-by-numbers approach is not limited to strategic planning (think Kotter’s Eight Steps for leading change, for example). Like many other aspects of conventional management wisdom, it panders to managers’ felt need for certainty and control: If we do things ‘better’ and get them ‘right’ (i.e. adopt a formal, structured, rational approach), all will be well. Unfortunately (or fortunately?) organizations are complex social processes, not machines.

I like Keith Grint’s comment on this phenomenon in his book, Fuzzy Management. He says, “Much of what is taught in management or business schools, or written about in management or business books, is a banal paradox. It is banal in that it appears to regurgitate what everyone already takes for granted and knows to be true. It is a paradox because, despite being full of common sense, it doesn’t seem to work.”

I would suggest that Ralph Stacey’s notion of strategic management is much more useful than that offered in the article. In Strategic Management and Organisational Dynamics, he argues that strategic management is the process of actively participating in the conversations around important emerging issues.

[Jamie Notter]

Thanks for the comment Mads. You're on for the book (but let me finish my other one first!). As to separating planning and strategy, I do agree strategy more accurately happens everywhere than just at the top at the beginning of the year. But there is a distinct role for the top. Strategy doesn't necessarily look the same at every level. And maybe I'm simplistic, but I think planning is really more operational. It should be done by the folks who need to get things done in a complicated environment. There's nothing wrong with someone actually mapping out the things that need to happen in order for that big awards dinner to go well. But the plans don't get rolled up into a big "strategic plan". Strategic direction is simply not a plan.

[Jamie Notter]

Thanks for chiming in, Chris. I agree completely with the notion of strategic management. And the idea of "conversation" is critical. Actually, I think our collective lack of capacity to have important or controversial or complex conversations could be at the root of a whole host of management problems.