On Strategic Planning: It's two products, not one

The following comes from Peter Hughes (an extraordinary planning fellow!)

Having assisted a wide range of organizations over the past 21 years on formulating Strategic Plans one glaring common problem stands out. In over 80% of the more than 150 organizations I have assisted, including Healthcare Systems, Corporations, Chambers of Commerce, Universities, School Districts, Health and Human Service agencies and Municipalities the one thing almost all had in common was an expired Strategic Plan.

Each of these organizations had let their most recent strategic plan expire on the shelf. These organizations had let their strategic focus and strategic roadmaps for their future lapse. Each of these organizations believed in the importance of a strategic plan, yet for some reason had not renewed their most recent strategic document. Changes in leadership or changes in key personnel, changes in the membership of the Board of Directors, sudden changes in market conditions are all cited as reasons for the failure of the organization to stay current with their strategy document, but I believe the vast majority of these lapses were caused by the lack of a solid planning process.

These organizations all embarked on the planning process with one thought in mind, to develop the organizations strategic plan, and accomplished their objective. They also failed to renew it!

When I first sit down to discuss the development of a strategic plan with an organization, I discuss with the key leaders what they hope to accomplish from the planning process. Then I work with them to articulate this into planning process objectives. Examples would include "to foster alignment across the organization"; "to serve as a catalyst for change", and to "create a roadmap for the future." Not surprisingly very few clients think to cite as an objective "to create a sustaining planning process that facilitates the strategic plans renewal." In my experience this is why the vast majority of the organizations with whom I have worked have found themselves without an active strategic plan. In my opinion there are two major objectives for each planning process, to both develop the organizations strategic plan, and to develop a strategic planning process which facilitates plan renewal.

Each organization developing a strategic plan document articulates a planning horizon, or the period of time for which the plan serves as the organizations roadmap. It may be one year, but is usually three or five years. Regardless of the planning horizon selected, the organization should pre-establish the time cycle for renewing and building the next plan, prior to the current plans timeframe running out. For example if an organization selects a three year planning horizon, the process to update and renew the plan should be conducted during the third year of the current plan. By conducting planning in this fashion, the organization smoothly moves to their next planning horizon, with no disruption and more importantly with no lack of organizational focus. In reality, a good planning process always keeps the plan in front of the organization and facilitates keeping the plan current, but this is a topic for a future posting.

In order to achieve this orderly transition I believe that an organization is best served by developing a solid planning framework and as they move into the next phase of organizational planning take a continuous quality improvement approach, redesigning the existing planning framework with incremental adjustments, but keeping the main chassis in place. Too often I have seen organization leaders or their planners succumb to the “flavor of the month” approach to strategic planning. They completely throw out the former process and inserpaddiesew faddish approach. It has been my experience that this approach takes the organization backwards before moving it forward again, wasting time and energy.

Why do I believe this? Every planning process that I have been involved with brings new ways of doing things, new language and new processes. That means that many, many of the organizations stakeholders, i.e. their Board members, Executives, Managers and Associates will need to learn and master these new processes, terms and definitions. To throw this overboard the next time around only serves to disrupt the organizational learning that has been achieved. With many of the organizations I have worked I have had the privilege to have taken them through a second or even third cycle of planning. By keeping the basic framework intact, by making process improvements and adjustments to the planning process, these organizations have became more sophisticated strategists with each cycle of planning. They achieved this by having continuity with the planning process, layering new learning with each cycle to achieve a higher organizational level of sophistication with respect to developing their strategy. Not only is this important to the development of the organizations strategic roadmap, it is important to the organizations ability to execute the strategies in its plan. Deepened understanding of the organizations strategy, and consistency, permit the organization to master plan development and move on to plan implementation.

While having a plan for plan renewal may not seem like a very profound declaration, it would appear by the evidence to in fact be the key ingredient to why good organizations find themselves without a strategic plan.