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How to Create Value While You're Creating Your Future
Imagine the following scenario: You’re working late one evening, desperately trying to catch up on your work. A knock on your office door interrupts your concentration and the proverbial genie saunters into your office.
The genie smiles and informs you that your persistent state of overwhelm is the result of your having no strategic plan in place to guide you and your organization. But, the genie brings good news: a great strategic plan is yours for the wishing. All it will take to have that plan - all bound and beautiful laying on your desk in front of you - is wishing for it.
Be honest with yourself. Would you take the genie up on the offer?
I suspect that many people wouldn't hesitate for a moment to say “yes,� especially those who have gone through planning processes. Confronted with months of extra work, the time and expense to plan, and the headaches associated with convening planning meetings, many of us would indeed be sorely tempted, and would likely yield.
But we’d be wrong if we did. And wrong big-time.
In our product-oriented culture, many of us obsess about end-products and their quality. We're convinced that getting our hands on a good plan without having to endure the process to produce one is a "duh!" decision. Who wouldn't? Conversely, we pine to make the process that produces those great products someone else’s concern. We don't want to admit it, but to many of us, "process" is a dirty word. We're all about producing products. To hell with process. Leave that to the touchy-feely, journey-over-destination, sweater-wearing types.
Through our imagination, we invest a strategic plan with the same qualitative dimensions that a great novel or a memorable film has. We imagine it as a template for an unfolding success story, featuring ourselves in the role of protagonist. It’s a great daydream, for sure, but a lousy reality, and a poor prospect for realization.
The problem here is that we tend to equate strategic plans with articles of incorporation, bylaws, audits, and annual reports — as a “something� that you’re “supposed to have.� Since most of us don't have genies knocking on our doors as we work late, we grit our teeth, steel our resolve, and do our best to put the planning process behind us in order to touch the planning base.
Is it any wonder that so many of us have had bad experiences with strategic planning?
While most well-managed organizations use strategic planning as a management tool, the “plan-as-management-imperative� misses the point and misses the point entirely. Almost none of the value in strategic planning resides in the plan, itself. The value that matters - that value that is robust and lasting - is created through the process of engaging, reflecting, learning, making meaning, and devising strategies to move towards the most desirable future. As in so many other endeavors, the real value is created in doing the work, not in having the product of the work.
Some time ago I was reading about an article about a man who was reflecting on his marriage and the quality of his relationship with his wife. Like many husbands, he dreaded hearing his wife utter the words, “I want to have a conversation with you about the quality of our relationship.� He just didn’t understand why talking about it would make a difference; it hadn’t seemed to help much to date. Then, one day it occurred to him that those conversations he dreaded were, themselves, the quality of the relationship. That insight applies very much to how strategic planning creates value.
Planning principals don’t just set a course for a desirable future - and how to best get there - they co-create the meaning that fuels the journey forward.
Effective planning processes conjure vision. They consider mission in terms of relevance and resonance within vision. They engage more than the wallet, they fire up the imagination and open the heart. By prompting mutuality of purpose and building commitment, the process strengthens the bonds that connect people to one another through a process of describing the future, and then aligning people, resources, and priorities to actualize it. A good planning process strengthens relationships while it strengthens understanding. People feel not only closer to what they want to create, but to each other, too.
So, if strategic planning processes create so much value, then why are people resistant? Why is the process’s reputation tainted?
No question. People do resist planning processes, and for a variety of reasons. One, they believe that their external environment is changing quickly and in a non-linear fashion. They feel themselves at the whipsaw end of unforeseen events that, taken together, seem to make plans rigid and useless.
Understandably, they ask themselves, “What’s the point?� That’s because they see strategic plans as a set of pre-made decisions about the future rather than as an expression of priorities and a set of strategies that increase the probability of creating a desired future.
Again, it’s all about the viability (executability) of the plan as opposed to the planning process building an organization’s capacity to respond effectively to opportunities or threats.
Another point of resistance is that planning takes time, a resource that is rightly perceived to be in short supply. Ironically, many people fail to see that while planning indeed takes time, it creates more than it uses. A clear set of priorities and a explicit “order-of-battle� allows for time to contemplate and respond to the unforeseen. Though it is counter-intuitive, planning actually builds an organization’s ability to be opportunistic and flexible.
Without a doubt, the most valuable deliverable that a strategic planning process creates is an increased and ongoing capacity within an organization for its principal players to think, interact, and intervene more effectively. If you want to achieve desired organizational outcomes, you’re likely to be more successful if you build your internal capacity first. Strategic planning is a great gymnasium within which to build organizational muscle.
If I were forced to choose, I’d rather have a mediocre plan from a good process than have a good plan from a mediocre process. Of course, a good planning process increases the probability that you will have an excellent plan from which to manage forward. I'd choose both.
I would go so far as to argue, while it is possible to create an effective plan without a good process, that a plan’s intrinsic value is negligible compared to the value deliverables that a good process creates.
Posted on January 4, 2007 09:47 AM | Permalink
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