Blind Man's Tag

The Story
When I was about ten years old, several of us at school invented a game we called “Blind-Man’s Tag.” The game went something like this:

• Half of the boys would wear hats over their eyes so they could not see. These were called the “blind boys.”
• The other half were paired up with the blind boys, to act as their eyes and tell them what to do.
• The blind boys were supposed to chase after the other blind boys and “tag” them (i.e., touch them).
• If you were tagged, you were out of the game.

The last blind boy who wasn’t tagged won the game.

We decided to play the game one day at school during recess. I was one of the boys chosen to have his hat cover his eyes and become blind. The game quickly became very confusing. I was wandering around not knowing where I was at, while all of the “seeing” boys were yelling confusing commands.

Eventually, my seeing partner yelled, “He’s coming after you! Hurry up and run or you’ll be tagged!”

I shouted back, “Which way should I run?”

He replied, “It doesn’t matter! Just hurry up and run!”

So I started running—and I ended up running right into a brick wall of the school. The school called my father to come get me and take me to the emergency room of the hospital. Fortunately, I did not do any serious damage to my body—only slightly brused cartilage in my nose (the nose was the first part to hit the wall). I did, however, do serious damage to my ego. It was difficult to go back to school when everyone knew that I was the boy that ran into the brick wall. It was embarrassing.

The school never let us play that game again.

The Analogy
Sometimes the business world feels a lot like “blind-man’s tag.” Situations get confusing. You hear conflicting reports of what is going on. And every once in awhile you run into a brick wall.

The only difference is that when literally I ran into that brick wall as a child, I did no serious damage. However, when businesses run into brick walls, the damages can be severe:

• Stock prices can tumble to a small fraction of what they used to be.
• Thousands of employees could lose their jobs.
• The top management could be replaced.

The company might get sold at a loss or go into bankruptcy.

When times are tough, there is a desire to want to take action. However, if you do not know which action is correct, you will be running aimlessly like I was in Blind-man’s Tag. You may feel better if you start running faster, but that only makes the pain more severe when you hit the wall.

This is why strategic planning is such a critical element for business success. A well-run strategic planning department provides vision to a company. It can take the hat off of your eyes so you can see. Although strategic planning cannot guarantee that you will win every game, your chances of success in a game of tag go up significantly if you can see.

The Principle
The main principle of this story is that without vision, you end up running into walls. There are three ways in which strategic planning can give a company the vision needed to avoid those walls:
1. A vision of where you are going.
2. A vision of how to get there.
3. A vision of the obstacles along the way.

Each of these are discussed below.

1. A Vision of Where You are Going
If you do not know where you are going, it really doesn’t matter which path you take. It would be like running a race when you do not know where the finish line is. It doesn’t matter how fast you run, because you do not know which direction to go. Worse yet, if you have a business full of people who do not know which direction to go, they will each run in a different direction, canceling our each other’s actions, confusing your customers, and in total ending up going nowhere.

Businesses need a strategic vision—a common understanding of where they are going long-term. How many people in your company could describe a vision for where your company is going? How many of them would be describing the same vision?

A good strategic planning process will help you find that long-term vision by doing the research and asking the tough questions that will help you to see:

• To see where the external environment is trending, how these trends will affect your customers, and the opportunities provided by those trends.
• To see what condition your company is truly in—where it is strong and where it is weak.
• To see what your competition is planning to do—both the direct competition in front of you today, and the potential new competitors of tomorrow.

To see which long-term position is best for your company, given the environment, your competition, and your company’s strengths and weaknesses.

2. A Vision of How to Get There
It’s great to know what your final destination is, but if you have no clue for how to get there, you will never reach your goal. At that point, it is not a plan, but merely a wish. A good strategic plan not only tells you where you are going, but provides a rough idea of what steps need to be taken to get there. You need to see the interim steps—the major milestones that need to be accomplished along the way and the approximate order in which they need be accomplished.

How many people in your company could describe the major steps needed to reach your goals? How many could describe what their individual role is in helping to reach that company goal? If you cannot answer these questions properly, perhaps you need to spend more time fleshing out the details of your strategic plan.

3. A Vision of the Obstacles Along the Way
No matter how good a strategic plan may be, it will never be perfect. Not every event in the future can be accurately predicted. Minor adjustments will need to be made along the way. That is why strategic planning does not end once the plan is produced. Good strategic planning continues throughout the journey, looking ahead for the obstacles on the path and devising plans to overcome them.

A good strategic plan is not a book to be put on a shelf. It is a living document that continues to look for those brick walls and help you avoid them.

Now some people say that in today’s rapidly changing world, it is no longer necessary to make plans. They say too many things are happening too quickly, making a longer-term perspective irrelevant.

I would claim just the opposite. All of these near-term changes are like all of the people who were yelling at me when I was playing Blind-man’s Tag. Because I couldn’t see, I didn’t know what to do with all of the changing voices, so I ran wildly in all directions, eventually hitting a wall. It is only when you have a long-term vision that you can see what to do with all of the change around you. The vision lets you know which changes to ignore, which to pay attention to and what to do about it. If you let every little change affect your actions, you will bounce around from wall to wall like a ping pong ball.

Summary
If you cannot see where you are going, you will end up eventually running into a brick wall. A good strategic planning process will help you avoid those walls by helping you see:

• Where You Want to Go
• How You Will Get There

How to Adjust When the Unforeseen Occurs

Looking back, the idea of Blind-Man’s Tag seems like a silly thing for children to do. It seems even sillier for business to do.

Strategic planning is not a luxury. It is a necessity.

Final Thoughts
The best part about strategic planning is that it allows even the seemingly slow and weak to have a chance of winning. If the stronger and faster are still running around with hats over their eyes, the vision you receive from your strategic planning can help you navigate past these companies and reach your success. Like the old fable of the tortoise (turtle) versus the hare (rabbit), even the slower animal can win the race if it has a plan and sticks to it.