Strategic Planning Analogy #378: Who’s to Blame?

THE STORY
Although there are many things that governments are not very good at, it seems that they excel at creating processes to assess whom to blame when things go wrong. Whenever there is a problem, governments are quick to set up a process to find out whom to blame. It can be special investigative committees or inquiry sessions in front of the legislature, or just your normal voicing of opinions while legislating “punishment” for the “evildoers.”

And if members of the government cannot find a non-governmental group to blame, then they will blame a political party other than their own for the problem.

You’d think that with all that finger-pointing and declarations of whom to blame, we’d be able to stop all of these problems from re-occurring. Unfortunately, all this finger-pointing has not stopped the problems. Instead, it seems like the problems requiring their “blaming” process are increasing.

Maybe if governments spent less time trying to assign blame and more time working together to fix things, we’d be further ahead.

THE ANALOGY
Governments are not the only ones playing the blame game. Businesses do it as well. When a business venture fails, companies also tend to look for where to pin the blame.

I have seen situations where companies get into a heated debate about strategic failure. The debate centers around who is to blame for the failure. Was it the fault of the people who created the strategy or the fault of the people who implemented the strategy?

Unfortunately, just as governmental finger-pointing hasn’t reduced the problems they deal with, strategy finger-pointing (creators or implementers) hasn’t seemed to reduce the rate of strategic failure. Maybe if businesses spent less time trying to assign blame and more time working together to achieve strategic success, we’d be further ahead.

THE PRINCIPLE
The principle here is that instead of segregating strategy creation from strategy implementation (so as to assess separate blame), we should be working towards greater integration of these two processes (making it almost impossible to separate blame). My reasoning is as follows.

Strategies Have 3 P’s
As I have stated many times in the past, successful strategies need to address three topics, each beginning with the letter P:

1. Positioning: The place where you win.
2. Pursuit: The ability to get to and keep that winning place.
3. Productivity: The ability to exploit that position for optimal cash flow.

For many people, the concept of strategy is limited to only the first P: Positioning. Pursuit is not seen as part of strategy, but part of implementation, which is considered completely different form strategy. To me, this is faulty logic. All three Ps are just different facets of the same gem. You cannot separate them without destroying the gem. It’s all one package. True Strategy includes all three.

Having a “great” position without pursuit is like having a plan to be the first to go to Mars, but not have a rocket. You won’t to get to the moon, no matter how great that would be. Having a “great” pursuit with no position is like running faster than anyone else, but running in random directions. All that running gets you nowhere. None of it works unless all of it works.

The P’s Are Interconnected
Since positions must be “pursuable” and pursuit must be in the direction of a position, it is hard to isolate the activities. They are, by nature, interconnected.

When devising a strategic position, capacity and capabilities must be a key element in the discussion. The idea is not to create a “great position”, but to create a “great position where your company can own.” You can only own a position if you have the capacity and capabilities to achieve it.

For example, I might want to own a low price position, but if my capacity and capabilities are such that I can never be the lowest cost operator, then I will never successfully own the low price position. Although it may be a great position, it is not the right position for me. I need a position where I can be successful in pursuit.

So, in this example, if the pursuit fails, whose fault is it? Well, if the position chosen works against the capacity and capability of the firm, then the positioning is just as much at fault as the pursuit (if not more so).

This also works in the other direction. As companies invest in their capacity and capabilities, they have to make choices about where to invest. Ideally, those investments should be made in a manner which reinforces what is needed to achieve the position. For example, if your position is to win with service, then you should overweight your investments into areas which will increase your capacity and capabilities in providing service. Otherwise, you cannot hold the service position.

So when one starts placing the blame at a lousy choice of position, consider whether the investments in capacity and capability over time worked for or against that position. Perhaps the position would have been highly successful if only the investments in pursuit had been more in line with the position.

In other words, neither positioning nor pursuit can be devised in isolation. Positioning needs to take into account the capacity and capabilities which can be realistically achieved by the firm. Conversely, investments need to consider the chosen position, so that investments become over-weighted in the areas most critical to achieving and holding the position.

Therefore, if things don’t work out, blame should not be isolated to the creators or the implementers, because creation and implementation should have been intertwined. Of course, if the creators ignored the implementers (or vice versa), then perhaps there is some isolated blame. But even here, perhaps the blame should be placed on the leadership who did not demand that the two sides cooperate.

The People Should Also Be Interconnected
The best way to ensure that the positioning decisions adequately understand capacity and capability, and that investment decisions adequately understand how to support the position, is by interconnecting the people working on these issues.

Implementers need to be a part of the positioning decision and strategists need to be a part of the implementation teams. This is not about two different isolated teams working on different issues (creation versus implementation). There is just one issue on the table (success) and both sides have something to offer to improve the work of the other.

Strategists are more likely to create a strategy appropriate for the firm when working side by side with the people who have to implement it. Conversely, implementers are more likely to take the right actions if they understand and have an emotional stake in the chosen position.

Pointing fingers at each other does not build the kind of teamwork and cooperation needed for success. It only creates isolation. After all, it is hard to blame “the other guy” when you both participated on each other’s work. Blame, by nature, creates uncooperation.

If One Fails, We All Fail
At the end of the day, if the company fails, everyone suffers a loss—creators, implementers, stakeholders and everyone else. We only win if everybody wins. There is no victory in a great idea poorly executed or a poor idea greatly executed. There is only victory when the right idea is correctly executed.

Encouraging blame in one direction discourages the cooperation needed for success. Worse yet, it encourages the wrong definition of success. If someone defines success as “I did my part right, but the other team screwed up”, then you get people who are content with failure, provided they can pin the failure on someone else.

However, if you hold everyone accountable when a project fails, then nobody is content with failure. We are more likely to help each other and keep all the parts of strategy properly intertwined if we view our success as depending on others also succeeding. Creators won’t be able to ignore issues of capacity and capability. Implementers won’t be able to ignore the key differentiators in the strategy.

SUMMARY
When a project fails, the wrong question to ask is whether the blame belongs to strategy creation or strategy execution. This question discourages cooperation and creates an environment where failure is tolerated, provided the blame is not placed on me. If you want success, the question we should be asking is “How can we better integrate creation and execution, so that the probability of success increases.” This is done by:

1)Defining creation and execution as both being integral parts of Strategy.

2)Making sure the processes are intertwined:
a. Creators take capacity and capabilities into account when creating the position.
b. Implementers overweight their investments in time, money and labor in those areas most critical to the position.

3)Making sure the people are intertwined (creators and implementers are on each other’s teams).

4)Making sure failure is shared (so that there is no tolerance for failure and an incentive to help each other succeed).

FINAL THOUGHTS
The logic behind wanting to find someone to blame for failure is so that we can help prevent future failures. If you follow the suggestions in the summary, I think you still achieve the goal of helping prevent future failures without the negative consequences of the blaming process.

Strategic Planning Analogy #314: One Strategy

THE STORY
Early in my career, I was working on a project with another guy in the department. He seemed more motivated than normal get this project done. He also wanted me to be more highly motivated.

Trying to get me excited, he said, “I was talking to the boss, and he said that if we do a really good job on this project, I will get a big promotion.”

So I started thinking…this guy had less seniority than me and a lesser position. If he were to get a big promotion, it would mean that he would become my boss, putting an additional layer between me and the top of the organization. In essence, his reward would have the indirect effect of acting as if I we getting demoted, or at best having my career path made worse.

So, if WE work hard, HE benefits at MY expense. What’s in this for me? Would not I be better off if the project has a little less than a stellar performance? The status quo looked a lot better to me than the so-called “rewards” that would come from working harder.

I could see the look on the face of the guy I was working with. He was starting to realize what was going through my mind. Now he regretted having told me about his potential promotion.

THE ANALOGY
Business is ultimately about getting things done. One of Strategic Planning’s key roles is to help determine what should get done. However, just deciding what should get done does not necessarily ensure that it will, in fact, get done.

In the story, there was a disconnect between what the company wanted to get done and what I wanted to get done. Project success and my personal success were at odds with each other. As a result, I was not fully motivated to make the company goal a reality.

These types of situations happen in the business world all the time, often on a far larger scale than the project in my story. Businesses will make grand pronouncements of wonderful new strategic initiatives. They will explain how these new strategic plans will make everything for the company so much better.

Then, over time, you stop hearing much about that grand strategic initiative. Worse yet, there is no real evidence that the key elements of the strategy ever got accomplished. Status Quo prevails.

A year or two later, the business will make grand pronouncements about an entirely new and different set of strategic initiatives. Forget those old initiatives. Let’s embrace the new ones. Of course, the success in implementing the new initiatives turns out to be no better than the failure of the old ones.

Why? Usually in these situations, there is a disconnect between the ones declaring the initiative and the ones who are supposed to accomplish the initiative (just like what happened to me). Unless you fix the disconnect, the strategic initiative will not succeed.

THE PRINCIPLE
The principle here is that strategic planning needs to be more than just a source of great ideas or mandates. It also needs to get involved in the messy work of implementation. Otherwise, the forces of the status quo will usurp control and render the strategy powerless.

I was reminded of this principle today while reading an interview with one of the authors of a book called “One Strategy.” The book, which was published late in 2009, tells the story of the project to design and release Windows 7.

The premise of the book is as follows. Most companies have two strategies: The “explicit” or “directed” strategy (the declared strategic desire from the top) and the “implicit” or “emergent” strategy (what emerges from the everyday activities of the organization). If those two strategies are not aligned, you will fail.

The book’s prescribed solution is to seek “strategic integrity”—where both strategies are one and the same. This is done by working on all those forces which cause the “emergent” strategy to vary from the intended “directed” strategy. This includes things like policies, procedures, organization, rewards, incentives, management style, and so on. In addition, there needs to be constant communication between the keepers of the directed strategy and the keepers of the emergent strategy so that they can stay on the same page. The book uses blogs by the Windows 7 project manager to illustrate how Microsoft created strategic integrity through this process.

In my story above, my rewards and incentives were not aligned with the project, so I was less than fully motivated to make the project a success. There was the potential for me to lose strategic integrity.

What is amazing to me is that this is considered a radical enough new idea to warrant a book. Isn’t this just common sense? Let’s assume for a moment that I owned an auto repair shop and decided to turn it into a gourmet restaurant. I tell the head mechanic to make the change and then go away for a few months. When I come back, I find out that nothing had changed. When I ask the mechanic why the new strategy was not implemented, he says:

“You didn’t give me any money to make the conversion from auto repair to gourmet restaurant. I had no policies or procedures for running a restaurant. All the employees here are compensated as a % of the labor costs in automotive repairs. If they stop doing auto repairs, they stop getting paid. In addition, all the mechanics figured that they would soon be out of a job (replaced by chefs) if they cooperated. Finally, I’m more comfortable managing a repair shop than a restaurant. So we decided to keep things as they were.”

Common sense should tell us that this would be an expected response. If you truly wanted to make the conversion from auto repair shop to gourmet restaurant, you would need to get rid of all those barriers to conversion and stick around to make sure that the forces of status quo do not win.

But I guess it is not common sense, since strategic failure (lack of strategic integrity) is so common.

Part of this is the fault of the professional strategy community. We often don’t like getting our hands dirty with the messy task of implementation. We voluntarily cut ourselves out of the daily conversation where the “emergent” strategy takes place. This is a mistake. No wonder so many companies see strategy professionals as irrelevant.

Part of this is the fault of the operators who try to block strategists from “meddling” in their affairs. Strategists cannot help remove the barriers if they are forbidden from entry into the world of everyday business activity.

So how can we help fix this situation?

1) Create Incentives for Cooperation
If the natural tendency is for the two sides to not want to work together, create incentives to overcome these natural tendencies. Tell the strategists and the operators that neither is rewarded unless both do their part to build the One Strategy. Suddenly, their success is dependent upon each other, so there is more incentive to work together.

2) Blend the Teams
The operators are more likely to trust the “meddling” of the strategists if some of the members of the strategy team are current or former operators. In addition, the strategists are more inclined to get their hands dirty if members of their team are used to getting their hands dirty. So if you want one strategy, build one blended team.

Professional strategists and professional operators both have something to offer. Blend them together, so that they offer assistance to each other rather than offering two distinctively different strategies.

SUMMARY
Strategic plans are doomed if they are mere words handed off to people who are incented to keep the status quo. Strategy & Implementation need to be blended into a single, ongoing process.

FINAL THOUGHTS
I witnessed a company where about 90% of the organization believed that the “directed” strategy would have a negative impact on their career path. This was like my little story above, only multiplied by the thousands. As you may have guessed, the 90% revolted against the 10% and won. Never underestimate the potential resistance of people who feel that change threatens their personal agenda.

Strategic Planning Analogy #253: Sailing Into Headwinds

THE STORY
One time I was on an executive retreat and had the opportunity to go sailing in San Diego Bay. That sounded like a pleasant and relaxing way to spend an afternoon, so I signed up. When I got to the boat yard, I found out that I was going to one of the leading schools in the nation for teaching how to race sailboats competitively. Well, so much for relaxing.

We got a brief lecture on how to race sailboats (way too short for me) and then we were out in the water. I was relatively clueless about what was going on, but a least we had a good teacher on this large sailboat (or so I thought).

Well, we lost the race, but at least once it was over I thought I could get that relaxing boat ride I had wanted. The teacher said it should be very pleasant, since it never rains that time of year in San Diego. Shortly thereafter, it started to rain.

As the teacher was moving the sail to catch some wind, he unknowingly tried to place the crossbeam in the same location as where my head was. I was knocked flat on my back and almost fell into the bay. Fortunately, the only thing that went into the water was my hat. We got to watch it sink into the bay.

With a sore head, I was ready to go back to shore. Unfortunately, at this point the wind totally disappeared. We were stranded and couldn’t go anywhere. We waited what seemed to me to be forever. The wind never returned. Finally, the teacher decided to call to shore to get a motorized boat to tow us in.

What a crazy day. I haven’t gone sailing since.

THE ANALOGY
Strategic Planning is a lot like sailing a boat. In both cases, you have a team of people trying to move from one location to another. In a racing sailboat, the goal is to get to the finish line before anyone else. In strategic planning, the goal is to reach and own a winning position before anyone else.

If your sailing team doesn’t know how to get a sailboat moving, you will not achieve your race goal. Similarly, if your business does not know how to get a company moving, it will not successfully achieve its strategic goal. Therefore, this blog will look at what we can learn from sailing success and apply it to strategic success.

THE PRINCIPLE
The principle here has to do with motion. Without the right kind of movement, you will not achieve your goal. In sailing, motion depends upon harnessing the power of the wind. The wind is an external force, over which the sailor has very limited control. A similar force is at work in business—it is the movement of the marketplace.

The marketplace is made up of a variety of trends. They could be things like demographic trends, lifestyle trends, governmental trends, attitudinal trends, and economic trends. Sometimes the trends are moving up, sometimes they are moving down. For example, in demographics you may see an increase in the elderly or an increase in young Hispanics or a decrease in traditional families.

Whatever direction the trends are moving in, it is movement. It is this movement that changes the direction in which money is spent. Like the wind, the directional movement of how money is being spent in the marketplace tosses around the fortunes of businesses like a boat. Also, like the wind, these market forces are external to your business and you have only limited control over them.

Good sailors know how to harness that wind to their advantage. Good strategists need to do the same. So what can we learn from these sailors?

1. It is Easier to Adjust to the Wind Than to Get The Wind To Adjust to You
Racing sailboats have all kinds of ropes, pulleys and gears. These are used to reposition all of the sails in order to catch the wind. The idea is that although the wind is essential for moving the boat, if you want the boat to move in the proper direction, you need to adjust the location of the sails.

In the current economic difficulties, many managers are blaming the economy for their poor performance. They refer to the recession is a “strong headwind” which is holding them back from achieving their goals. A good sailor wouldn’t use these excuses. They would instead adjust their sails to use that headwind to their advantage.

This doesn’t mean that you necessarily have to abandon your overall strategy in order to catch some wind. In the case of Target stores, their “Expect More, Pay Less” strategy has had to adjust its sails to be focused a bit less on the “expect more” side and a bit more on the “pay less” in order to catch the winds of the economic downturn. The overall strategy still remains in tact.

On the west coast, many high end restaurants have found that the current economic winds are moving spending away from expensive meals, but still going out for drinks. Therefore, many of these restaurants are adjusting by expanding the size of their bar and cutting way back on seating for meals, but they still want to be seen as high end.

As sailors know, it is easier to adjust the sails to the wind than to command the winds to change to suit your sails. Businesses that are fighting the prevailing long-term trends of the marketplace tend to fail. Just as sailors cannot change the wind, you cannot suddenly change the economy or make baby boomers young again. Being out of touch with the times is hardly a winning strategy and wishing for the times to change doesn’t help. Instead, adjust!

2. Have a Course, But Be Flexible
But what if my strategy wants to take me in the direct opposite direction of the near-term prevailing trends? Well, good sailors know that one can even make forward progress using winds going in nearly the opposite direction. The tactic is called tacking. In tacking, you make forward progress by using a zig-zag motion. The zig-zags provide angles that can catch the wind from alternating sides in a way that combine to still get you going roughly forward.

The idea for business here is that even during rough patches, a strategy can still move forward. However, the exact course may need to adjust a little—perhaps become more zig-zag and less direct. Remember, the goal is not to follow a precise line in your journey. The goal is to reach the finish line. If modifying the path gets you to the finish line faster, than so be it.

What does tacking mean from a business point of view? Well, if the trend’s against you, then zig-zag the agenda of your conversation with the customer. For example, let’s say you want to sell expensive luxury goods in an economic time when customers are cutting back and desiring cheaper items. The customer wants the agenda to be about price. You need to zig-zag around that and use the tough economic times to create an agenda which helps you. Examples:

• Luxury items have a lower total cost of usage because they last longer and need fewer repairs.
• It’s really not price, but value which counts.

Remember that this is a race, so stealing share from the competition may be the best move when the pie stops growing. Zig-zag faster than the competition by adding more service to the package (increasing relative value), or introducing some lower-price entry products, etc.

You can be flexible in the path while keeping the same goal in sight. So don’t just go wherever the wind wants to go. That is randomness that never gets to the goal. Use the wind to go where you want to go, even if it means taking a slightly different path to get there.

3. It takes coordination
When I was sailing that boat in a race, I was not alone. We had a racing team positioned at different spots on the boat to make different adjustments. We had different roles, but we had to work together in order to make the proper adjustments. Our teacher told us what to do so that all of our individual actions added up to the right adjustment.

The same is true in business. Strategic plans need leaders who know what adjustments to make and teams of people who can coordinate their work in order to make that adjustment. Strategies need to be more than platitudes on a piece of paper. They need to embrace action plans.

4. Be Ever Alert
Winds can change in an instant. All it took was two planes ramming into the World Trade towers on 9-11 to instantly cause a major redirection of marketplace trends. Sailors pay attention to the weather to try to anticipate wind changes. We need to do the same by studying trends and doing scenario analyses, so that we can try to spot changes early and have a backup plan in place for when they do.

5. Don’t Just Sit there
When I was in that boat race, we never had a moment to rest. We were continually tightening and loosening ropes. Sometimes we had to change where we sat and lean so that the weight was in the right place. It was tiring work.

The same is true with strategy. It is not something you do once a year for a few days and then ignore for a year. It is an ongoing process that requires action all year long. Adjustments are being made daily. If the strategists are not in on the adjustment discussions, then the adjustments can make the overall strategy obsolete. You need to provide context so that all the adjustments eventually get you to your goal.

And when the winds die, don’t just sit there waiting. Find ways to get towed to where the winds are (spend some capital, reposition). Sometimes the prevailing winds have moved so far from where you are that it is time to refashion an entirely new strategy.

SUMMARY
Businesses move on the winds of marketplace trends. These trends direct the way the money flows. If you want that money to flow into your sails, you need to be adjusting your sails on a continual basis. This does not mean randomly drifting with the wind and chasing every fad, but in cleverly using those winds to accomplish your long term goals.

FINAL THOUGHTS
One time I went canoeing a large lake on a very windy day. The wind blew me westwardly across the large lake and quite a ways north. When I tried to turn around and go back, I was not strong enough to fight the wind. It kept pushing me and the canoe back to shore. Eventually I had to get out of the boat and knock on doors until someone could help me call the boathouse to get them bring out a pontoon boat to haul me and the canoe back…another example of the problems which occur if you ignore the wind when planning a journey.

Analogy #232: Breaking the Ice

THE STORY
Growing up in Michigan, I heard stories every year of how ice was affecting the shipping of goods through the Great Lakes. Each winter, portions of the Great Lakes waterway would freeze, making it impossible for the cargo ships to operate.

The Great Lakes shipping industry is vital to the economies of communities throughout North America and beyond. During the winter months, about 17 million tons of cargo flow through this waterway. Key cargos include coal for electricity and heat, iron ore for manufacturing, salt to keep roads open in the winter, and grain for food.

To keep the cargo moving, the US Coast Guard uses icebreaking ships. These ships do not carry cargo. Instead, they are specifically designed to break down ice, in order to create shipping lanes for the cargo ships. Without these icebreaker ships, many weeks of shipping would be lost each year.

THE ANALOGY
Although both types of ships are different, both the icebreaker ships and the cargo ships are necessary to accomplish the task. In fact, it is their differences which make each one valuable. No cargo ships could get through without the icebreaker ship creating the shipping lanes. And those shipping lanes would be worthless if there weren’t cargo ships to use them. They functions are both vitally important.

Both of these ships are specifically designed for their purpose. If you tried to use a cargo ship to break the ice, you would destroy the ship. And the icebreaker ships are not designed to carry much and would be highly inefficient as a cargo carrier.

There is a similar situation in business between “Leadership” and “Management.” Both are vitally important to get business accomplished, but they are different and cannot be a substitute for each other.

Leadership is like the icebreaker ship. Leadership looks ahead and creates the path to the future, like building a shipping lane through ice. Leaders (the icebreakers) provide guidance to show the followers (the cargo ships) where to go. Leaders need to innovate—break through the rigid ice of conventional thinking to achieve the next “breakthrough” idea. Leadership is mostly externally focused, scanning the environment to find a proper path.

Management is like the cargo ships. Management makes sure the details of the business get done—the cargo is loaded, shipped and delivered on time and under budget. Management is mostly internally focused on the specific task at hand.

Focusing on management alone can lead to two problems. First, management skills are good at making sure the task gets done, but not well suited for determining which task to do. Without leadership, one can end up becoming very good at managing a task that is no longer relevant.

Second, management alone can become so internally focused on improving the process that they fail to see the changing external conditions which can make all that effort for naught. The ice comes in and freezes that cargo ship of management so that it cannot move. Leaders are needed to detect the coming ice and find the proper path through it.

I have seen too many companies get all wrapped up into managing the tasks at hand to the exclusion of any leadership looks into the larger picture. The company just focuses on trying to do everything “just a little bit better.” The idea is that if we keep doing the same thing (only a little better) everything will work out all right.

In times of economic turmoil, like the current situation, it can become even more intense of a focus on managing the execution. Unfortunately, the economic turmoil has changed the environment. The old ways may no longer be appropriate. The leadership role is needed to find the new path in the icy storm.

Of course, as important as leadership is, it alone is not enough, either. Many great ideas from visionary leaders fail because of insufficient follow through on managing the process to bring the idea to light.

In addition, leaders are only great if they have followers. Just as shipping lanes in the ice are only useful if there is someone who follows behind and uses the lane, leaders need followers to create any value from the vision.

THE PRINCIPLE
The principle is that strategic planners need to recognize the existence of two essential, but different functions here—leading and managing. Each aspect needs a different kind of strategic plan.

The strategic questions which need to be answered for “leading” are as something like this:

1) What does the environment look like?
2) Where is the ideal place in this environment for our business to go?
3) What should our position be in the marketplace?
4) What does winning look like?
5) How do we need to change in order to win?

This tends to look like conventional strategic planning.

But we shouldn’t stop here. We need to plan the management of the vision as well. This second type of planning is often referred to as Project Management. This is how one coordinates all the little things that have to happen to make the plan come to life. The questions for planning at the management level look something like this:

1) What are all the tasks which need to be accomplished?
2) How do the tasks interact? Do they have to be done in a particular order? Where do tasks need to coordinate together?
3) Who will be responsible for getting each task done? What are the incentives/punishments associated with getting it done?
4) What are the timetables (due dates) for when each task needs to be completed?
5) How are we going to monitor all of this activity, to make sure it gets done properly?

To a professional strategist, this may look more like a tactic than a strategy. However, to the one who has to get the job done, this is his/her strategy. And getting this planned out properly is just a critical as getting the big picture correct.

Now, just as you use two different kinds of ships at sea (cargo and icebreaker), you probably need two different types of people to do these tasks (leading and managing), because the skill sets tend to be very different. But just because they are different tasks done by different people doesn’t mean they can act independently of each other. Tight coordination is needed.

The tasks being managed need to be moving the company in the direction of where the leader is trying to lead it. And the leadership cannot properly lead if it does not keep the managers in the communications loop. They are really just two aspects of the same process.

Therefore, when setting up your strategic planning process, make sure time is given to planning the plan (leadership) and planning the execution of the plan (management). Although they may take place at different times with different people, they need to coordinated on your calendar and be working towards the same agreed upon goals.

SUMMARY
For a company to succeed, it needs two things: the proper path into the future (Leadership), and a process to get there (Management). Both are essential and need to be a part of the overall strategic planning process. Leadership alone is just a dream with no way to fulfill it. Management alone will get a job done, but it may be absolutely the wrong job to be doing, because it is out of touch with the evolving environment.

FINAL THOUGHTS
A common term thrown about these days is “visualization.” The idea is that if we can just visualize hard enough the goal we want, the goal will somehow be miraculously be obtained. I’m not willing to just rely on thinking hard (leadership alone). I want to work hard as well (management).