Strategic Planning Analogy #572: Outcomes Vs. Objectives

THE STORY

There is a company I know of that desired two outcomes. First, they wanted a product mix skewed towards new products. Second, they wanted high returns on their investments.

So this company turned these desired outcomes into their goals. Then they set metrics around these goals in order to encourage compliance in new products and high returns.

Here’s what they got:

1. In order to meet the metric of having a high percentage of their products being new, the management discontinued a number of very viable and profitable older products, merely because they were old.
2. When they looked at the risk profile of their portfolio, they discovered that the riskiness had skyrocketed. As it turns out, high returns tend to come from high risks. By bypassing wonderful projects that would have exceeded their capital to focus on only the highest return options, they horribly skewed their riskiness.

So even though the company tried very hard to focus on the right outcomes, they created an environment which ironically created the wrong outcomes.

THE ANALOGY
Desiring great outcomes is a wonderful thing. There is nothing wrong per se in wanting lots of new innovations and having high returns on investments.

The problem occurred when this company turned their desired outcomes into company objectives.

Objectives are the things you want people in the company to do. Outcomes are net results of what happens in the marketplace based on what you did.

Objectives and outcomes should not be the same thing. When companies try to make them the same thing, they end up like the company in the story: They get lousy objectives and undesirable outcomes.

This distinction is critical for strategic planning. Strategic Planning tends to have a great deal of influence on what are the outcomes and objectives pursued by the company. If strategic planners get this wrong and make them the same, the company is doomed to repeat the errors in the story.

THE PRINCIPLE
The principle here is that if you want great outcomes, you need to have objectives which are different than the outcomes.

Why it’s Wrong To Make Higher Profits an Objective

Let me give you an example. Let’s say you want an outcome of higher profits. In most cases, that is a good outcome to desire. However, the best path to higher profits is rarely to make higher profits your objective.

Here’s what typically happens when you make profits your objective.

1.       A group of managers go crazy on cost reductions. They’re so busy cutting costs that they ruin your quality or ruin your service or stop investing in the future or have product shortages or miss deadlines, etc.
2.       Another group tries to get incremental sales at any cost. This usually results in unprofitable price wars, actions which alienate core customers, trying to be a one-size-fits-all solution which results in being a never-the-best-solution-for-any-customer solution, etc.

The problem is that higher profitability is too abstract and too numerical. It leads people to work on moving the numbers rather than doing the things that actually lead to higher profitability. In most cases, enduring higher profits come the following types of activities:

1.        Having a superior solution to what is being offered in the marketplace.
2.        Having a unique business model which produces this solution in a way that is both better than other people’s business models AND is difficult for the competition to imitate.
3.       Having superior access upstream to suppliers/partners and superior access downstream to distributors/customers.
4.       Having the best employees.
5.       Having a clear and simple message as to why your offering should be preferred as well as an organization focused on being the best at delivering on the promises of that message.

You don’t see the word “profitability” in any of those activities. However, if you want enduring profitability, these are examples of the types of activities you should be focused on. Therefore, if you have higher profits as your desired outcome, don’t also make it your objective. Instead center your objectives around tasks like those in the second list.

Have the Metrics Match the Objectives, Not the Outcomes

It is a well-known fact that people tend to focus on achieving the metrics which trigger their rewards. If your metrics are focused on the outcome, then you will get the mess we saw in the beginning story. However, if you focus the metrics on the objectives, then you will get people working on the very activities which lead to your desired outcomes.

Yes, I know that outcome-related metrics are typically much easier to set and to measure. Profits are a lot easier to measure than the superiority of a business model. But just because it is easier to do doesn’t make it right.

As we saw in the story above, when you measure “% of product sales that come from products less than 5 years old” you get people eliminating great products merely because they are more than five years old. Although this metric sounds like your outcome, it does not achieve your outcome.

To get the desired outcome, you may need measurements focused more on objectives. It could be something like “the number of products in the innovation pipeline today that are successful launches over the next two years.” Yes, that is a much messier metric, but it gets closer to the core of what you really want people to do to ultimately achieve your outcome.

I worry about this point a lot, because these days a lot of strategic planning departments are housed in finance. Finance people have a natural inclination to want to measure outcomes. That is what a CPA is trained to do. But is the absolute wrong thing for a strategic planner to do. They need to measure the inputs—the things that create the great outputs.

If you are measuring outputs as your metrics, not only are you measuring the wrong things, you have the wrong time frame. By the time you have the outcomes, it is too late. You cannot have any strategic impact on them. Once you know the profits for the year, it is too late to improve them. That’s why you need to measure the tasks or objectives which impact profits.

Wells Fargo

Wells Fargo recently got into a lot of trouble because they did not heed the advice of this blog. Wells Fargo desired the outcome of having a lot of customers with multiple accounts. There are many reasons why this can be a very good outcome. It creates economies of scale and it makes customers a lot stickier (harder for them to leave).

The problem occurred when Wells Fargo made getting customers into multiple accounts the company objective. By placing the major incentives around creating multiple accounts, employees did whatever it took to get those accounts established, including the creation of millions of accounts without the authorization of the customer. The end result was executives losing their jobs, destruction of the quality of the brand name, significant losses (customers and profits), etc.

Instead of having an objective be to create a lot of multiple accounts, the objective should have been to so be in tune with their customer’s needs and desires that the customers willingly want to sign up for those multiple accounts. That could include measuring activities like:

1.       Finding out what types of additional products the customers want.
2.       Coming up with more efficient ways to create and deliver these products than other alternatives.
3.       Making sure the benefits of bundling for the customer are clearly superior to the customer getting these services from multiple suppliers.
4.       Making sure the portfolio of offerings is consistent with the brand and improves the brand (and does not confuse the customer as to what the brand Wells Fargo stands for).
5.       Making sure people are not turned away from Wells Fargo due to heavy pressure sales.

SUMMARY

Outcomes and objectives are both important to a business. But that doesn’t mean they are the same thing. Objectives are what you want people to do. Outcomes are the results in the marketplace based on what you have done. Ironically, if you want to achieve your outcomes, you need to develop objectives which are different from your outcomes. And this includes developing your metrics around objectives rather than outcomes. If you don’t, people will chase the wrong numbers in the wrong way and destroy the business.

FINAL THOUGHTS
Getting a company to properly grasp the difference between outcomes and objectives may be the single most important thing a strategic planner can do. I guess we can put that on their list of objectives.

Strategic Planning Analogy #472: Watering Seeds

 

THE STORY
This past summer was unseasonably hot and dry.  My lawn suffered from the harsh weather.  As a result, I needed to plant some grass seed this fall to fill in the dead spots. 

Getting grass seed to grow takes a lot more effort than just throwing some seeds on the ground.  First you have to loosen the soil.  Then you have to keep watering it on a regular basis for several weeks.  Then you have to fertilize it.  That was tough work.  Tossing the seeds on the ground was the easy part.

At first, I thought I wasn’t watering the grass enough.  But then I saw a cardinal giving himself a bird-bath in a puddle where I had watered.  So I guess I watered enough.

And now, my lawn is covered with new grass.

 

THE ANALOGY
Strategy is like grass seed.  It is something new sown into the business with the hope of increasing the growth and value of the company.  And if you want to take the analogy further and think of US dollars as “greenbacks,” strategies are the grass seeds that create that green (money).

The problem is that just because one throws seed on the ground does not guarantee that the growth will occur.  If the ground is hard and dry, the seeds will just sit there until the birds eat it.  Similarly, if strategy is just thrown at a company, there is no guarantee that the strategy will take root. Just as it took a lot more than just tossing seeds to get grass, it takes a lot more than just delivering a strategy in order to achieve a strategy.

If you see the role of strategy as merely delivering a fancy document with all the clever ideas on it, then all you have done is just toss seeds at the company.  The document will then most likely just end up on a shelf and never be touched again.  It’s as if the birds ate all your seeds.

No, if you want a strategy which gets implemented, you have to get involved in all the other work—the ground preparation, the watering and the fertilizing.

  

THE PRINCIPLE
The principle here is that strategies only succeed in a company which is committed to making it succeed.  And that does not usually happen naturally.  In fact, there is usually active resistance to strategies because they require changing the status quo—and that bothers those who are comfortable or have power in the status quo.  Therefore, if you want to successfully implement a strategy, you can’t just give it to the company—you have to actively counter that resistance as part of the strategy process. 

We will refer to those actions as preparing the soil, watering, and fertilizing.

1. Preparing the Soil

In grass-growing, you prepare the soil before planting the seed. The idea is to loosen the soil so the seed can penetrate and get buried in the soil.

A similar activity needs to take place in strategy.  Before presenting the strategy, you need to first prepare the audience so that the strategy will penetrate their wall of resistance.  Since that wall of resistance is in their minds, then the mind is where you need to prepare the soil.

The core idea is very simple.  People act based on the way they think.  Therefore, if you want to change the way they act, you must first change the way they think.  In other words, if you want the leaders embrace and willingly implement the strategy, then you must first get them to think that it is right to abandon the status quo and embrace the new strategy.

There are several ways to change that mind.  The first approach is “The Burning Platform.”  This is where you change how people think about the status quo.  The idea is to convince them to believe that remaining with the status quo is not a viable option for the long term.  It does not work in the changing environment.  Instead, it is like being on a platform which is burning up.  It is only a matter of time before it is all burned up.   And if we do not jump off that platform, we will burn up as well.  It is only a matter of time.  So we may as well jump as soon as possible.

The second approach is “The Locked Door.”  The idea here is to paint a picture of a glorious and prosperous future—a place so desirable that it makes your executives salivate with anticipation when thinking of it.  Then you convince them that there is a locked door between them and that glorious future.  That locked door is the status quo.  It is impossible to reach that future as long as we cling to the status quo, because that approach cannot get you there.  It is only by tearing down the status quo that we can enter that glorious future.

The first approach of thinking prevents actions of turning back and the second approach of thinking increases enthusiasm for actions moving forward.  Depending on the nature of your soil (type of resistance) you may need one of these or some other thinking approach to prepare them for proper acceptance and action.

2. Watering the Soil

Watering the soil is an intensified effort for the period immediately after planting the seed.  It is not a one-time act, but needs to be done continually until the grass seed has fully sprouted.  The strategic planning equivalent is working intensely with executives until they see the connection between the long-term strategy and their daily actions.

If executives do not see a connection between their daily decisions/actions and the long term strategy, then they will not change their daily decisions or actions.  And, as we all know, if the daily actions don’t change, then the long-term outcomes will not change.  The real strategic outcome of a company is the cumulative result of all those daily actions (not the result of that document on the shelf).  So if you want to get the new strategy implemented, if must be meaningfully represented at the point when daily decisions are made.   Watering the seed then means that strategists need to be present when daily decisions are being made—to teach people how the new strategy should influence how those decisions are made.

For example, new strategies are typically about winning a particular position.  And in order to have enough emphasis in the winning area, one usually needs to makes trade-offs with areas less critical to that success.  Therefore, our daily actions need to make the right trade-offs so that we choose in the direction of the winning position.  And if intensive effort is not placed on training people to make the right trade-offs, then wrong trade-offs will occur.

Think back a few years ago to the crisis at Toyota.  Their strategy was built upon winning in dependability.  However, for awhile, management’s daily decisions were not keeping dependability at the forefront.  Ideas of growth, expansion, and low prices got in the way.  As a result, dependability suffered (numerous crashes, lawsuits and recalls) and Toyota had a huge set-back.  Management had to go back and re-water the soil—to get everyone to realize that dependability is top priority and must penetrate every decision made on a daily basis.  Once the soil was sufficiently watered with that intensive effort, dependability came back and so did the prospects at Toyota.

3. Fertilizing the Soil
Fertilization is a brief activity which takes place at set intervals.  For example, many recommend fertilizing grass 5 times a year.  The equivalent activity in strategy is the strategic review.  The idea here is that just as periodic fertilization keeps the grass on track to grow, periodic strategic reviews help keep the strategy on track to proper implementation.

There are several methods to do this.  One is the dashboard approach.  The idea is to set desired near-term outcomes related to the strategy.  These are usually referred to as KPIs, or key performance indicators.  You then measure actual performance against the KPIs and display them on a dashboard.  Periodically you look at the performance on the dashboard and make the appropriate adjustments to get back on track.  Depending on how broadly you want to measure the strategy you will end up with different dashboards.  In the broadest approach, you end up with something like a Balanced Scorecard.

A strategic review which will occur less frequently is the review of assumptions.  The idea here is to periodically go back to the core assumptions behind the strategy to ensure that they are still relevant.  If they are no longer relevant, then it is time to modify the strategy.  Sometimes, this process makes use of scenario planning.  In scenario planning, several potential environmental assumptions are examined.  Strategies are developed for the most like sets of assumptions.  Then, at the periodic reviews, one looks to see which scenario is coming to pass, so that  one will know which path to take.

A third approach for strategic review is known as stage-gating, or real options.  The idea here is that large strategic initiatives are broken down into smaller parts.  Each part optimizes the strategy based on what is known at the moment the stage is started.  Then, based on what is learned over the interim of that stage, you choose the proper next stage, and so on.  The periodic reviews occur for each stage.

An example would be in oil drilling, where one buys an option to drill well before drilling begins.  Then one examines in more detail the likelihood of that being a good place to drill.  If yes, the next stage is to prepare drilling.  If no, you let the right to drill lapse.  The idea is to maximize action while minimizing risk.

 

SUMMARY
Just having a strategy does not guarantee that the strategy will become a reality in the business.  To increase the likelihood that the strategy comes to pass, you also need three other activities:

1. Preparing the Soil--Changing the way the company thinks, so that they naturally want to work hard to make the strategy come to pass.
2. Watering the Soil—Intensive effort up-front to teach people how to incorporate the essentials of the strategy into everyday decision-making.
3. Fertilizing the Soil—Periodic strategic reviews in order to make sure everything is on track, that the assumptions still hold, and that periodic adjustments can be made.

 

FINAL THOUGHTS
You can’t prepare the soil, water the soil and fertilize the soil if you are locked up in the ivory tower at corporate.  No, you have to get your hands dirty and get out into the field where the soil is.

Strategic Planning Analogy #427: Reporting Documents Vs. Managing Documents

THE STORY
Back when I was in college, I was a DJ on the college radio station. Near the end of one year, there was a student who suddenly realized she was about to graduate without any marketable skills. She decided to put in some time on the radio station to get some free experience.

The only position she could get on short notice was to announce sports news. Unfortunately, she knew absolutely NOTHING about sports (her passion was classical music). Before going on the air, she would ask me questions, like which sport did a particular team play, or what was the name of a sports team in a particular city. She literally knew NOTHING about sports.

As a result, her sports reports were the worst I ever heard. All she would do is state the name of a city and its score. One after another after another after another after another, with no commentary, no insights, no additional statistics, no excitement. It was painful to listen to.

THE ANALOGY
Sports scores are important. They tell you who won and who lost. But that’s about it.

They really don’t give you a feel for how the game was played. You don’t know what happened to create the score. You don’t know how many near-scores were prevented by great defense. You have no idea what any of the players did. You don’t know the team strategy. If all you have are the scores, you are missing a lot. And as a result, that woman’s sport’s report was missing a lot—which made it a terrible report.

The same is true in the business world. There are financial metrics which can tell you the results of how well a company did, like Net Earnings or Earnings per Share (EPS). These types of metrics are like the final scores in a sporting event. They are important to know, but they really don’t tell you a lot.

For example, did EPS go up because earnings went up or because outstanding shares went down? Did earnings go up because of increased volume, decreased expenses, or a one-time accounting adjustment? Are the results repeatable, or based on unusual one-time circumstances? None of this can be discerned from just looking at earnings.

What if you had a sport team coach who never watched the game he was coaching and only looked at the score? He wouldn’t be able to coach well, because he would not have any knowledge of what was happening on the field of play. He wouldn’t know how well individual players were playing or how effective particular plays were.

Similarly, how can you expect business managers to execute well if all they do is look at final results? They have no idea of what’s happening out in the marketplace. They don’t know who is performing well. They don’t know which tactics are working. Worse yet, they may be satisfied with final results, not realizing that they were obtained illegally, unethically, or by means of tactics which will destroy long-term performance.

You wouldn’t expect a coach or a sports announcer to only look at final results. Yet, so often we tolerate this in the business world.

THE PRINCIPLE
The principle here is that, by definition, “results” are the result of something which occurred in advance. Results are merely outcomes produced by prior actions. Earnings don’t magically appear by themselves. They are the result of a lot of prior activities. Therefore, if you want to impact results, you have to manage those prior activities.

As we saw in a prior blog, if all a coach does is yell at his players to “Make a higher score,” he has not provided any insight into how to get a higher score. His yelling is fairly worthless. If you want better results (a higher score), you need to dig deeper into how the game is played.

Similarly, if all we tell an employee is to “Get higher sales,” we have not provided any helpful insights. If you want higher sales, you need to dig deeper into how sales are made.

Reporting Tools are Not the Best Management Tools
Part of the problem is that businesses often use the same metrics to manage reported results (outcomes) as they do to manage operations (inputs).

“Results Reports” are the scoreboards of business. They are typically income statements, balance sheets, cash flow statements, or some variation of these. They tell the external stakeholders how well you did. They let the shareholders, debt holders, and government agencies “know the score.”

These are great reports. However, their focus is primarily on the outcome, not what caused the outcome. They let you know the score, but not what created the score.

Sports scores may be great for telling the external world how the team did, but they are not the best tools for helping the team improve that performance. To do that, they look at different data, like who is making errors, how successful are particular plays being executed, are people playing with the proper form, do they know what to do, are they cooperating as a team, and so on. You won’t find those answers in the final score. That’s why sports teams use tools other than the scoreboard to improve results.

Similarly, the reported results in an income statement or balance sheet won’t give an adequate enough picture to know how to improve those results for a business. They tell you the “what” but don’t tell you the “why.”

Therefore, businesses should be more like sports—use one tool to report results and another report to manage the process to get those results.

Example
We can see this in the example of a retailer. One of the key results a retailer wants is sales. Yet, as we saw earlier, just wishing for sales or yelling at employees to get sales will not create sales. Sales are the result of prior activity.

What are the prior activities which create retail sales? The formula looks something like this:

SALES = (# of customers) X (# of trips to the store) X (# of items bought per trip) X (the average price per item purchased)

In other words, if you want to increase sales, you need to do a combination of the following:

a) Get more customers;
b) Get the customers to come more often;
c) Get the customers to buy more items; and
d) Get the customers to buy more expensive items.

You can measure these items by looking at:

a) Customer Counts
b) Customer Frequency (which is easier to measure now that customers have loyalty cards).
c) Size and Composition of the Average Transaction (in units and currency)

Then you can design tactics to improve these activities. And then you can measure your success with these types of metrics.

However, none of these metrics can be found on an income statement. The first line on the income statement is “sales.” The sales are already assumed to exist and are reported as a done deal. It gives the “sales” score, but no insight on how to improve it. The income statement is a miserable way to manage sales. Instead of using that results report mechanism, one needs a management report with these other measures.

How Did We Get Here?
Although it may now seem obvious that different tools are needed to manage a business than to report results, many businesses tend to use results documents for both. Budgets are usually based on result metrics. Bonuses are based on result metrics. Management meetings focus on result metrics. It’s as if everyone is yelling about the size of the sales without ever bringing up the measures which truly impact sales.

How did we get to this situation? I think a lot of it has to do with the tight connection between the accounting function and the strategic analysis function in many companies. They are often the same people or exist in the same department.

The accounting orientation has a predisposition towards result reporting (it is what they were trained to do). In addition, it is a lot easier to report everything if everything uses the same report. Therefore, there is a temptation to force all reporting into a result-oriented template.

Yet this is not the ideal format to understand what is happening in those activities which really create those results. It is not the right tool to manage what causes those results. A different monitoring system is needed…a strategic one.

SUMMARY
Although results reports, like income statements, are useful (particularly for external stakeholders), they are insufficient. If you truly want to manage the important internal activities which cause these results, you need a different tool. You need a tool which monitors how well people are performing on the key inputs to that performance. Otherwise, all you are doing is shouting the score without any clue as to how to improve the score.

FINAL THOUGHTS
Sports media like ESPN, Sports Illustrated, and EuroSport spend only a small percentage of their time reporting scores. Instead, they focus their time on trying to understand the performance behind the scores. Is your reporting approach more like these companies, or more like the woman I knew back at the college radio station (who didn’t have a clue as to what was behind those scores)?

Strategic Planning Analogy #426: The Gotcha Guys (Part 2)

THE STORY
There’s an old saying that “absence makes the heart grow fonder.” That may be true, but absence certainly does not make the relationship easier.

My son works the day shift. His fiancée works the night shift. As a result, they do not see as much of each other as they would like and that adds difficulty to the relationship.

I can empathize with that. When I first moved to Columbus, my wife stayed back in Minneapolis for awhile (about 750 miles away). That was tough.

THE ANALOGY
For a relationship to thrive, there needs to be interaction. This is not only true with marriage. It is also true with the various aspects of one’s business. In particular, I am thinking about the people in charge of long range strategic goals and the people in charge of monitoring near-term financial targets (like annual budget and bonus targets).

If these two groups are not interacting together on a regular basis, they can get out of sync with each other. It can get as dysfunctional as when married couples drift apart and no longer interact on a regular basis.

If the near-term monitors and the long-term strategists are not in regular communication, their agendas may no longer be compatible. Achieving the near-term targets may no longer move the company towards the long-term goals. They might even do the opposite and move the company further away from the long term intent.

As we saw in the previous blog, many problems can occur when the near-term monitoring of the “Gotcha Guys” loses the context of the long-term goals. The Gotcha Guys can end up rewarding bad behavior and punishing good behavior. They can also stifle the creativity needed to achieve ambitious long term goals.

In this blog, we will look at some suggestions to help avoid these problems (and keep that context in place).

THE PRINCIPLE
The principle here is that long-term goals are only achieved if they are part of the daily discussion when near-term targets are being decided and monitored. Therefore, it is essential to have frequent interaction between the near-term Gotcha Guys and the long-term strategists. Here are some ideas to help make this a reality.

Suggestion #1: Set More Strategic Targets
Most of the near-term targets used by companies are simple financial metrics, like “sales” or “expenses.” As we saw in the last blog, it can be easy for people to “game the system” and use tricks to achieve these types of simple metrics in ways that have nothing to do with achieving strategic goals.

Some try to avoid this problem by trying to make the metrics more complex by using ratios. Then you might have metrics like “Sales per Labor Hour” or “Expenses as a Percent of Sales.” But, as we saw in an earlier blog, even ratios can be abused and lose their link to the bigger strategic picture.

Therefore, I suggest that some of the near-term targets avoid numbers altogether. Instead create some monitoring questions which are more subjective—requiring more of a yes or no type of answer.

In its roughest form, the question would be “Did this area take the desired steps to move the company closer to its strategic objectives?” Now this is probably too vague to use in this form. But if you have a well thought out strategy, you should be able to figure out what types of key activities need to take place to make it a reality. Then you can determine which areas of the business need to participate in each activity and how they can impact it. Some examples of key activities might be:

a) Adding some specific capacity where it is lacking.
b) Adding some specific capability where expertise is lacking.
c) Convincing consumers to believe in the claims of your positioning.
d) Creating superiority in a particular attribute essential to winning in the marketplace.
e) Properly resolving a key strategic issue.

By holding people accountable in the near-term for specific activities directly linked to the long-term strategy, one is more likely to get the long term strategy achieved. These types of questions are more difficult to “game” because you are more directly measuring actual long-term activities.

Now some people will take this one step further and try to create fine-tuned metrics around these activities. This is usually referred to as a balanced scorecard. Although having a balanced scorecard is better than just the simple metrics mentioned earlier, it may still be less ideal than the more vague and abstract version of the question “Did you move us closer to our goal?”

I have two reasons for saying this. First, if you keep the question more vague, it requires more interaction between the long-term folks and the Gotcha Guys in order to interpret the target and the performance. And as we said at the beginning of the blog, more interaction is a good thing.

Second, the more we try to push this into a metric rather than a question, the easier it is to sever the linkage between near- and long-term. The temptation is there to focus on just “hitting the number” rather than “doing what’s right.” Why provide that type of temptation?

Now I’m not saying that all the targets should be in this format. Just do enough so that the near-term and long-term people are forced to work together to ensure that people are rewarded on their activities in a long-term context.

Suggestion #2: Use Scenario Planning
As we said in the last blog, near-term targets can get out of sync with long-term goals when the environment changes (or we learn of a need to adjust our assumptions). One way to get around this problem is to analyze various scenarios in the beginning and think through their ramifications to the desired metrics.

Then, if the situation changes, the long-term people can tell the short-term people to shift the program to the alternative scenario and its alternative metrics. By using this process, it gives more opportunities for the two groups to work together (when setting up the scenarios and when changing scenarios). In addition, it is a quick way to keep everyone in sync when times change.

Suggestion #3: Force Interaction
Finally, if these other suggestions do not create enough interaction, then mandate it through policy.
Mandate periodic cross-functional meetings. Rotate people between the two departments. Put them on project teams together. Make increased interaction one of their goals. Have them sign-off on some of each other’s work. Do whatever it takes to ensure that the short-term Gotcha Guys are confronted with the long-term context.

SUMMARY
It is easy for near-term targets to get out of sync with long-term goals. To help prevent this from happening, it is a good idea for the groups responsible for near-term and long-term to interact on a regular basis. Three suggestions to do this are:

1) Add some abstract action-oriented questions to the near term criteria (“Did you do what was required to get us closer to our goal?”);

2) Use Scenario Planning;

3) Force interaction through policy decisions.

FINAL THOUGHTS
If couples stop communicating altogether, they can end up getting a divorce. Let’s keep our communications frequent between the near-termers and the long-termers to prevent an ugly divorce in our business.

Strategic Planning Analogy #425: The Gotcha Guys (Part 1)

THE STORY
Many years ago, the US Postal Service ran an advertising campaign to increase the use of its priority mail service. The advertising was a tremendous success—far higher than anticipated. Usage of priority mail skyrocketed. The return on that advertising investment was phenomenal. It paid for itself many times over.

The US Postal Service employee in charge of the advertising was pleased with how well the advertising was working. He could see that each dollar spent on the ads returned high levels of profits. Therefore, he increased the spending on the ads. And the ads continued to perform well.

You’d think that the US Postal Service would be happy with these outstanding results. Instead, they fired the employee in charge of the advertising. Why? The man had overspent his allocated advertising budget. And that was considered an offense worthy of being fired.

THE ANALOGY
In this story, we see two points of view. The employee felt he should be rewarded, because he had dramatically increased the profitability of the Postal Service—far more than what was expected. He saw that as a great success.

By contrast, the US Postal Service saw it as a great failure, because the expense budget allocated for advertising had been violated. Such a gross overspending needed to be severely punished.

The employee understood the “Big Picture”: He knew that the postal service needed to create demand for the more profitable Priority Mail if it was to have any long-term viability. He was fulfilling that big picture purpose. His superiors, however, were focused on the “Little Picture”: The postal service was losing money, so it needed to control each line item of costs on the income statement. By losing sight of the big picture, these superiors made a poor long-term decision regarding the advertising.

A similar situation can occur in strategic planning. Somewhere within the planning process, one usually sets some near-term targets—usually financial in nature (the Little Picture). Then there are people assigned to monitor progress against those targets. If the targets are not achieved, then this violation is brought to everyone’s attention.

I call these monitors of the Little Picture the “Gotcha Guys” because they appear to take great pleasure in catching people in the wrong. When they see a violation, they seem to want to shout “Gotcha!” because they like catching people in the act of violating the rules and want everyone to know that they caught someone. These are the types of people who would take pleasure in firing the US Postal Service employee who broke the rule on advertising spending.

Although one needs people to monitor this near-term performance, one must never forget the larger context of the Big Picture. Remember, the ultimate goal of strategic planning is to improve the long-term prospects of the business, NOT to hit every interim target exactly.

In practice, sometimes you can end up discovering a better path to long term performance which doesn’t exactly mesh with the pre-set interim targets. As long as this better path is consistent with the foundational principles of the strategy, it should not be severely punished.

THE PRINCIPLE
The principle here is that near-term performance always needs to be evaluated within the longer-term context. Otherwise, near-term performance may never lead to the desired long-term results. This blog will briefly look at three problems which can occur when this context is ignored. In the next blog will look at ideas to help keep the context in place.

Problem #1: The Linkage Is Not Ironclad
When the near-term targets are set, there is an assumption that there is a linkage between the near-term target and the long-term goal. In other words, there is an assumption that if the targets are generally achieved, then the goal will be generally achieved.

In a rough sense, that is commonly true—there usually is some sort of linkage. The targets of where to cut and where to invest tend to be made with the idea that they will lead to the right outcomes.

The problem is that this linkage is not ironclad. One cannot assume that there is an unbreakable connection between the two.

For example, sometimes one can find ways to achieve the near term targets in a manner contrary to the long-term goals. Haven’t you ever seen managers find tricks to achieve their numbers (and get big bonuses) which are contrary to long-term intent? They cut needed investments and repairs to hit the near-term expense targets while jeopardizing long-term capabilities. Or they hit a near-term sales target by using tricks which either destroy profits or hurt future sales opportunities. These are the people who are destroying the future, but are wrongly ignored by the Gotcha Guys because they hit their targets.

Conversely, there can be ways to improve strategic outcomes which violate the near-term targets (as we saw with the postal service advertisements). These are the people who are improving the future, but get wrongly punished by the Gotcha Guys, because they missed their targets. In both cases, because the Gotcha Guys are not evaluating near-term performance within the long-term context, they are coming to the wrong conclusion.

Don’t assume an ironclad link. Evaluate each case to make sure the right long-term move was made.

Problem #2: We Learn As We Implement
When the implementation plan and near-term targets are set, we make the best choices based upon what we know at the time. However, as we start the implementation, we learn even more. Sometimes we learn that some of our assumptions weren’t as good as we thought. For example, competition may react differently than anticipated. Or, as we saw in the story, advertising may work a lot better than anticipated.

As we learn, we need to adapt. Sometimes that adapting means that the original targets need to be adjusted. I’m pretty sure that if the Postal Service had known in advance how well the advertising would work, they would have set a higher target for advertising expenses.

In other words, our good intents on target-setting may have lead to the wrong targets. As we learn this, we should adjust the targets. I’m not saying here that we should continually change our Big Picture strategy based on the latest whim. That should be relatively stable. But sometimes tactics need to be adjusted (in light of new learnings) in order to better achieve that same strategy.

The Gotcha Guys tend to ignore learnings and just zero-in their focus on monitoring performance on the original targets. This can lead to not taking advantage of the new learnings and sub-optimizing long-term performance.

Problem #3: Gotcha Guys Stifle Creativity/Innovation
One of the key buzz words these days in “Innovation.” Most of the recent literature seems to promote the idea that great strategic leaps forward require an innovative approach. We need to think “outside the box” in order to find our strategic edge.

The problem with a rigid adherence to the near-term targets is that the targets were probably set with “inside the box” thinking. A truly innovative approach may require severing the linkage between the target and the strategic goal.

If the Gotcha Guys are given too much power to force compliance with the near-term targets, they may inadvertently be stifling any creativity and innovation. Creative approaches which could lead to superior achievement of long-term goals might be abandoned, for fear of upsetting the Gotcha Guys.

SUMMARY
Although there is a need to break down long-term strategic goals into near-term tactics, problems can arise if those near-term tactics take on a life of their own outside the context of the bigger picture. For example, tactics can be achieved using tricks that do not support the strategy. Or, tactics may become obsolete as we learn more through implementation. Or, innovative ways to improve on the big picture may be ignored because they do not fit with the original tactics. That is why compliance with near-term targets needs to be done within the context of the longer-term strategy. That way, we can assure that the right things get done—not only for now, but for the future.

FINAL THOUGHTS
The recent news from the US Postal Service is that they are near bankruptcy and that drastic changes are needed in order to survive. Perhaps if they had spent more time years ago incorporating the big picture into their decisions (rather than punishing creative initiative) they would not be in a mess as large as they are today. Learn from the mistakes of the US Postal Service.

Strategic Planning Analogy #421: Tapping the Power

THE STORY
One year for Christmas I decided to put up a larger than normal Christmas light display in my front yard. I bought all sorts of new items to place in my yard, including a metal deer covered in lights with a motor that made its head go up and down.

Everything worked fine for a few days. Then it stopped working. The lights went out and the motor stopped working. I spent many hours over many days going over everything in the front yard trying to get it to work again. I assumed that something in the display was broken, so all I need do is fix the display and everything will be fine.

So I spent hours looking for the brokenness in the display. I wiggled all the wires in the display. Nothing helped. For the rest of the season, the display at my house was dark and lifeless.

After Christmas, I started to take all of the lights and displays down. It was then that I saw a switch in my garage that I had never noticed before. It was a circuit breaker switch. I pushed the button, and all of a sudden the remaining parts of the display began to work.

If I had only spent a second at the beginning of the season pushing that button in the garage, I could have saved all of those many hours wasted in the front yard trying to get that display to work.

THE ANALOGY
My goal was to have a great Christmas light display. Therefore, that is where I focused my efforts. When my goal was not being achieved, I spent my time looking for a solution somewhere in the display.

Unfortunately, the problem was not hidden within the display. It was back behind the scenes in the garage. Had I only taken my eyes off the goal, I would have seen that the display was fine and that the problem was that there was no electrical power getting to the display. Had I spent more time thinking about the power behind the display, I would have had a working display that year.

A similar situation can occur in strategic planning. We can get so focused on our strategic goal that we forget about looking at how well the goal is connected to the corporate energy source. Since the goal is what we want, we look at fixing the elements of the goal when results fall short. This can all be a waste of effort, since the problem often is a result of insufficiently tapping into corporate energy. Turn on the power of the organization, and the results will come on their own.

THE PRINCIPLE
The principle here is about discerning the difference between power and performance. Performance is the output—it is what we want to happen. It is our goal. Power, by contrast, is the input—it is the energy needed to accomplish the goal.

Strategic planning is usually pretty good about managing the performance. It helps us decide what we want to happen (goals) and how we are going to measure the results (metrics). Many times, however, the process comes up short on managing the power. It doesn’t go behind the scenes to ensure that sufficient energy is focused on the plan.

Power is often just assumed to be there. Just set the goal and the work will get done. Therefore, all the effort is spent on getting the right goal and measuring the progress towards the goal. Nobody bothers to go back into the garage to make sure the power switch is set in the “on” position.

The real problem occurs when performance falls short of plan. If you focus only on the performance, you may not be able to fix the problem, because the cause may be insufficient power.

For example, let’s say that you have a goal to achieve dramatic sales growth for a particular product and performance is falling short. To fix the sales problem, you may look for a sales solution. You may look to change the advertising, or change the pricing, or start a new sales promotion, or some such similar tactic. This would be similar to when I tried to fix my Christmas display by tinkering with pieces of the display. And, like with my Christmas display, all those efforts may not work.

However, if you stepped back to consider the power in your organization, you may have found that there was nothing wrong with the original plan (as far as it went). Instead, the problem was insufficient motivation amongst those required to do the selling (not enough power). Perhaps they do not believe in the product. Perhaps they have put their power behind a different product in the portfolio. Perhaps they just aren’t motivated to work hard because they feel no loyalty to the company. If you fix the power, the performance will come all on its own, because highly motive employees can accomplish much.

Problem #1: No Power
There are two ways in which a company can mismanage power. First, they may not create sufficient power. I have personally witnessed how much performance is impacted by the level of power running through the employees.

For example, I worked with a company that used to have a lot of power flowing through the employees. They were highly motivated to “do whatever it takes to win.” They loved the founder and would go the extra effort in response to that love. The place felt like a family and everyone worked hard for the good of the family. The power was huge and performance was outstanding.

Then something happened—the founder retired and the new leadership destroyed the feeling of family. As a result, work became nothing more than just a job. People went from voluntarily working 70 hours a week (because they loved doing it) to working only 50 hours a week. The energy levels during those 50 hours went down as well (because they didn’t love doing it as much and they didn’t care as much). The power of family love was replaced with unproductive in-fighting. Personal goals replaced doing whatever it takes for the greater good. And, not surprisingly, performance started to suffer.

The company is scrambling to find ways to get performance back up. But the focus in on adjusting the tactics rather than the power behind the tactics. As a result, they are fighting a losing battle.

In essence, the company had unknowingly turned off the switch in the garage, not realizing how much impact that would have on the display out front. And now they are trying to fix the problem by tweaking the display rather than turning the switch back on.

By contrast, I had the privilege to work in the past with the employees of Save-A-Lot, a hard discount, low price food retailer similar to Aldi. When you walked into the Save-A-Lot headquarters, you could feel all the energy and buzz around you. The power switch was on full power.

When you talked to the people, the conversation wasn’t around doing a job of pushing groceries at a profit. Instead, people talked in terms more similar to a religious revival. They talked about the pride they had in providing a higher standard of living to those who society tended to overlook. They talked about bringing “greater dignity” to the poor by packaging the food products to look like the brands the rich people ate. They not only wanted to feed these people, but improve their sense of self-worth. It was as if they weren’t grocers, but missionaries on a mission to save the poor from malnutrition and humiliation. They were united in purpose and focused on this larger, more personal motivation. And guess what? This power lead to great performance.

To achieve high levels of power, you need to supply high levels of purpose. This purpose needs to transcend just working for a paycheck. It requires tapping into the inner desires of your people. This concept seems to be taking on greater significance, as the Millennials who are now entering the workforce seem more focused on this greater purpose than the Baby Boomers they are replacing. If you do not provide a greater purpose, you will lose a lot of the power potential in the Millennial segment.

Strategic Planning can help by infusing a higher purpose into the Vision and Mission Statements. Planners can help ensure that strategic processes not only looks at managing performance, but also proactively manages power. They can make sure that power issues get sufficient attention.

Problem #2: Power Unlinked
Even if the company is full of power, performance may still suffer if there is insufficient connection between the power and the performance. My Christmas display only worked when plugged into the power source in the garage. Similarly, strategists need to connect the strategy to the power in the people.

Strategists need to show how the strategy is connected to the higher purpose. They need to show how achievement of the strategy not only improves performance, but improves achievement of the higher purpose. They need to show that putting effort behind the plan gets them closer to the higher purpose that doing something else.

SUMMARY
Often, the best way to ensure that strategic goals are met is to take your focus off the goals and focus instead on ensuring that the organization is powerfully motivated to achieve the goals. This typically requires bonding with employees at a deeper level (than merely meeting the goals) by instilling a higher purpose into what people do. The higher their motivational power, the more likely the effort will be there to get the task accomplished. If you can connect that power to the task at hand, then the results will pretty much take care of themselves.

FINAL THOUGHTS
This deeper bonding can also work with customers. If consumers identify with your higher purpose, then they will want to support your efforts by purchasing from your company. This can lead to higher unit sales volumes at higher prices.

Strategic Planning Analogy #419: Get Into the Flow

THE STORY
I used to work with a company that would go into a panic the week before the quarterly board meeting. They acted as if they were totally surprised that a board meeting was coming up. They never seemed prepared. As a result, there was always a last minute rush to get ready (with lots of overtime).

I was always flabbergasted by this lack of preparedness. After all, the board meetings were put on the calendar almost a year in advance. They were mandated by law to be held quarterly and they had been holding these quarterly meetings for decades. I wondered why everyone seemed to act as though the meetings were a surprise.

I used to joke that these people are so out of touch with the rhythms of the business that they are probably shocked every morning when the sun rises in the east. They probably say to themselves, “Wow! The sun rose in the east AGAIN. What a surprise! I wasn’t ready for that. Didn’t it just do that yesterday? I wonder when it will do it next time.”

THE ANALOGY
There is usually a rhythm or flow to a business. It is the way things get done on a recurring basis. Some activities seem to effortlessly mesh with the flow of the business. Others seem like a major disruption to the flow.

At the company mentioned above, board of directors meetings were treated as a disruption to the business flow. The normal flow had to stop while panicked people altered their routine and rushed to get the director’s meeting job done. After the board meeting, the normal flow returned and people acted as if the board had never met.

When it comes to strategic planning activities, we have a choice. We can either build a structure where strategic planning meshes into the regular flow or we can have it appear as a disruption—like those board meetings. As we will see below, strategic planning is better off when part of the normal flow.

THE PRINCIPLE
The principle here is that strategic planning is more effective when incorporated into the daily flow of business. This will not occur on its own, since the “tyranny of the immediate” tends to naturally push longer-term strategic issues out of the daily flow. Therefore, if you want strategic planning to be part of the daily flow, you have to actively work to make it so. Otherwise, you will end up with a dysfunctional mess like I saw with those board meetings.

Why Strategic Planning is Less Effective When Seen as a Disruption
There are several reasons why strategic planning is less effective when seen as a disruption. First of all, the reality is that a company moves in the direction of the daily flow. It is the sum of all those little decisions and daily actions which causes a company to become what it is. You can put a business mission or vision statement in a fancy frame and place it on the wall, but if it is not a part of the daily flow, it will have no impact on the business. You may as well frame a picture of a dancing bear and put it on the wall for all the good it would do.

For example, if your strategy calls for radical change and the daily flow doesn’t change, then the change strategy will never take root and become reality. The simple truth is that you are what you do. If the implications of the strategy are not integrated into the daily flow of what gets done, then the strategy will never succeed. So if you want an effective strategy it must move beyond disruption status and get integrated into the flow, where the real decisions are made.

The second problem with strategy-as-disruption is that it is often not taken seriously. After the disruption of an annual strategy session, people go back to their routines. It’s sort of like taking a vacation or going on holiday. It can be a fun diversion—a pleasant disruption of the routine—but afterward, the old routine returns. Or it can be seen as an unpleasant disruption, like getting the flu. Once the illness is over, the goal is to get back to the normal routine as soon as possible. Either way, the connection between the disruption and the routine isn’t made because the disruption is not taken seriously enough to cause any real lasting change.

It reminds me of what the civil servant government employees in Washington DC are known for. Tradition has it that they frequently say, “Government administrations come and go. Sometimes they are Democrats; sometimes they are Republicans. They make all kinds of pronouncements about grand new programs and new ways of doing things, but in a couple of years they are gone. Then another administration shows up with their own pronouncements. Well, we were here before these administrations, and we will be here long after they are gone. So we will keep doing whatever we want, just like we have always done before.”

In other words, the government doesn’t change much, because the everyday workers of the bureaucracy reject the disruptive calls which come from the outside politicians. The daily flow stays the same because the pronouncements aren’t taken seriously, and the grand strategies go unimplemented.

Steps to Get Strategy Into the Flow
Since it is critical to get strategic planning into the daily flow, it is prudent for the strategist to take steps to ensure that happens. The first step would be to create visibility at the point where daily decisions are made. If the key decision-makers only see the strategists once a year at an annual planning meeting, then the strategists will only be a small, maningless distraction. If you want to impact the daily decisions, you have to be visible all the time—to be there when the regular decisions are being made.

Get on the calendar of as many of the decision making bodies as you can. Go to the meetings. Steer the discussions to consider the strategic implications of what they are considering. If they won’t let you into the meetings, get to the meeting members prior to the meeting. Make sure the strategic context is top of mind and part of the normal decisions within the flow.
The second step is to provide a link between the conceptual and the practical. Business Missions and Vision Statements can provide a great conceptual framework for where you want to take the company or brand. But that doesn’t mean that everyone can intuitively understand how it impacts their own day-to-day actions.

For example, let’s say that your strategy is to become a leader at providing some functional attribute, like service, or quality, or speed. That sounds nice, but how should a salesman do his or her daily task differently in order to expedite this strategy? How should someone on the shop floor act differently as a result of that mission statement? Where should R&D efforts be directed to make the strategy a reality? How should a secretary answer the phone as a result of this strategy?

Unless you can provide a link between the words on a paper and what the average person does on an average day, they may never make the link. Don’t assume people will figure this out on their own. Help them to make the connection. Help them to see that the everyday actions of everyday employees impact strategic success. Help them to find ways to act in support of the strategy rather than (unknowingly) against it.

Ask people to visualize how the daily flow should look when the strategy is fully operational. Then help them figure out how to change their processes in order to get in line with that visualization.

Finally, pay attention to metrics. Metrics are the way we measure the daily flow. If you want the daily flow to move in concert with the strategy, then use tools which measure how well the flow is moving with the strategy. Don’t expect the daily flow to support the strategy if the measurement tools and benefit packages reward a different type of performance. For example, if you want to win on quality, don’t focus on cost control metrics and rewards

Some people use a version of the Balanced Scorecard to accomplish this. However, it might just be as simple as making sure that once everybody sees the link between what they do and the strategy, to measure how well that link is getting done.

SUMMARY
Strategic execution is most likely to be successful if the strategic planning process is integrated into the daily flow of how things get done in the business. Otherwise, you end up with strategic planning as being a minor disruption which gets ignored when the real work is resumed. To ensure that the strategy is integrated into the daily flow, consider the following actions:

a) Increasing the visibility of strategists and strategic thinking throughout the year at the places where routine decisions are being made.

b) Helping employees at all levels of the organization see the link between their everyday activities and the overall strategy.

c) Using metrics to measure and reward how well the daily flow is reinforcing the strategy.

FINAL THOUGHTS
There’s been a lot of talk over the years about how ineffective many Boards of Directors are. I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that they are often seen as a disruption rather than as part of the daily flow (as we saw in the story above). Unless you want your strategic planning

Which Comes First—Goals or Strategies? (Part 2)

REVIEW
In the last blog, we looked at why it can be a mistake to set financial goals prior to setting the action strategy. More specifically, we saw that setting financial goals prior to setting a strategy can increase the risk of:

1) Setting the Wrong Goal (wrong metric and/or wrong level)
2) Taking the Wrong Actions (if the goal is inappropriate than it will lead to doing inappropriate actions)
3) Increasing Undesirable Risks (Unrealistic goals can lead to desperate behaviors)
4) Sacrificing the Long-term to hit Short-term Goals (Sub-optimal Trade-offs)
5) Perpetuating Failed Strategies (Rather than shutting them down)

In this blog, we will look at suggestions for reducing these risks.

CLARIFICATION
Before moving on, I’d like to make a clarification. Thanks to some feedback, I realize that I may have given the false impression that I am against having goals. On the contrary, I like goals. I’m reminded of an old Pogo cartoon. Pogo and his buddy Albert are running through the woods as fast as they can. Pogo asks his buddy Albert if there is any particular destination they are running towards. Albert says no. So Pogo replies, “Then why are we running so fast?”

The idea is that if you have no idea of where you are going, there is no reason to run. Strategy is like that. Strategic planning is the task of finding the best path to a goal/mission/objective. If you do not know where you want to go, you cannot design a path to get there.

My concern is that most of the goals I see are merely financial numbers, like a goal for sales, profits, etc. These are not destinations, they are hoped for outcomes. They provide little to no insight into what the company must become to be successful.

These financial “destination-less” goals are the ones which lead to the five problems listed above (if they are set prior to setting the strategy). In this blog, we will look at alternatives.

THE PRINCIPLE
Here are four suggestions for how to avoid these problems.

Suggestion #1: Set Non-Financial Goals
There is no law that says all goals need to be a financial number. Successful financials do not magically appear out of nowhere. No, they are typically an outcome of a combination of the following actions:

a) Owning the right position in the marketplace.
b) Maintaining/Strengthening the core competencies, capabilities and capacities needed to hold/strengthen a winning position.
c) Leveraging a winning position in the marketplace.
d) Having enough productivity in order to profitably afford to the position.

If good numbers depend on first achieving these types of actions, why not set up goals around these types of issues? For example, you could have a goal of achieving a particular position in the mind of the targeted customer. You can measure this goal via consumer research. Or, if your strategy is centered around quality, you can set a quality level goal (which can also be measured). If success requires international expansion, then set that as a measurable goal.

The point here is that there are a lot of ways to achieve a financial target. These approaches may or may not have any correlation to the desired strategic actions listed above. In fact, some of those approaches can disastrous to a strategy.

For example, I know an executive who hit his financial target by completely ignoring the strategic mandate to invest in a repositioning of his business. Instead of taking cash flow and putting it into repositioning, he let the money fall to the bottom line as near-term profits. He made a great bonus that year because he hit the financial target. Soon thereafter, however, the business was sold at a great loss, because the strategic repositioning never occurred. The business was destroyed, because the leader took the wrong path to achieve the near-term financial goal.

The point is that if you want that repositioning to occur, then make the repositioning the goal, not a financial number that can be achieved while ignoring the strategy. In other words, if you want certain strategic behaviors or conditions to occur, than make these behaviors and conditions the goal. The only way to ensure that the right actions get done is to set the goal around the action. Reward doing the right thing rather than hitting a financial goal the wrong way.

And, of course, you cannot set these types of behavior or condition goals until you have an understanding of the proper strategy. That is why strategy work needs to be done before setting the goal.

Suggestion #2: Separate Planning Cycle From the Budget Cycle
Many companies intermingle the timing of the planning cycle with the budgeting cycle. I think this is usually a mistake.

Budgets tend to be very financial in their focus and goal orientation. And this is not necessarily a bad thing. But by formulating strategy at the same time as budgets are set, one tends to end up with strategies which are often little more than a budget with a slightly longer time frame (a sort of 3-year budget). And this can be a bad thing, leading to all the problems mentioned earlier.

If you want people to think more strategically and create more strategic (less financial) long-term goals, it seems to work better if that process is not done simultaneously with annual budgeting. For example, if you do your budgeting in the fall, then do your primary strategy formulation in the spring. Not only does the separation allow for a better focus on strategy, it provides time between the two processes to understand the true ramifications of the strategy, so that strategy can better drive what is an appropriate budget.

Some of the intermingling is a result of placing strategic planning groups inside of finance or budgeting departments. Finance departments have a natural financial orientation, which can lead to goals that are too financial. If you want to reduce that bias, then you might want to consider taking strategic planning out of the finance group (if that is where it is today).

Suggestion #3: Just Don’t Do It
If setting a financial goal up front gets in the way of making great strategy later, then stop setting a financial goal first. It could be just that simple.

Suggestion #4: Add A Feedback Loop
If your company still insists on looking at financial goals first, then reply by insisting that the company also looks at these goals last. In other words, add a feedback loop to the end of the process to determine whether the original goal is still the most appropriate goal. If it isn’t, then reserve the right to change the goal at the end.

It may be that, after the strategic analysis, you conclude that some of your original assumptions during the goal-setting phase are no longer valid. Perhaps the best strategic path leads in a different direction from where your goal lies. If so, change the goal so that it fits your new reality.

SUMMARY
Many companies use a strategic process where financial goals are set before the strategy is chosen. This approach increases the likelihood of bad results and missed opportunities. Four suggestions for reducing this problem are to:

a) Set Non-Financial Goals
b) Separate Planning Cycle From Budgeting Cycle.
c) Stop Setting Goals First
d) Add A Feedback Loop

FINAL THOUGHTS
Before running off to operate your business, be like Pogo and ask what the destination is. And don’t settle for a mere financial number. Ask for a real destination that is based on prior strategic analysis and rooted in specific activities.

Strategic Planning Analogy #414: Which Comes First—Goals or Strategies?

THE STORY
Let’s assume that you want to race in the Olympics. Let’s further assume that they way you qualify for the Olympics is by agreeing (in writing) to guarantee achieving a specific time when you race (quick enough to win committee approval). And, if you fail to achieve that time, you will owe the Olympic Committee a large sum of money. Then, to make it even more interesting, the Olympic Committee does not tell you which type of race you will be competing in until after you commit to a specific time.

When making the time commitment, you do not know if the race is a short sprint or a long marathon. You don’t know if the race involves running, speed skating, swimming or bobsleds. Perhaps there are hurdles or other obstacles. Perhaps not.

It seems to me that committing to a race time before you knew what the race was would be an act of insanity. It’s a good thing the Olympics aren’t run that way.

THE ANALOGY
Although the Olympics are not run that way, it seems that many businesses are run that way. When starting their strategic planning process, these companies begin with goal-setting. The goal could be a level of sales, or profits, or a percent return on investment, or a stock price. Setting these goals is a lot like setting the goal of the time you want to achieve in a race.

Then these companies get management to commit to hitting these goals, and tie their bonuses to achieving these goals.

It isn’t until all this is completed that these companies start looking for a strategy which can achieve that commitment. To me, choosing the strategy after committing to a goal is a lot like being told what race you are going to run after committing to a race time. It is often a process of foolhardiness. And, unfortunately, I think a lot of companies are on this foolish path.

THE PRINCIPLE
The principle here is that long-term success is more likely to occur if goals are set after conceiving the strategy rather than before. In this blog we will look at some of the negative consequences of putting goals first. In the next blog we will look at some potential solutions to this problem.

When a company puts goal-setting ahead of strategy-forming they increase the likelihood of six bad outcomes.

Bad Outcome #1: The Wrong Goal is Set
Setting the goal before knowing what to do can lead to two types of improper goal setting. The first is choosing the wrong metrics. For example, at different stages of the lifecycle, different metrics may be more appropriate. Rapid sales growth targets may make more sense during the rapid growth phase but be inappropriate during the decline phase, when cost control may be a more appropriate metric. You cannot know what the most appropriate metric is until you understand the type of plan you are putting in place.

Even if the right metric is chosen, you might choose the wrong target level—too high or too low. How can you know what the appropriate target level is before you know what you are doing? Set it too low and you may miss opportunities (and reward too generously). Set it too high and you may encourage people to take on bad behavior (as we will see below).

Bad Outcome #2: The Wrong Actions Are Taken
People act based on how they are measured, so if you measure the wrong things, people will tend do the wrong things.

If the metric is inappropriate for the circumstances, it might force people to apply strategies consistent with the metric but wrong for the circumstance. For example, if a business has recently reached maturity but the goals are more appropriate for an earlier rapid growth stage, one might try to apply rapid growth strategies in order to try to reach the rapid growth goals. This could lead to investing in over capacity and money-losing sales strategies, in an attempt to try to achieve no-longer-realistic top line growth commitments.

Going back to the story, you might be best suited for running a marathon, but because you promised a quick race, you are forced to run a sprint. So instead of playing to your strengths—a place where you can win—you go with your weakness in a place where you will lose. Figure out the race you are most likely to win before committing to an outcome.

Bad Outcome #3: Undesirable Increase in Risks Are Taken
Many times, aggressive goals cannot be achieved by the core business. You end up with what is commonly called a “planning gap”—the difference between what the current strategy provides and what you want to achieve. The bigger the gap, the more one has to do to fill it. This can lead to taking on a lot more risks in order to fill the gap, such as diversifying further from one’s core or doing some hasty acquisitions.

We know most acquisitions fail, and if they are being done primarily to fill a gap rather than to fill a synergistic strategic need, the risk is even higher. In addition, so much focus could be placed on filling the gap that the eyes are taken off the core, increasing the risk of problems there as well.

Perhaps the only way to narrow the gap is to assume the best case scenario—everything has to go right. The best case scenario is rarely the most likely case scenario. As a result, your strategy takes on added risk for failure if you have to skew assumptions in order to make the strategy fit the goal.

Bad Outcome #4: Long-Term Prospects Are Destroyed
When the numbers come first, people’s priority is to try to hit those numbers—whichever way they can. There are lots of ways to hit a number, and a lot of those ways are destructive in the long run. To hit aggressive numbers in a short time span, one usually has to make trade-offs which hurt the long run. For example, to hit near term profits, future-oriented activities (like R&D or innovation) may get cut too much. To hit aggressive near-term sales, one may create costly promotions which merely steal away sales from the future. To hit near-term return on capital numbers, one may underinvest in long-term capital projects.

One of the first cases I had in business school was about a manager who made his numbers by cutting out all maintenance costs. Eventually, everything broke down and the long term costs of repair were much higher than those maintenance costs which were cut. This is an important lesson which can be lost if aggressive goals are put in place which can only be met by making bad trade-offs with the future.

A lot of Warren Buffet’s success is due to taking the long view. He knows that he will usually get more out of an investment if he manages it for the long term rather than a quick payback. But if goals come first, one can start managing for what’s best for the goals rather than managing for what’s best for the business. That usually means trouble for the long-term prospects.

Bad Outcome #5: Avoidable Failures Are Perpetuated
If you look at a business purely objectively, you might come to the conclusion that it should be shut down or sold. However, if you start with an inappropriate goal, you may be hesitant to retreat from the business, because you feel you need every bit of business possible in order to try to reach the target. For example, I worked with a company that had a business line which they probably should have gotten out of. They didn’t because they told me they “needed the sales” (even though they were unprofitable sales) in order to hit their sales growth targets. I had suggested a more profitable approach, but it produced fewer sales, so it was rejected. Instead, the failed approach was perpetuated.

If people commit to unrealistic goals, then they will not have a realistic way to achieve it. This inevitably leads to not achieving the goal. Disappointment and failure are the most likely result. All the stakeholders get angry. These “guaranteed” failures and disappointments could have been avoided if bad businesses were cut out sooner, and promises were made which had a high likelihood of success, because they were first grounded in doing the right things. If you choose the right strategy first, then you know which goals to promise, and then you can meet them.

Bad Outcome #6: New, Better Options Can Be Missed
If you don’t first have a strategy to help you set your goal, then often times the only thing you have to base the goal on is the past. And as we all know in strategy, the past is often not the best guide for what to do in the future. This backwards orientation (extrapolation of the past plus stretch), may keep us mentally oriented towards modified status quo strategies rather than new breakthrough strategies.

Breakthrough strategies typically come from starting with a clean slate, not extrapolations from the past (which at best, only gives you incrementalism).

In fact, by setting goals prior to setting strategy, management is in essence telling people that the old strategy is good enough. After all, how can you realistically set a future goal before considering strategic change unless you believe no meaningful change is necessary?

SUMMARY
Many companies use a strategic process where goals are set before the strategy is chosen. This approach increases the likelihood of bad results and missed opportunities. Committing to a race time before you know what the race is sounds backwards. The same is true of setting numeric performance goals before you know what strategy will be performed. In the next blog we will look at ways to minimize this problem.

FINAL THOUGHTS
Setting the goals first sounds like wishful thinking. Last time I checked, you don’t automatically get what you wish for. I could wish I was taller or younger, but it isn’t going to happen. No, we should start first by optimizing what is in the realm of the possible and set our goals from there.