Strategic Planning Analogy #452: “X” marks the Spot?

THE STORY
How much would you pay to get a treasure map showing the exact location where one million dollars is buried?

There’s a big “X” on the map where the exact location of the treasure is—guaranteed! Sounds like that map would be worth a lot of money, doesn’t it?

Oh, there’s one more bit of detail about the map I should tell you about.  The only detail on the map is that “X” for the treasure.  The rest of the sheet of paper is completely blank.

Without any other details or reference points on the map, it is impossible to know how to reach that “X”.  Now how much do you think that map is worth?  Is it even worth anything at all?

THE ANALOGY
A key part of strategic planning is determining a desirable future position—a place where the company can win and succeed at a high level.  That desirable future state is a lot like a hidden treasure.  It is desirable and valuable once you get to it and make it a reality.

The problem is that just knowing what you want that desirable future position to be is not enough.  You have to achieve it in order to gain its value. 

In the story, we know of a treasure, but the map does not provide any detail on how to get to it.  That makes the map worthless.  In the same way, having a strategic goal, but no specifics on how to reach it, is worthless. 

Strategic planning needs to be more than just writing down an idealized vision on a piece of paper.  Like that X on a map, you need to flesh out the plan by showing a path on how to get to the X.  Discovering and managing the path is just as important a part of strategic planning as setting the goal (if not more so).  That is what adds value to the goal, because it creates a way to make the goal a reality.

THE PRINCIPLE

The principle here is that strategic planning does not end when the goals are set and the pro formas are saved in an Excel spreadsheet.  In many ways, that is just the beginning of the journey.  You still have all the work of taking and completing the journey.

It is like planning a vacation.  You may decide to vacation in Paris.  But just choosing the location is not enough.  You need to pick a date, arrange to get time off from work, determine how you are going to get to Paris, and how you are going to pay for it.  Otherwise the idea of vacationing in Paris is just that—only an idea. 

Just holding a business meeting to announce a strategic goal is like just announcing you are going to Paris.  There is absolutely no assurance that a large and diverse organization will automatically reach that goal.  There are too many forces at work to get in the way. 

In particular, the journey typically requires parts of the organization to abandon the familiar and work together in coordinated ways which they are not used to.  That will not happen by accident or natural consequence.  It has to be proactively managed.  It has to be planned.

For the rest of this blog, we will briefly look at some of the areas to consider when building that path.

1.  Commitment

Getting people to change and work in new ways is difficult enough when there is high desire to get it done.  It is virtually impossible if significant factions in the organization are resistant to the change.  Therefore a key part of the planning path needs to be concerned about finding ways to get people fully committed to the plan. 

Don’t just assume people will drop everything to bring the plan to life.  The change may hurt their power base or career plans.  The plan may interfere with maximizing a bonus.  The plan might require working with people they don’t like.  Or they may just think the ideas behind the plan are silly. 

They may not be very vocal in their opposition.  Instead they may just quietly and subtly sabotage the efforts during implementation.

Therefore, part of the strategic plan needs to find ways to gain commitment and deal with people who resist.  A little planning around this up front can eliminate a lot of grief later on.

2.  Competency

Once you have everyone emotionally committed to the task, one needs to determine if they have all the skill-sets and tools necessary to succeed.  After all, even the most committed individuals will fail to achieve the goal if they lack the competencies needed to get there.

Technologies and processes can quickly become obsolete.  Being the best at an obsolete skill does not guarantee that you will automatically succeed in the transformed environment.

Is training a part of your strategic plan?  Is acquiring new people with new skills embedded in your plan?  Does the plan have a methodology for dealing with people falling behind on competencies?  Do you have the tools in place to apply those competencies in the best way possible?

An even more basic question:  Do you even know which competencies are critical to success with the plan?  Do you have an internal assessment of where you stand today on those competencies?  Do you know where to get what is missing in your assessment (acquisitions, joint ventures, key hires, etc.)?

3. Capacity

Good intentions with smart people can still fail if you have not built an infrastructure capable of supporting those efforts.  There’s an old saying that an Army is only as strong as its supply chain.  If you cannot get sufficient food and ammunition to the troops, they cannot succeed.

Your infrastructure must have sufficient capacity to support your business to the magnitude of its vision.  For example, if your vision includes a major push into selling to China but you have only one-tenth of the selling capacity in China to meet those goals, then those goals will not be met.   You need to add more selling capacity.

Capacity can be critical in many areas, such as manufacturing capacity, supply chain capacity, sources of critical supply elements, and information technology.  If you cannot find a way to achieve the necessary capacity, then the strategy is severely flawed. 

I remember hearing stories of how capacity issues creates major changes at McDonalds.  For example, they had a great strategy for Shrimp McCocktails, but they determined that there were not enough shrimp available on the planet to supply projected demand, so the plan was scrapped.  When McDonald’s enters new regions, it often has to plan many years in advance to ensure there are enough of the proper cows and potatoes in the area to support the expansion.  Capacity has to be built before that expansion can occur.

 Does your plan calculate the necessary capacity in key areas?  Does it have a plan to achieve the necessary capacity?  Is the timing of the steps in the plan coordinated so that capacity comes on-line at the proper time?

4. Connections

Usually a plan’s success depends on the actions of others outside your direct control.  This can include suppliers, distributors, governments and customers, among others.  You need to find a way to make sure they have the proper commitment, competencies and capacities to achieve your plan as well.

Think about health care.  For a plan to work, you often need to get the cooperation of government to approve your approach, doctors to prescribe your approach, insurers (or governments) to pay for the approach, and patients to accept the approach.  Lose cooperation in any area and the strategy fails.

In a competitive world, it is often necessary to create stronger connections within your network of partners than the connections in competing networks.  You need to prevent defections.

 How strong is your network?  Are the strengths of your network connections specifically addressed within your plan?  Do you have a plan to make them capable of supporting your plan?  Do you need to add or change partners?  Do you need to acquire them?

SUMMARY

A plan does not magically come into being just because the leaders want it to.  To ensure that a strategic vision is more than just a wild dream, you need to proactively determine and control all the steps necessary to get there.  Otherwise the forces of inertia and self-interest will keep the vision from becoming a reality.  Areas to consider in this plan include commitment, competency, capacity and connections.  Without these considerations, all you have is a treasure marked with an X on an otherwise blank piece of paper—a goal without a means to attain it.
 

FINAL THOUGHTS
One of the biggest criticisms of strategic planning is that all those fancy plans never become reality.  Maybe if we spent more time proactively trying to manage the path, we’d have a lot more success in achieving the goal.  That will quiet the critics and increase our value.

Strategic Planning Analogy #428: Changing Tires

THE STORY
Let’s assume there are two people driving along in a car. One is the manager and the other is his subordinate.

As they are driving along, the car suddenly gets a flat tire. After pulling off to the side of the road, the two of them just sit in the car doing nothing.

Finally, the manager says, “Well don’t look at me to change that tire. I like the current tire. It successfully got me everywhere I wanted for the last five years. I see no reason to give up on that tire and change it just because it had one little setback.”

The subordinate says, “Well don’t expect ME to change that tire. It’s not in my job description. It’s not a part of my bonus calculation. I’ll file a complaint if you force me to change it.”

So the two of them sat there by the side of the road for hours with that flat tire, even though there was a spare tire and jack in the trunk.

THE ANALOGY
When a tire goes flat, you need to change it. Similarly, when a company’s current business model goes flat (stops working), you need to change it. Therefore, one might think that all one needs to do when business models go bad is to discover a new business model and a migration path and you’re done. Right?

Wrong. In the story, they had the equivalent of the new business model (the spare tire) and the migration path (the jack). Yet those parts just sat in the trunk not being used.

Why? Because nobody was adequately motivated to use the jack to put on the spare. The manager did not see the need for change and the subordinate did not feel personally responsible for making the change. If nobody wants to do the work, then having the parts is worthless. You’re stuck on the side of the road while the other companies pass you by.

Are companies really as silly about change as those people were with the flat tire? Well, consider research by McKinsey and Co. Scott Keller and Colin Price of McKinsey recently wrote a book entitled Beyond Performance. The book is based on research into thousands of executives at hundreds of companies. Here is what they found.


First, about 70% of change programs fail. In other words, most of those flat tires don’t get adequately fixed. That’s not good news.

Second, the primary reason why those change programs failed is not due to a lack of resources or plans. In other words, it wasn’t for a lack of spare tires and jacks that these change programs failed.

Instead, 72% of the failure could be traced to the people in the organization—nearly half of this amount to management failure to support the change and the rest due to employees resisting the change. In other words, most companies are very much like those people in the story. They sit by the side of the road in failure because management won’t support the change and employees resist the change activity.

THE PRINCIPLE
The principle here is that “change” is an activity, not a concept. You can have the concepts of a new vision or a new strategy or a new business model. You can also have the concept of a plan to make that change a reality. But if equal effort is not also placed behind motivating people to act, you will almost surely fail.

Therefore, a strategist’s job is not done when the business model and migration path are devised. It is only done after equal effort is spent creating an internal environment capable of vigorously acting to bring about that change—quickly and fully. Otherwise, all you have done is put a spare tire and jack into the trunk and left the company sitting by the side of the road unwilling to use the tools you provided.

Getting Management Support
So how do you get management to embrace the need for change? There are several approaches.

First, you can try to get them to see that the status quo is truly broken and cannot be brought back to its former glory. In the story, the manager thought the flat was just a temporary setback for the formerly successful tire and that it would eventually bounce back up on its own like before. Therefore, he was not motivated to change that tire. Similarly, you need to show people that the flat is a major change in the condition of that tire. It will not return to its former glory on its own. It must be replaced.

Second, you can try to convince them that even if they liked that old tire, they’ll like a new tire even more. In other words, if you cannot convince them the old model has gone bad, then convince them that the new business model is so much better that it is worthy to change to get the improvement.

Third, you can appeal to their personal motivators. Most managers have something which drives them to reach the top. For some it is greed for money, for others it is greed for power, for others it is leaving a legacy, and for some it is leaving a mark which makes the world a better place. Whatever the motivator, tie it to the change. Tell them that if they make the change, they will get more money, more power or more whatever, than they had before. It’s sorta like telling a guy with a flat tire ,“If a guy puts slick new tires on his car, all the cute girls will want to ride with him.”

I’ve talked about ideas like this in more detail here and here.

Getting Employees to Make the Extra Effort
In addition to getting the managers motivated, you need to properly motivate the employees. It’s one thing for employees to do the minimum required for their position. But if you want to succeed in the transition for change, employees typically need to put in a much stronger than normal effort.

Keeler and Price refer to this as going beyond merely motivating through normal incentives to tap into “employees’ sense of meaning and identity to harness extraordinary effort.” This is effort which comes from deep in the heart.

This means transforming the change agenda from being “additional work” on top of the day-to-day to becoming “the greater work” which gives meaning to all of one’s efforts.

I’ve spoken about this topic in more detail in several other blogs, including this one.

SUMMARY
A large part of strategic planning has to do with enacting change within the organization. The key roles typically given to strategists are to:

a) Help determine what to change into; and
b) Help determine the best path to get there.

However, research has shown that if that is all that is done, there is a high likelihood of failure. To ensure success, one must do more. One must also make sure that:

a) Management believes in promoting the change; and that
b) Employees are deeply motivated to give an extra effort to make it a reality.

Strategists need to help with these issues as well.

FINAL THOUGHTS
Changing a tire is not a glamorous job. You have to get your hands dirty. But the car won’t get moving again unless you change the tire. In business change, not all tasks are glamorous, either. But if you keep the big picture in mind, you can see that the messy jobs are essential if you want the big prize. So don’t shy away from getting your hands dirty by working on getting the implementation done.

Strategic Planning Analogy #338: Traffic Jams

THE STORY
It’s common for larger cities to have traffic web sites. You can go there to find out where the major traffic accidents and road construction slow downs are. It’s great to check out the site before getting in my car to drive home from work. That way, I can adjust and plan a route home which avoids the worst of the traffic problems.

Since most days tend to be uneventful on my route home, I tend not to look at the web site all the time. Of course, it seems that whenever I check the site, there are never any problems and that whenever there is a problem, that is the day I didn’t check the site. As a result, the traffic tie-ups tend to come as a surprise to me. I don’t know about them until it is too late to avoid them. Then I am hopelessly stuck in traffic, unable to move or adjust. Had I only been more proactive by checking the site, I could have avoided the mess.

THE ANALOGY
Like cars, businesses can get can get hopelessly stuck. Just as actions outside your control (like accidents, flooding, and road construction) can make your normal commute route unusable, external actions like shifts in the economy, competitive actions, and shifts in consumer desires can bring your old business plans to a complete halt.

In driving, if you know about the potential traffic problems in advance, you can re-plan your route to avoid the worst. The same is true in business. If you know what difficulties lay ahead, you can adjust your plans to avoid problems and become more in tune with where the opportunities for smooth progress are.

Checking out those traffic web sites are a lot like an important piece of strategic planning. Strategic planning takes the time to see what’s going on in the environment before starting the journey. That way, you can prepare a route for your business which gets you to your desired location faster and with fewer difficulties.

Avoiding this step of strategic planning would be like ignoring those traffic web sites. If you are unaware of the changing dynamics, your business will be surprised when the traditional path you take to profits is suddenly and unexpectedly halted by the new conditions.

By not making any adjustments to your strategic path until the old path is already obsolete (you are already stuck in “money-losing traffic”), it is often too late to make a smooth transition to progress. The road to recovery is slower and more painful. In addition, you have less cash flow to make the transition and competition (who planned better) will get to the new position sooner and get a head start on gaining ownership of that position.

It is much easier to adjust while times are still good, cash is still flowing in, and you still have a strong reputation with your customer base. Unfortunately, it is also more tempting to avoid looking ahead for necessary adjustments when times are good, cash is flowing in, and your reputation is strong. Don’t become tempted as I was to stop looking at that web site just because it had been a long time since the path had seen problems. The day you stop looking could be the day when your really need to look.

THE PRINCIPLE
The principle today has to do with preparing for strategic adjustments. A good, solid strategic position usually lasts quite awhile and should not be changed all that frequently. However, the way in which that strategy is applied on a daily basis may need occasional adjustments. It is better to be proactive by adjusting in anticipation of change rather than waiting until the old methods no longer apply and scramble for a way out of the traffic jam.

Take Wal-Mart, for example. Wal-Mart’s strategic position is rooted in low cost, low price. This is a great position which can last for many decades. However, the best path for pursuing that low cost, low price strategy may need an occasional re-routing. By looking ahead, Wal-Mart recently saw that attitudes about the environment, energy and sustainability were changing. Looking at these environmental changes through the lens of their low cost, low price strategy, Wal-Mart saw the opportunity for a win-win strategic adjustment.

Wal-Mart discovered that if you approach energy, environment and sustainability issues in a particular way, it can lead to substantial cost savings—savings in energy usage, savings in packaging waste, and so on. All these savings lowers costs, so that one can lower prices. By proactively getting into the movement early and by approaching it aggressively, Wal-Mart was able to reinforce its low cost, low price strategy while at the same time become more in tune with the desires of their customer (and improving its consumer image).

This is only one in a series of adjustments Wal-Mart has made over the years to remain a leader at achieving is low cost, low price position. Earlier adjustments have included moving from low technology to high technology, adding groceries to the merchandise mix, and moving from a pure adversarial role with vendors to a bit more of a cooperative partnership. If Wal-Mart had not made these adjustments and kept on the same exact path they were on in the 1970s, they would have lost their leadership position. They would have gotten stuck in traffic and not grown to the success they are today.

It the extreme, as we saw in the last blog, sometimes the environmental changes are so severe bold new directions need to be taken. For example, the movement from analog to digital was so severe that the entire Kodak strategy (based in analog film and paper) needed to be abandoned and an entirely new route needed. Because Kodak did not boldly seek a radical new route, it got stuck in traffic while digital companies passed it by.

There are three principles we should keep in mind to help one become proactive in avoiding business “traffic jams.”

1. Check Traffic Conditions Early and Often
We have already talked about the importance of checking the traffic conditions early—before you plan out your journey. However, as we all know, the marketplace is dynamic and in continual flux. Road conditions when we start the journey will not necessarily stay that way throughout the journey.

Therefore, scans of the operating environment should not be seen as isolated, infrequent events, but rather as an ongoing concern. The more we can update our data base on a “real-time” basis, the sooner we can detect the need for adjustments, and the better our adjustment decisions will be.

Do you have a daily/weekly/monthly/quarterly dashboard of key environmental indicators (like those traffic web sites) to help you adjust while your business is on the road?

2. Know Your Alternate Routes in Advance
When I was commuting in Minneapolis, I had preplanned dozens of alternative routes. That way, no matter where I was during the commute, I had an alternative path from that point to my home or work. As a result, when things started to look bad on my normal route, I could quickly (and calmly) adjust to a superior alternative route.

This same principle applies to business. The equivalent of developing alternative routes would be scenario planning. By doing scenario planning in advance (and tracking the key factors determining which scenario is most likely), one can quickly adjust properly at the point when the key factors point to a need to adjust.

Waiting until disaster sets in to find an alternative is too late (just ask BP regarding the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico). Do the scenario planning in advance so that everyone in your company knows what to do when it is time to make the shift. This eliminates panic, confusion, and rash decisions which would be regretted later. It also helps you make the transition faster.

3. Grasp the Immediate Ramifications of Future Problems
One of the biggest frustrations strategic planners have to deal with is getting the rest of the organization to adequately focus on longer-term issues. As we have talked about so often in these blogs, the “tyranny of the immediate” often blinds most employees to the long-term. They become so focused on putting out the fire-of-the-day that there is no time to think beyond today.

When presenting long-term plans, the response is often “I see no relevance to what I have to deal with today, so I will ignore it.” Therefore, it is imperative for us to help the organization see the relevance of the long-term to the issues of today.

Going back to our commuting analogy, that car accident slowing down traffic may be a long way away from the office, but that doesn’t mean I should ignore it until I get there. It has immediate relevance. For example, depending upon which alternative route home is most desirable for me in my commute, I have to make a choice immediately upon leaving the company parking lot. One route requires me to turn left upon leaving the lot, while the other requires me to turn right. Even though the accident may be many miles away, the changes in what I need to do while driving occur immediately upon leaving the office.

We need to show our leaders that long term paths have immediate implications on whether we turn left or turn right today. Wal-Mart was not going to achieve the full cost-saving ramifications of environmental sustainability immediately, but the instant that decision was made, it had immediate ramifications on how to deal with vendors, how to design stores, how to operate its logistics, and so on. We need to “connect the dots” to show that relevance so that we turn the right way right now.

In addition, we can show that by only focusing on today, we are like those people who ignore the traffic web sites and are surprised when they land in a traffic jam. Those traffic jams are the fire-of-the-day that they are constantly dealing with. Had they taken time to look long term, they could have avoided a lot of those fires-of-the-day by planning alternative routes around them. Wouldn’t it be nice to get out from under the tyranny of the immediate?

SUMMARY
The more time we spend looking long term at what’s happening in the marketplace, the better we will design a path for our business which avoids profit slow-downs (and gets us to a better future more rapidly). This includes environmental scans at the beginning of the process, environmental dashboards while in process, and continual reminders of how long-term changes impact what we should be doing today.

FINAL THOUGHTS
Sometimes, the best way to avoid the traffic on the road is to take a helicopter. Don’t be afraid to think out of the box to radical new approaches.

Every Intersection is Not a Crossroad

THE STORY
One time, a colleague and I were talking about how some companies do their strategic planning. Once a year, they bring together a large gathering of their executives for an offsite planning meeting. At the meeting, a big announcement is made that the company is “at a crossroad” in their strategy and that major changes are needed to get back on track or to choose a new direction.

It got me thinking. In the average city there may be 12 blocks to a mile. If you are able to maintain an average speed of 30 miles per hour, you will drive past an intersection about every 10 seconds.

You would think a driver was rather crazy if he stopped his car every ten seconds, got out of the car, and started telling everyone excitedly that he was at a major crossroad. Then, if he held a long business meeting to decide which direction to go every time he came to an intersection, you would really think he was mad. At that pace, it would take him all day to get across town.

So I turned to my friend and said, “When you’re driving across town, you will go past hundreds of intersections. You can’t call every one of them a major crossroads.”

THE ANALOGY
Automobiles are like companies, driving towards their future. Intersections along the road are opportunities—opportunities for a company to change its strategic direction. Just because every intersection provides an opportunity to turn does not mean that you need to turn at every intersection. In most cases, a driver ignores the majority of the intersections and does not even consider them while driving, because he knows that they will not lead to his destination.

In the same way, every opportunity presented to a company does not require a rethinking of strategy. Most opportunities can be ignored. Instead of leading to someplace special, they will just take you on a detour that goes nowhere, while at the same time keeping you from reaching your intended strategic destination. These “opportunities” turn out to only be opportunities to get side-tracked, waste resources, and fail in achieving a lasting strategic success.

Often times, the most important aspect of a strategy is not what it tells you to do, but in defining the greater list of things you are not supposed to do. Knowing what you can ignore can free you to better focus on the few essentials needed for strategic success. The likelihood of success becomes much easier, because you can focus on only those things that help you reach your strategic destination. Using the driving analogy, let us say that your strategic destination is Paris. As you are driving along, you can ignore all of the roads that do not lead to Paris and only focus on the smaller subset of roads that moves in a direction towards Paris. As a result, you will get to Paris sooner and enjoy it longer.

Of course, just because you can ignore many of the intersections does not mean that you can ignore every intersection. If you stay on any single road long enough, eventually it will lead to a dead end. The same is true with strategy. It never runs exactly in a straight line. You may need to drive around a roadblock set up by your competition. You may need to make a small side trip to acquire new competencies for the journey ahead.

Therefore, ether extreme will get you in trouble. If you turn at every possible intersection, you will end up driving in circles and end up getting nowhere. At the same time, if you never turn, you will end up running out of road before you reach your destination.

THE PRINCIPLE
Effective strategic planning has three elements:
1. A vision of an attainable position where you can win/prosper in the future.
2. A path showing the steps necessary to get from where you are today to the vision.
3. A feedback loop to ensure that you are going in the right direction once you start the journey down the path.

The Vision
Creating a vision that properly motivates your team to act properly has a lot to do with getting the right perspective on timing. If you have chosen a vision that is too far into the future, the people in your business may not know which path to take to get there, because they cannot find the link between where they are today and where the future vision is. For example, if you told the driver in our analogy that the ultimate destination is to go to the moon, he may have no idea how to get his automobile closer to the moon. Worse yet, he may think your goal is too outrageous and is impossible to achieve, so he stops listening to you and drives wherever he wants. Now, not only are you no closer to the moon, you no longer have a team.

Goals that your people cannot relate to because they are too far away or too different from what they understand fail to motivate. Instead, they may have the opposite effect of paralyzing the troops or leading them into chaos or defection.

Now it may be true that for your business, it is necessary to build a future that eventually takes you as far away from where you are today as the moon is distant from the earth. But, to make the vision real for the team that you want to take there, you may need to break it down into smaller chunks. For example, instead of just saying you are going to the moon, tell the team that the first goal is to get to Florida, where the Cape Canaveral space launching pad is located. Now this is something they can find on a roadmap and draw a path and a plan to get there.

Of course, there is a different problem if you break down the vision into too small of a block of time. If the timing around your vision is too short, you will not be able to build a suitable path. For example, let’s say that instead of telling people we are going to the moon, all you tell them is that the vision is to back the car out of the garage. This is something the team understands and can easily accomplish, so they rush out to the car and back it out of the garage. Then they get out of the car and come back to say, “We’ve accomplished our vision! We’ve reached our goal!” This is followed by a celebration.

Well, now you need to give them a new vision, so you tell them to get back into the automobile and back down the driveway to get to the street. So the team goes back to the car and gets to the end of the street and start to celebrate again. This is starting to sound like our earlier example, where the man sets his goal only a block away at a time, requiring a need to stop every ten seconds to set a new vision. At this pace, you will never get to the moon.

Worse yet, because the team has no idea of the larger vision, they will only prepare for the shorter vision. If all you think you are doing is backing a car out of the garage, you may just hop into the car quickly and do it, without bothering to even put on a coat or shoes. You certainly wouldn’t be thinking about packing a suitcase with spare clothing, bringing along snacks to eat, or checking to make sure the engine is in fine working order. However, if you knew that you were eventually driving 1000 miles to get to the space launching pad in Florida, you might prepare differently. Without proper preparation, you may never reach your goal.

Therefore, the ideal vision should describe a destination that is far enough away from today that people will adequately prepare for the journey (further away than just getting to the end of the driveway), but not so far away that they have no idea how to prepare for the journey (not as far as going to the moon).

The Migration Path
Once the vision is described, the task moves to designing the migration path to get there. Designing the migration path would be like getting a map and determining the best roads to take to get to Cape Canaveral in Florida. Just as the perfect vision requires getting the right balance in terms of timing (not too short, not too long), the perfect migration path needs to get the right balance in terms of detail (not too much, not too little).

The team should not spend years on trying to design the absolute perfect path to get from here to Cape Canaveral. That level of detail is impractical. After all, there may be detours along the way. Changes in weather may affect which route is the best. Unexpected road construction may occur. There may be unexpected problems with the automobile. All of these occurrences will create a need to alter your route, no matter how much time you spend perfecting it.

In the business world, you cannot entirely control your destiny. Therefore, acting as if you can and spending too much time designing perfection into your plan is a waste of time.
On the other hand, if you do not prepare at all, your vision will never be reached. You will be reacting to your environment, rather than helping to direct how the future evolves. If you do not try to help direct how the future evolves, your competition will, and I can assure you that they will try to form a future that advantages them over you.

Hence, you need a balance in your migration path—enough detail to show what big activities need to be accomplished to help control your destiny and reach your vision, but not so much detail that there is no room to flex with the inevitable change.

Feedback Loop
As you start implementing your plan, you need to monitor your progress through a feedback mechanism, in order to:

• Ensure that you are not unintentionally deviating from the vision and migration path; and

• Determine whether changes in the environment necessitate modifications to the vision and/or migration path.

The beauty of driving past a new intersection every ten seconds is not that you have to stop at every intersection. The beauty is that if you find out that you are off course a little bit, you are only ten seconds away from an opportunity to readjust your direction to get back on track. Each intersection should not be seen as a major crossroad requiring a new strategic initiative, but as an opportunity to adjust to stay on plan.

SUMMARY
Strategic planning is about determining a destination for your business (a vision) and a means to get there (a migration path). If you find yourself frequently making major changes to your vision or migration path, then you have probably:

• Set your destination too close to where you are today (and thereby never make any meaningful forward progress); or

• Set your destination so far away or made your migration path so vague that the team members do not understand what to do to get there (and thereby get nowhere); or

• Not monitored your progress through a feedback loop often enough to see when current actions need to be adjusted to get back on track (before it is too late).

It’s okay to adjust the focus of the company every year based on where it is along the migration path, but if your business reinvents its overall strategic plan and migration path every year, then you really do not have a plan at all. You just have a series of unrelated tactics.

FINAL THOUGHTS
We might laugh at a person driving across town one block at a time, stopping every ten seconds at each intersection to replot his course. However, this is not that different from a company that only plans out one quarter at a time, stopping every three months to plot a new course.

In general, if your long-term destination is correct, most of the quarters along the way will be successful. However, if you only look out one quarter at a time, the cumulative direction of all of your quarters strung together rarely moves in a positive direction, and your business will “run out of gas” before reaching a more desirable future.