Strategic Planning Analogy #515: Follow the Recipe

THE STORY
The nice thing about a “To-Do” list is that you can pretty much do anything on the list in any order you want. The individual items on the To-Do list are independent of each other. If I choose to clean the garage first and mow the lawn second, that’s okay. Or if I choose to mow the yard first and clean the garage second, that’s okay, too. Or if I can get a friend to help me and do both at the same time, that’s also okay. All that matters is getting the stuff on the list done.

A recipe doesn’t work that way. Things need to be done in a particular order. You have to measure the ingredients BEFORE you mix them together. You have to mix the ingredients BEFORE you bake them. If you bake before mixing or mix before measuring, you will have a mess on your hands. The recipe will not turn out as desired. Unlike a To-Do list, a recipe needs to be done in the proper order.

This is especially true if you expect me to eat what you make.

THE ANALOGY
There is a long list of activities associated with strategic planning, like coming up with Visions or Mission statements, analyzing the environment, formulating a budget, creating a position, designing KPIs, assigning implementation tasks, and so on. To get it all done in a timely fashion, there is the temptation to treat it all like a To-Do list. Just get every activity assigned to somebody and let them work at—all at the same time.

That may sound efficient at first. But strategic planning is more like a recipe than a To-Do list. Connections and dependencies exist between the tasks. There tends to be a need to do things in a general order. Otherwise, you end up with a mess.

Unfortunately, I see companies skipping steps or doing them in the wrong order. That’s like mixing before measuring and skipping the baking. I wouldn’t accept that in the kitchen, and I won’t accept it in the world of planning.

THE PRINCIPLE

The principle here is that before embarking on strategic planning, get a good recipe and do the tasks in the proper order. In this blog, I will offer such a recipe. Since most recipe books come with pictures of the recipe, I have one, too—as you can see in Figure 1. Click on it to see a larger version.

Learning

I have summarized everything into three major tasks—learning, deciding and doing. These are the planning equivalents of measuring, mixing and baking. The first task is learning—getting smart about understanding the current state and expected future state. This applies to the state of your internal company/brand and the state of the external marketplace where you will compete.

To learn about the external environment, you need to study the consumers, the competition, regulations and other external factors which can impact your success. To learn about your internal environment, you need to look at your strengths and weaknesses and how you get things done.

This learning is a lot like the measuring in a recipe. You are measuring four things—current state, direction, magnitude and speed. This applies to measuring customer segments, competitive positions, technological advancements and internal issues. The four measurements work like this:

1. Current State: What do things look like today (market share, number of people, size of industry, attitudes, threat of Porter’s Five Forces, internal competitive advantages, etc.)? This is a sort of good or bad measurement.
2. Direction: In the future, how will the current state measurement change in size? Will it go up or down?
3. Magnitude: In the future, how massive will those changes in direction be? Will the changes (up or down) be huge or small?
4. Speed: How fast will the future changes occur? Will it happen almost immediately or will it take some time (fast or slow)?

This is not about making precise measurements. Measuring the future is not that easy and precision takes too long (you have to wait until the future gets here before you can precisely measure it and then it is too late to be useful in planning). For planning purposes, it is usually enough to know good or bad, up or down, huge or small, and fast or slow. I talk about this in more detail here.

Deciding

Once you become smart via learning, you are ready for step two in the recipe—to make some key decisions about how you want to play the strategic game. This is where you put together your unique mix of attributes and processes that you will stand for and win with.

Without gathering the knowledge first, your decisions for this mix will be little more than guesses, hopes, or wishes. Yet, I often see organizations start with some decision activities as their first act. They want to dive in and create visions and missions from the start. They want to decisions about what they want to be begin the planning process. It’s like mixing before measuring.

The problem is that is somewhat irrelevant what we initially want our mix to be. That’s because we do not operate in a vacuum. We operate in the context of the environment and time. The idea is not to pick a place that is pretty and desirable. The idea is to pick a place where we can succeed. And the best place to succeed depends on everything else going on in the marketplace relative to our strengths. And we won’t know that unless we do the learning first.

I remember going to a franchising seminar and hearing a lecture from a successful franchisee. He said that some of the most successful franchisees ignore the glamorous businesses and enter businesses which are dirty, ugly and risky. Why? Big corporations tend to avoid the dirty, ugly and risky. This makes them more profitable for the little franchisee. The idea here is that analysis and learning may point you to away from your first choice (the glamorous option) and put you somewhere else which will make you far more successful. Remember, nearly everyone in the smartphone business is losing money. It may be glamorous, but not a place where everyone can succeed.

In making decisions for your strategy, keep in mind the context of yourself within the environment. Make sure the position you choose is seen by the marketplace as desirable, sizable, ownable, preferable, achievable, believable, understandable, and profitable. I talk more about these concepts here. And then, once you have made your choice about what you want to be, translate it into an external message (position statement) and an internal business model (how I must operate to make the position a deliverable reality).

Doing

The third step is doing—the hard work of making your decisions come to life. This is where you “bake” the strategy. This, by necessity, has to come last. Until you make your decisions, how will you know which actions are the right ones to take? Until you know your way to win, you cannot know which are the winnable actions for your business. 

For example, Aldi and Whole Foods are both grocery retailers. Yet they have decided on radically different positions. Aldi aims for the lowest possible price while Whole Foods aims at health, nutrition, and natural/organic. The right actions for success at Aldi are almost the opposite of the right actions for Whole Foods, and vice versa.

It’s not that some actions are always good and others are always bad. Good and bad is determined by the position. A good action for Aldi can be bad for Whole Foods, and vice versa. So how do you know what the right actions are prior to deciding the position?

Yet, I often see businesses rushing to do the actions first. They claim there is no time to learn (or the future is unlearnable) and that consumers make all the decisions. Therefore all we can do is act quickly and learn from our mistakes. I don’t think it’s quite that simple. I don’t want to stick random ingredients in the oven and then taste them afterwards to learn if it is good. Random actions are not as efficient as making the right action tradeoffs based on a chosen position.

The “doing” actions you choose to prioritize need to address both internal and external challenges. Externally, one needs to convince the customers and the supply chain that you own our position and that it is in their best interests to prefer us. Internally, we need to be sure we have a model capable of delivering the position.

Cycles

Those who want the “doing” to come first aren’t entirely wrong. There are some things which are best

learned via doing and experimenting. But that doesn’t mean that you skip the traditional learning and deciding steps. It means you use the “doing” actions of your current planning cycle to begin the learning of the next cycle.

You can see this in Figure 2. Planning is a continuous series of cycles. Just as you don’t just eat once and quit eating ever again, you don’t just plan once and quit. The planning process never really stops. When you get to the end of one cycle, you use what you learned to influence the next cycle.

SUMMARY
Strategic planning is more like a recipe than a To-Do list. Good planning tends to do things in a particular order, without skipping steps. First you learn by measuring what’s going on (and expected to happen) in the internal and external environments. Then you decide how you want to mix together attributes and processes in order to create a position and business model which optimizes your chances for success in that environment. Third, you “bake” your strategy by doing the implementation actions which make your mix decisions a reality. Finally, you use what you learn from those three steps to do an even better job in your next planning cycle.

FINAL THOUGHTS
This recipe for planning isn’t 100% etched in stone. There is room to experiment with this recipe. But don’t throw it away.

Strategic Planning Analogy #460: Who’s the Greatest

THE STORY
If you get sports fans talking long enough, the conversation the conversation will eventually get around to an argument over who was the greatest.  Who was the greatest athlete?  Who was the greatest coach?  Which is the best team?

The problem with these types of arguments is that the individual greatness is tough to separate from the given situation.  For example, there are coaches who were very successful coaching one team, but then did poorly coaching another team.  Same coach with supposedly the same brilliant coaching strategies and skills, but different results.  So is the coach great or not?

The same is true for many athletes.  An athlete might have great success playing on one team but not when playing on another team.  Same athlete with the same skills, but different results depending on the rest of the team.  So is the athlete great or not?

And, of course, most teams can have a streak of very successful years, followed by a streak of poor years.  Is it a great team or not?

THE ANALOGY
In the world of business, one can also find heated arguments about greatness—who was the greatest CEO, the greatest business or the greatest business strategy.  In these discussions, you run into the same problem as with sports—the situation plays a major influence.  Some CEOs have great success at one company but fail miserably at another.  A company regarded by business experts as great in one year may go bankrupt a few years later.  Just like in sports, situations can change, causing otherwise great CEOs and companies to suddenly not look so great (or vice versa).

The one that is most relevant to me is the discussion about great business strategies.  Many times, a great strategy on paper may not work out so well in practice.  So was it a great strategy or not?  Should the strategists be rewarded or not?

THE PRINCIPLE
The principle here is that strategies should not be judged on how great they are.  Instead, they should be judged on how SUCCESSFUL they are.  After all, if the company does not benefit with success from the strategy, what is the point of having it?  Being proud of a “great” strategy on a piece of paper that never gets properly executed (for whatever reason), isn’t much to be proud of in my opinion.

And since success is based on a lot of situational factors (like in sports), strategists need to concern themselves with these factors if they want to see success. The truly great coaches adapt their strategies to the particular situation at hand—the athletes they have, the opponents they play, and so on.  In a similar manner, business strategists, need to look at the larger context in order to be sure that the strategy ultimate leads to success.

Moving from merely having a great strategy to having a successful strategy requires four steps.  These are described below.

1) Moving From Ideas to Actions

It all starts with a great strategic idea—what to be, what winning looks like.  But, if you have no clue how to bring this idea to life, then all you have is an idea.  Dreams are nice, but eventually you have to wake up and face reality.  For example, a sports team can dream about winning a championship, but that’s not enough to secure the championship. The team has to take action—play games, win games.

Moving a great strategic idea from a dream to a reality is the same. You have to convert the dream into action plans.  This doesn’t mean that every detailed action needs to be spelled out in advance.  However, the big action requirements need to be understood. 

A good coach doesn’t just tell his team to “win” and then walk away.  No, he draws up some game plans and set plays.  He devises actions that will increase the likelihood that the team will win.  In the same way, successful strategies are more than just declarations of lofty targets.  They also outline the path of actions needed to get there.

2) Moving From Actions to Skills

So far so good, but this is still not enough.  A great coach could have a great strategy and a great gam plan..  But if the players on the team are incapable of executing the strategy and game plan, then the coach will not succeed.  Somebody has to do the actions.  If the people cannot do the actions, the actions won’t get done.

That is why a great strategy not only includes an action plan, but also a plan for those doing the action.  In sports, it usually boils down three things—having athletes of the proper skill levels, having athletes properly trained, and having the proper equipment and facilities. 

A similar situation exists for businesses.  To execute the action plan you need skilled people who are properly trained and have all the tools and infrastructure they need.  In the past, I have referred to this as the “pursuit" portion of strategic planning.  The idea is that the plans don’t get done by themselves—you have to pursue them.  The pursuit portion of strategic planning makes sure you have all the pieces needed to win—competencies, capacity, and connections.  I spoke in more detail about these in an earlier blog.

Remember, strategic success relies on having the right people properly equipped.  Therefore, strategies need to consider both the human resource element and spending on resources.

3) Moving From Skills to Exploitation

Okay, so now we have a strategy, an action plan and some skilled players.  But that still does not guarantee success.  There have been dream teams in the past with all sorts of skilled players who still had disappointing performance.   Maybe the team chemistry is wrong.  Perhaps there are too many selfish egos in the way preventing teamwork.  Perhaps a key player doesn’t want to be on the team and is sulking rather than playing.  Perhaps the team is not serious about doing what it takes to win.

Whatever the cause, the execution is below the levels necessary to win.  Even if sufficient skills and sufficient training/equipment is there, if the athletes are not sufficiently motivated, the plan will not be properly executed.  The skills need to be exploited to be useful.

That is why great coaches not only work on game plans, but also work on team motivation.  Both are needed if you want the plan to succeed.  It is natural and expected for coaches to do this.  Yet it is not usual and expected that strategists would do this.  I think that is a mistake. 

It is common for strategist to hand off the plan to those executing it and then walk away.  And if the plan fails, the strategist blame “poor execution.” “It’s not my fault,” they say. “It’s the fault of those who are poorly executing that great plan of mine.”  We wouldn’t accept it if a coach used that excuse in sports.  Why do we allow that excuse in business?

No, if you want a truly great strategy, you have to include a process which properly motivates employees to aggressively and enthusiastically execute the key elements of the plan.  Do the people know what you want executed?  Are the compensation systems set up to reward the proper long term strategic behavior?  Are there motivating pep talks?

4) Moving From Exploitation to Strategy

Often times, even having action plans, skilled personnel and motivation is not enough.  For example, on a sports team, a coach may find that the people have skills, but not the right skills or right balance of skills.  Perhaps a star player retired or got injured, leaving a big hole.  Perhaps the matchup with competition is not what is desired.  In these cases, no matter how well thought out, the original plan is in trouble.

Great coaches do not blame these circumstances for their problems and accept failure.  No, they adjust.  If you don’t have the right kind of team to execute the original plan, perhaps you need to adjust the plan to better exploit the advantages you do have.  Look at what you have to find a way to win.

The key is not to have a great strategic planning document, but a successful business.  The environment the company is competing in is fluid and ever changing.  Internal and external changes often require adjustments to the overall plan.  This does not mean that strategies should be in constant flux.  But it does mean that adjustments may be necessary.

Planning is not a one-time event, but an on-going process.  It is a continuous cycle from strategy to action to skills to execution and back again to strategy. 

SUMMARY
The goal is not to have a great strategy, but to have a successful business.  Therefore, the strategist should not just come up with a great idea and walk away.  No, the process needs to be expanded to encompass all the elements needed to convert a strategy from an idea to business success.  That includes the development of action plans, plans to ensure the proper people/infrastructure are in place, and plans to properly motivate the right actions.  And if, going through this larger process you notice that the original plan is no longer most appropriate, take time to reformulate the plan to best exploit the situation at hand.

FINAL THOUGHTS
The greatest strategists are the one who create the greatest company successes, not the ones with the greatest portfolio of mission and vision statements.

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 #423: The Whole Canvas at Once

THE STORY
Back when I was in college, I spent one year as an art major. I had a professor who tried to teach me how to paint. This professor said that beginning novice painters tend to make the mistake of working on a painting one section at a time.

These new artists try to get one small section of the painting fully completed before moving to another section of the canvass. Then they try to fully complete the painting in the second section before moving to a third section, and so on.

The professor said this was a mistake because all of these little sections rarely fit together properly when the painting is completed. The colors don’t blend together right, the textures don’t blend together, and the overall effect feels disjointed rather than as one flowing statement.

Instead, the professor said that one should paint over the entire canvass all at the same time. First, you rough out the entire painting at the same time. Then you put on the finishing touches across the entire canvas at the same time. That way, everything flows together well and the painting makes a grand, unified statement.

Although this advice was excellent, my painting skills were not. It was soon thereafter that I switched my college major to something besides art.

THE ANALOGY
Painting and Strategic Planning are both creative processes. And, in my opinion, a great strategic plan (when completed) can be just as beautiful as a great painting. But both can appear rather ugly if one does not follow the advice of my art professor.

The strategic process is often broken down into its component parts, like mission statements, five forces analyses, vision statements, scenario planning, goal-setting, tactics, etc. Then, like those misguided painting novices, we can try to perfect each of these parts in isolation before moving onto the next component. It can be like following a check list. You do a strategic task to completion, check it off the list as “done”, and then move onto the next item on the list.

The problem comes when all the items on the list are finally checked off as done. Because each step was done in isolation and fully completed before moving onto the next step, the end result looks ugly. The parts don’t blend together. Everything is disjointed. There is no overall flow to the plan.

Because the pieces are not well integrated, faulty logic can creep into the strategic process, or even no logic at all to tie the parts together. The net result is a failed plan, because not only is the logic weak, but nobody could understand the flow and become committed to making the flow a reality.

Just like in painting, a truly beautiful strategic plan occurs only when you work the entire canvass simultaneously. That way, you can make sure that the logic flows properly and that people can clearly see the vision you have tried to communicate.

THE PRINCIPLE
The principle here is that strategic planning is not a series of isolated events, but an iterative process. You cannot effectively finish one part until you have finished all parts.

Each Part Influences Other Parts
All of the various parts of a strategic plan influence all the other parts of the plan. Therefore, one needs to work through all the parts together in order to take advantage of all the richness to be found in the interaction between the parts. The whole canvass needs to be worked as a whole—in an ongoing basis—allowing the knowledge gotten from feedback in one area to influence all the other areas.

For example, one can do a SWOT analysis (Strengths Weaknesses Opportunities Threats) and come away thinking you really know where your strengths are relative to competition. However, a later scenario exercise (or market test) may cause you to realize that if the environment unfolds in a particular manner, your “strengths” may not be as strong as you originally thought. You may need to go back and modify your earlier SWOT conclusions. And if your original mission was based on a strength you now feel is less secure, you may need to change the mission statement. Either that, or you may need a radical reprioritization of strategic initiatives in order to spend time restoring a strength you realize you no longer have.

Or let’s say you set a goal. Then later on in the planning process, you realize that the only way to possibly achieve that goal is by taking on more risk than you feel comfortable with. Based on this new information, you may need to go back and either change your goal or change your tolerance for risk. The worst thing you can do is not go back and change the goal (because that task is already “done”) and then disappoint everyone when the goal is not achieved, because the goal was never realistic in the first place.

Sometimes, you cannot tell if a vision is a good one until you work through all of its implications in the rest of the planning exercises. You may find out that it isn’t as good as you thought, or perhaps you stumble upon an even better vision. So you should be open to change as you go through the process.

Don’t Be Premature In Wordsmithing
I’ve seen planning processes grind to halt as executives struggle over each individual word in a mission statement or vision statement. Many weeks or months can go by as the simple sentence is edited, then re-edited, then re-re-edited, then re-re-re-edited, and so on. Major discussions envelop the choice of each word.

This is like the painter who labors forever over the perfection of the painting of a single tree in a forest landscape before moving on. So many layers of paint and scrapings of paint may occur on that single tree that it no longer looks like it fits into the rest of the forest. Similarly, so much effort is put into the individual words or a mission or vision statement that the big picture of the whole plan is missed.

Earlier, we saw that as we learn from the planning process, we may need to go back and modify prior efforts. A good idea for a vision or mission statement may not look so good anymore. It may need to be altered. Unfortunately, if you have just gone through this major, time-consuming struggle to perfect each word of the statement, it may not be possible to alter it any more. It’s taken on a life of its own and it would be a political nightmare to open it up for review.

Now, you are stuck with:

a) A statement no longer appropriate for the strategy; or

b) A strategy that matches the statement, but not the reality of the marketplace; or

c) A statement which eventually gets ignored because people know it is not relevant to what is happening (meaning that all that work was a waste of time); or

d) A strategy which eventually gets ignored because people cling too tightly to the improper vision/mission statement; or

e) A poor planning process, because the earlier-written statement blinds the executives from keeping an open mind about the realities in subsequent analyses.

None of these are good options. That’s why vision and mission statements should not be fully locked down into the final words until the full planning process has had a chance to “pressure-test” the statement, to make sure it is still completely relevant. Postpone the “wordsmithing” until you are sure you have a full understanding of the big picture. Don’t do it as a complete, unalterable, isolated event at the very beginning of the process.

SUMMARY
Because all the parts of the strategic planning process influence your knowledge base for all the other parts of the process, you cannot do effective strategic planning in a strictly linear manner. Instead of perfecting each part individually and sequentially (like a check list), one needs to incorporate a little back and forth into the process. New learnings need to be applied to prior strategy tasks to ensure that they are still relevant. Be willing to adjust and modify along the way. Work the entire strategy canvas together.

FINAL THOUGHTS
Just because the strategy process should be iterative does not mean that a plan is never completed. Painters work the entire canvas together in an iterative fashion, yet manage to eventually complete the painting. Everything on the painting gradually gets better together until everything looks great. The same is true of strategic planning. Yes, go back and forth to keep making everything better, but eventually stop when the whole picture comes together. Then start the implementation.

Strategic Planning Analogy #407: Standing at the Road

THE STORY
Back when I was in college, I sometimes got around by hitchhiking. One time while hitchhiking, a driver got me started on my long trip by taking me as far as an exit on an interstate highway.

It was great to get to the interstate highway. I had planned on taking that highway for quite a distance. Unfortunately, I was left at an exit which received virtually no traffic. I stood there quite awhile with absolutely no cars driving by.

After a very long wait, I eventually found someone willing to pick me up. That was quite a relief, because after a couple of hours, I had only seen three cars on that entrance ramp.

THE ANALOGY
The good news was that the first ride on that hitchhiking trip got me to the road I wanted to take. The bad news was that it took hours before I could get moving on that road. I could see that road in front of me, but I had no way to take advantage of it.

Sometimes, a similar thing happens in strategic planning. The strategy process will determine the right strategic path to take and then consider the strategy job to be finished. It was now up to someone else to implement the process to get down the path.

It’s as if the strategists see their job as being like the first ride I had on that trip. That first ride got me to the road and just left me there. I quickly learned on that trip that being at the road was not the same thing as being able to take advantage of that road. I knew it was the right path, and I could see it in front of me, but I was making no progress, because my first ride abandoned me as soon as I got to the highway.

If all your strategic process does is get the company to see the path, and does not help it move down the path, then your company may get stuck for a long time, just as I was stuck at that entrance ramp.

THE PRINCIPLE
The principle here has to do with how one defines success. Since we tend to work in such a manner as to achieve success, then the nature of how we define success has a great determination on what one actually does.

For example, if a company defines success for the strategist as merely coming up with a fully-designed strategy, then “success” is achieved the moment the strategy design is concluded. By this definition, strategy implementation is not necessary to achieve “success.” Just having a plan is reason enough to celebrate a successful conclusion, even if it is poorly (or never) implemented.

It’s easy to see why such a narrow definition of success comes about. After all, it seems reasonable and fair to reward people based upon outcomes which are under their control. And the strategists have meaningful control over the strategy design process.

Similarly, it seems a bit unfair to hold people accountable for outcomes which are out of their control. And strategists are rarely the primary driving force in charge of strategy implementation. So why hold a strategist accountable for an outcome they do not manage?

The problem though, as we will soon see, is that this narrow definition of success may not be in the best interest of the company. It also may not be in the best interest of the strategists.

Bad For the Company
They are many ways in which defining success for strategists as merely creating a plan is bad for a company. First, it tends to focus the strategist on the quality of the process rather than the quality of the output. After all, if success is achieved at the moment a plan is approved, then success is achieved faster (and more efficiently) with an efficient planning approval process. The focus shifts to creating a slick, standardized process. Just fill in the forms, hold the meetings, make the presentation, and then you are done! Success!!

It’s easy to put together a process to create an impressive-looking planning document if you don’t have to worry about how good the plan is, or how difficult it will be to implement, or if the strategy will work after implementation. Unfortunately, these latter issues are very important to the company’s ultimate success.

A company succeeds only if the plan succeeds. And a plan only succeeds if it is both a) worth implementing; and b) is actually implemented. Otherwise, the plan is worthless.

If you broaden the definition of success to include these other issues, then strategists will spend more time on them. I would suspect that the type of plan you get would be different. The process might get messier, but the plan will be better. Even if the strategists have only a minor role in the actual execution, if they are held more accountable for execution, they will create a plan which is easier to execute. Similarly, if they are held more accountable for the effectiveness of the plan when executed, they will create a plan which is more effective if implemented.

A second problem with the narrow definition of success is that it tends to isolate strategic planning from the rest of the business. Creating a strategic plan just becomes another thing which needs to get done (and not the primary responsibility of the operators of the business). Once the plan is designed, you can check it off the “to do” list as a successful completion. Then the focus of the company moves on to the next item on the list. It is just sort of done and forgotten, because no connection is made between making the plan and running the business.

If the day-to-day decisions are totally divorced from planning decisions, then the contents of the plan become irrelevant. After all, a company’s long-term execution is merely the sum of all the decisions it makes on a daily basis. If the daily decisions ignore the strategic implications, then the strategy never becomes a part of how things get done. As a result, the company never benefits from the plan, because it merely sits on a shelf, rather than being a major influence on how the company acts on a daily basis.

The strategist needs to be present not only at the place where the plan is designed (getting to the road), but at the place where key operational decisions are made (driving down the road). Otherwise, the company may end up like a hitchhiker stuck in place because it can’t find the right way to get down the road.

Bad for the Strategists
It’s not just the company which suffers under the narrow definition. The strategists suffer as well. First, if the rest of the company sees strategists as primarily responsible for the strategy process, then that is how the strategists will be measured. Bonuses will be based on things like making sure all the parts of the process get done and get done under budget. This can be a horrible way to make strategy and it wastes a strategist’s resources.

Good strategic positions and broad strategic objectives shouldn’t change all that often. For example, the basic plan for Wal-Mart is low cost/low price. That hasn’t changed in decades. The basic plan for Apple is cool devices doing cool things in cool ways. That hasn’t changed in years, either.

Going back to square one every year to complete the entire planning cycle in these cases is a waste of time and effort, because the core strategy will not change. You are better off rotating through key strategic issues related to the enduring plan already in place. But if the strategist is judged on revisiting the plan every year (and concluding it is still good), then the time for getting at the key strategic issues is lost. The strategist’s talents are wasted.

Worse yet, if companies see the plan in place as rather enduring, and they believe that putting the plan in place is all a strategist is good for, then they will see no need to keep strategists around. The idea would be that as long as “low cost/low price” is working for Wal-Mart and “coolness” is working for Apple, there really is no need to even have any strategists around. In this case, the strategist is fired.

It is like that hitchhiker story. Once the driver (the strategist) gets you to the road, they are cast off as unnecessary. The company (as the hitchhiker) will find another way to get down the path without you. And as long as they keep traveling down that same road, they will see no reason to get another strategist.

The strategist then loses his/her ability to influence the actions because they are not around. So, not only is the strategist unemployed, he/she is unable to keep the plan relevant. That makes the actual plan seem even less valuable, making it harder to get rehired to do it again.

Solution
As a result, it is in the best interest of both the company and the strategist to keep planning work and daily operational work more intertwined. That way, the company gets a better implementation of a better (more relevant) strategy. In addition, the strategist gets a more fulfilling (and longer-lasting) job. And the best way to keep the work intertwined is to use a broader definition of success for the strategist which includes aspects of implementation.

SUMMARY
The value of a strategy is not in having a plan on a piece of paper. No, the true value of a strategy is in its ability to improve the outcome of the business. Therefore, strategic success should be defined based on how well a plan improved a business instead of on how efficiently it was designed.

FINAL THOUGHTS
If the company sees no need to take the strategist along on the journey, then the company will not get timely information about problems up ahead on the road. By the time they realize that the road they are on is no longer any good, it may be too late to get back on track.

Strategic Planning Analogy #380: Where Should Strategic Planning Report?

THE STORY
Baking soda has an interesting quality. It will absorb the odors around it. After awhile, the baking soda will smell like the odor of its environment. Then it is no longer useful for baking.

THE ANALOGY
Strategic planning departments can be like baking soda. Just as baking soda can take on the odor of its environment, planning departments can take on the culture of their location within the organization.

For example, if you place a strategic planning department within the finance department, it will tend to take on a lot of the characteristics of finance. Planning will tend to be more data driven and concern itself more with implications to the income statement and balance sheet. Strategies will more likely be framed in terms of asset allocation and in the buying and selling of pieces of the portfolio.

If you place the strategy department somewhere else, that culture and orientation will move in bit of a different direction. Therefore, if you want the proper “odor” for your strategic planning department, it is important to consider where you place it within the organization.

THE PRINCIPLE
The principle here is that there is no law forcing a company to place a strategic planning department into a particular silo in your organization. In theory, it can go almost anywhere. So, even though most businesses have Strategic Planning reporting either directly to the CEO or into the Finance Department, you have other options.

Strategists are supposed to think outside the box, so I am going to do that with the idea of where to locate Strategic Planning. Why can’t it report somewhere else?

Marketing
Why couldn’t Strategic Planning report into marketing? After all, the chief strategist and the chief marketing officer have much in common. Both are concerned with the long-term strength of the brand/company. Strategic positioning is a lot like Brand positioning.

A good strategy needs to provide a superior solution for a consumer segment. That sounds a lot like marketing, too. Marketers usually know the customers better than anyone else, so a strategy lead by marketing would probably be consumer centric and appropriate for the marketplace.

One of the major complaints against many current strategic planning programs is that the plan is poorly communicated throughout the organization. I bet that if marketers ran strategic planning, the communication issue would be less of a problem. They’re good at communications.

I know of a retailer who recently conducted a major strategic reanalysis of the company. It was run by the marketing department and I think the process went very well.

Of course, there would also be some issues if strategic planning reported into marketing. Marketers are not known as being the most astute when it comes to containing costs. Financial issues tend not to be at the top of their priority list. So the plans might lack some of the financial or risk-based rigor which comes from a finance department.

In addition, marketers do not always understand all the nuances of the business model. As a result, they may underestimate the ramifications of their strategy on the capabilities of the organization. In other words, they might create a great strategy which is a bit out of touch with what the company can accomplish.

Human Resources
Why couldn’t Strategic Planning report into human resources? Lots of CEOs say that their people are their most important asset. Therefore, why not place strategy in the hands of those managing the most important asset?

Many of the complaints against how strategy is currently done talk about issues like mishandling of corporate culture, improper alignment, poor organizational structure, and poor integration of people after a merger. Aren’t these the types of things human resource departments are supposed to be good at? They could help solve all these issues.

Because human resources is not closely tied to the status quo of operations, they may be better able to push innovative, out of the box solutions (this could also apply to marketing).

I’d bet that if strategic planning reported to human resources, the plans would be better at getting alignment between people, functions and strategic issues. There would probably be more thought given to how to organize to get the strategy accomplished more efficiently and effectively.

I know of a company where the chief advocate of strategy came from human resources. It can be done.

The down side to human resources is that although they are good with processes, they are not always the best at knowing how to get business results. In other words, they may create a great “means” for doing strategy, but not have a great “end” in terms of what strategy to do.

R&D
How about having strategic planning report into research and development? Both areas are involved in research. Both areas are looking out long term. Both areas are looking for the next big thing. I think there is even a cultural fit, since strategists and R&D people both tend to be a bit nerdy.

If you want to build a plan around the art of the possible, the R&D folks are best suited for knowing what is possible. If you want innovation in your planning, this could be a great place to be.

And it also works in the opposite direction. If the strategists are closely tied to R&D, they will make sure that the R&D efforts are focused on what is needed to make the strategy a reality.

The down side is that although this approach could create some of the best ideas, it may not be the best place to create the game plan to get the rest of the company on board. It could be great on strategy conception, but not strategy implementation.

Operations
How about having strategy report into operations? Your operations people understand the details of how things get done. One of the biggest complaints about strategy is in the poor handoff from idea to implementation. If you put the responsibility for strategy in the hands of the implementers, you stand a better chance of getting it implemented. Operators would be able to easily reject ideas which are disconnected from the strength and skill-sets of the organization, because the operators are a large part of that skill-set.

Strategic objectives will probably be very realistic and doable, because it is run by the people who know how to do what needs to get done. And they will be more inclined to do it, because they would have a larger vested interest in the plan if it reported to them.

Of course, the down side is that operators are highly tied to the status quo. They will tend to resist radical changes which put their operations at risk. Your plans will tend to create only incremental improvements to the status quo. That may not be enough.

SUMMARY
The point I’m trying to make here is that nobody has a monopoly on everything needed to create and implement great strategy. Every area in the organization has unique skills and insights which are beneficial. In addition, every area in the organization has blind spots preventing them from seeing the whole picture. Therefore, narrowly slotting strategic planning into any one department is probably a mistake (even if put in finance). You are not getting the richness of all the flavors the company has to offer.

For strategic planning to work best, it needs to be owned by everybody. That way, you get the unique insights of each area, while also having everyone’s blind spot covered by another area for whom that is not a blind spot.

SUGGESTIONS
So how do we accomplish this? One way is by rotating people through strategic planning. Strategic planning departments would benefit from having people from finance, marketing, human resources, R&D and operations rotate into the area for awhile. If your company is large enough, I would suggest that strategy departments have a blend of both strategy professionals and rotating experts from all these areas.

I used to run a strategy department which did this, and I thought it worked well in many ways. The strategy formation was better, because there were broader insights from all these areas of expertise. The strategy implementation was better because there were stronger ties and greater credibility with the ones outside the strategy department who have to get the work done. And once someone in rotation went back to their old part of the organization, they took a greater strategic orientation to that department.

Even if you do not rotate people through the department, you can still get some of the benefits by opening up more opportunities for the teams of strategy and elsewhere to work together throughout the year. Get strategists on the committees where decisions are being made on a regular basis.

If strategy people are hidden away for most of the year and are only exposed to the rest of the organization at some annual off-site planning meeting, then you are missing all this richness.

FINAL THOUGHTS
I’m not sure what victory smells like, but I do know that victory is more likely if you absorb the rich aromas of the entire organization.

Strategic Planning Analogy #376: Dry Wells

THE STORY
Imagine two people digging water wells. Bob takes a very sophisticated approach to the problem. First, Bob brings together a team of experts in the latest advances in drilling. They design an elaborate, but efficient drilling methodology with all sorts of high-tech tools. While the well is being dug, Bob calls in a team of experts in water pumping. They design an elaborate, but efficient system of pumps using the latest in pumping technology. Finally, Bob and his team design a complex, but efficient series of pipes in order to get the water to its intended destination. It took a lot of planning, but in the end, Bob was convinced that this was the best water delivery system in the country.

Sanjay took a different approach to the problem. Sanjay dug his well with nothing more than a little back-hoe and a simple shovel. He got the water out of the well using a bucket tied to a rope. Sanjay got the water to the customers by pouring the water out of the bucket into a small tank truck, which would drive the water to the final destination.

So who was more successful with their well?

It seems that Bob was so busy planning his water distribution system that he didn’t have time to properly locate his well. All those pipes, all those pumps, and all that fancy digging lead to a dry hole. There was no water anywhere near Bob’s well. It was a worthless enterprise.

Sanjay, on the other hand, made sure that he did his simple digging over a large body of fresh, clean water. That was where he focused his effort. Sanjay may not have had the most sophisticated system to get that water distributed, but at least he had water to offer his customers. Since he was the only one around who had discovered the water, Sanjay had a thriving business.

THE ANALOGY
Bob was great at process. He had a great process for planning his water distribution system. He built a great process for delivering water. Unfortunately, Bob didn’t have any water to distribute. It was all for nothing.

Sanjay, on the other hand, was less concerned with having the right process. Instead, his focus was on being in the right place (on top of the only source of water). As a result, Sanjay was able to satisfy the needs of his thirsty customers, even if his process was less than ideal.

Every day, businesses need to make trade-offs on how they balance their time between a focus on process and a focus on place (also known as position). As we can see from the story, great process is worthless if the process is being built around a worthless place. Conversely, if your company is positioned in the right place (on top of what is desired), you can do well even if your process is less than ideal.

Therefore, as strategists, we need to make sure that sufficient focus is placed on being in the right place. Otherwise, we could be wasting a lot of time.

THE PRINCIPLE
The principle here has to do with the primacy of position. In prior blogs, I have talked about the three main components of great strategy:

1. A Great Position – A Place Where You Can Win.

2. An Energetic Pursuit – Winning the Race to Own that Great Position and Defend it from Competition. (I speak more about pursuit in the second chapter of my new book “8 Questions,” as well as here.)

3. An Eye on Productivity – Optimizing the Wealth Available due to Owning a Great Position.

All three—positioning, pursuit and productivity—are vital elements to success. None can be ignored. However, of the three, positioning is the most important.

In the story, Bob had great pursuit. He quickly amassed great resources to create a great water distribution system. Unfortunately, he was pursuing a dry hole, so the pursuit was worthless. Bob also used experts to ensure that his system was highly efficient—a focus on productivity. However, even the most productive water system is worthless if there is no water for the system.

Sanjay started by making sure he got the position right (digging the well where the water was). That made all the difference.

Pursuit and Productivity are “Dependent” factors. Their success is highly dependent upon the desirability of the position being pursued and being made more productive. Therefore, the best way to optimize all three factors is to give the search for the right position primacy.

Statistical Support
This principle is supported by an article in the January 2011 edition of the McKinsey Quarterly. The article, entitled “Have You Tested Your Strategy Lately?,” brings up many ideas, but I want to focus on one particular point in the article. Referencing a book called “The Granularity of Growth,” by Baghai, Smit and Viguerie, the article states:

“80 percent of the variance in revenue growth is explained by choices about where to compete, according to research summarized in The Granularity of Growth, leaving only 20 percent explained by choices about how to compete. Unfortunately, this is the exact opposite of the allocation of time and effort in a typical strategy-development process. Companies should be shifting their attention greatly toward the “where” and should strive to outposition competitors by regularly reallocating resources as opportunities shift within and between segments.”

In other words, 80% of success (at least for revenue growth) comes from getting the position right. Only 20% is explained by pursuit and productivity. That is why Sanjay succeeded and Bob did not. Sanjay focused on the 80%; Bob did not.

If this is true, then our strategic planning should take this into account. Positioning needs to be more important than process. I mean this in two ways:

1) Strategic Planning Outcomes Are More Important Than Our Strategic Planning Processes.
It is easy to fall into the trap of trying to perfect an annual strategic planning process. Getting the calendar set up, designing great meetings and presentations, getting great forms to fill out, having great computer systems which link data to scorecards and budgets, and other such process issues can easily suck up all of our time and attention.

However, the ultimate goal is not to perfect the planning process. It is to optimize the business performance. Spend less time perfecting the process and more time making sure the company adequately grapples and comes to a conclusion on what determines 80% of success.

It’s okay if the planning process is a bit messy. In fact, that is probably a better way to find your position. I speak about that in more detail in an earlier blog, which can also be found as chapter 15 in the book “8 Questions.”

2) Strategy Implementation Processes are Less Important than Strategy Implementation Direction
Although there needs to be a methodology for implementing a strategy (implementation process), that process is fairly worthless if it is pointed in the wrong direction (towards a dry well). As we have seen, getting the right position is the critical first step. Unfortunately, the McKinsey article points out that most companies have their time priorities upside down. They spend 80% of their time on implementation (pursuit & productivity) and only 20% on positioning. Instead, we need to give the greatest priority to discovering the right position.

In the first chapter of “8 Questions,” (which can also be found here), I give a list of 8 questions which can help you get your position right. The McKinsey article referenced earlier also has some questions to consider. This is where the focus should be—on pressure-testing your position, so that you know you are in the right place. Otherwise, your efforts will be as misdirected as they were for Bob.

SUMMARY
Although positioning, pursuit and productivity are all important elements of strategy, proper positioning is the most critical. That is because if you choose the wrong position, your pursuit and productivity efforts will be wasted. No amount of pursuit and productivity can get water out of a dry well. First, spend the time to position yourself where the water is.

FINAL THOUGHTS
Just because positioning is the most important factor does not mean that you need to reposition yourself on a continual basis. Great positions have lasting qualities. If you emphasize them long enough, the position almost becomes synonymous with the brand (think of the association between Wal-Mart and low price). Frequent change will just confuse the customer and dilute the power of the position. That being said, modifications may be needed to ensure that you still own the position and the position is still relevant.

Strategic Planning Analogy #347: GPS

THE STORY
I love those GPS devices you can put in cars. I’m a typical guy who doesn’t like to ask for directions, and with GPS, you don’t have to ask for directions.

I remember when those devices first came out, and about the only cars that had them were rental cars. I was on a business trip to go visit some stores. I put the addresses of the stores I wanted to visit into the GPS device on the rental car and the device would tell me how to get to the stores.

That worked fine until I put in the address of one particular store. The GPS device took me to a location, but the store wasn’t there. I got really angry with the GPS device for taking me to the wrong location. I was blaming it for having a defect, because it did not get me to the store I wanted to see.

Eventually, I figured out that the store I was looking for was no longer in existence. The GPS accurately took me to the empty lot where the store used to be. Apparently, my list of store addresses was out-of-date. The device was fine.

I guess this goes to show that even the latest and most sophisticated technology is worthless if you fill the device with out-of-date information.

THE ANALOGY
The purpose of the GPS device is to help a driver more easily get from his starting point to his desired destination. Strategic planning has a similar function. Its goal is to help a company more easily get from where it is now to its desired destination.

Therefore, instead of having GPS stand for Global Positioning System, we should rename it the Global Planning System.

THE PRINCIPLE
The principle here is that we can make strategic planning a lot more popular and useful if we borrow some of the functionality which has made the GPS device so popular.

1. It is next to the driver during the journey.
The beauty of the GPS device is that it is right there in the car next to the driver during the entire trip. It isn’t anchored to your desktop computer back in your office. The GPS is highly useful specifically because it is immediately available when you need it most—while you are driving.

Unfortunately, not all strategic planning systems work this way. In many cases, the strategist is there at the beginning helping to set up the destination and the path for the company, but once the journey to the future begins, the strategist is not in the “car.” It is as if the strategist is waving to the company car as it pulls away, yelling to the driver “Good luck on the journey.” No wonder a lot of companies find strategic planning as irrelevant. They don’t take it along on the journey.

You wouldn’t set up a plan on the GPS and then leave the GPS device in the office. That would be silly. No, you would take the GPS with you to use in the car while you are driving. The same principle should apply to planners. To not bring them along on the journey is equally silly.

Usually, when strategists are left behind, it is because management sees them as being a part of corporate staff, and there is apparently no place for staff once the “operators” of the business to take over. This is a shame, because just as the GPS is most useful after the journey has begun, strategists can be most useful once the journey to the future has begun.

Strategists can be there to help companies interpret the environment they are driving into and make suggestions on how to adjust to that environment. With the ever more rapid changes in the environment, this type of in-car advice is more critical than ever. But strategists can only do that if they are in the car next to the driver.

If the strategists are left out of the car, the operators will make corrections and adjustments on their own once the journey begins. Due to short-term reward systems and the “tyranny of the immediate,” long-term considerations may not get properly reflected in those adjustments (no one in the car has their eye focused on the long term). Eventually, the car may get so far off the original course that nobody can figure out how to make those old maps given them by the strategists before the journey make any sense any more. This just reinforces their original perception that these staff planners aren’t useful for the journey anyway.

As a planner, as much as it is in your power of influence, make sure you get a seat in the car once the journey begins. This will make your services more relevant and more valuable.

2. There is live-time interaction and adjustment.
There is great power in the immediacy of the information of the GPS. When it is time to turn left, the GPS will tell you to turn left. When it is time to turn right, the GPS will tell you to turn right. And if you accidentally turn right when you should have turned left, the GPS will immediately help you get back on track.

The information is given to the driver at precisely the moment it is needed, in real-time interaction. The relevancy and usefulness is increased precisely because of the frequent interaction. If the GPS only dispensed its suggestions for turning once every hour, it would not be very useful. You would miss a lot of turns, because the information would come too late, after the intersection is long passed.

This is why it is a mistake to only use strategy as part of a long, drawn out annual process. If the only time major dialog between the operators and the strategists occurs is at some annual off-site planning retreat, the strategist becomes just as irrelevant as a GPS device that only tells a driver about turns once per hour.

The annual off-site retreat is an artificial environment. The car has been temporarily parked. The daily “turns” of business have been set aside. A GPS is not as important when the car is parked, and neither is the strategist.

A lot of decisions need to be made in the period between annual business cycles. If the strategist is not there, the decisions can lose a lot of the long-term strategic perspective. Strategic turns will be missed because the strategist is not there to point them out.

Therefore, as much as it is in your power of influence as a planner, make sure you get frequent interaction time with the operational leaders of the company. Insist on having a voice at the regular meetings where the decisions on which way to “turn” are being made. As you increase the frequency of your interactions, you will also be increasing your relevancy to the business.

3. It is easy to use.
People like the GPS device because it is relatively easy to use. You don’t need to spend weeks in advance filling out complicated paperwork each time you want to use it. Just a few simple clicks and away you go.

How easy is it for your company to use the resources of strategic planning? Does your process force operators to get lost in a sea of paperwork? Do they dread having to do anything related to planning because of all the seemingly tedious and time-wasting work your process puts them through? Are you as easy to use as a GPS device?

Fortunately, if you get points 1 and 2 correct (lots of frequent interaction at the times when decisions are being made), then a lot of that complicated process stuff is less critical. Your frequent interactions help you to know what’s going on, so that you don’t need others to write it all down for you on complicated forms. More frequent access to strategists usually leads to ease in interaction, since there is greater familiarity.

4. It relies on periodic updates of its database.
GPS systems make their advice based on their database. Since roads and road conditions change over time, it is important for the GPS database to get updated. Otherwise, the GPS can make improper suggestions.

Similarly, strategists need to periodically update their data and perspective on what is happening in the environment. Otherwise, the decisions based on the data will be out-of-date and irrelevant. Are you taking the time to stay relevant with what is happening in the environment? Or are you like the situation in the story, where you are directing people to empty lots, because your information is out-of-date?

SUMMARY
If you want your strategic planning to be as desirable and as useful as a GPS device, then follow its examples:

a) Be in the car for the whole journey. Don’t just set up the trip and wave good-bye.

b) Have frequent and timely interaction with the key operators when decisions are being made—all year long. Don’t rely on an annual meeting to be your primary time of interaction.

c) Have an easy-to-use process, so people will want to interact with you.

d) Update your data periodically, so that your perspective remains relevant to the changing environment.

FINAL THOUGHTS
The Cooper Mini automobile from BMW is based off a design originally made for small race cars. That is why many of the key dials on the dashboard are in the center of the dash rather than right in front of the driver. When the small cars race, they have two occupants—one is mostly concerned about what’s happening outside and one is mostly concerned about what the dials are saying. This power of two makes for better racing. The same is true for businesses. By having the strategist alongside the driver, the strategist can better help the driver win the race.