How to Make Sure that Strategic Planning Fails

Brien Palmer, Partner
InterLINK Management Consulting

A lot of us are involved in a ritual that comes around every year, just like Halloween: Strategic Planning. It seems like people don't really believe in it, but if everyone else is getting dressed up, we might as well do it too.

When you look at what really happens after all the hoopla, you'd think that nobody wants it to work, anyway. You know, you go to a couple of off-site meetings, do some team-building exercises, and develop some strategies. Give them the official blessing and put them into a binder. (Make sure that the graphics, binders, and printing are all top-of-the-line.) Put the binder on the bookshelf and…well, that's it. The binders catch dust for a year.

If you are in this camp, I've found nine warning signs that a strategic planning approach is probably just reinforcing "business as usual" rather than developing a stronger, better business. If you really want strategic planning to fail, just implement these as written. However, if you want to your planning efforts to succeed, take these as warning signs and apply corrective measures as warranted.

Don't Do It At All

This is probably the best approach of all. After all, who has time for this? Everybody is already working as hard as they can now, doing what's best for the company. Should they stop doing what they are doing for this?

You might want to use these proven arguments to support your case. You can adapt them to your particular situation:

We are on top of our game right now. Let's just keep doing what we are doing. Why slow down for this?

Are you kidding me? With the pace of change, strategic planning is dead. By the time we come up with a strategy, the whole business will have changed. What a waste of time!

Do it with Managers Only

Take a group of top management off to a nice site for a couple of days. After all, they are paid to think. Do some ropes courses, and maybe some creative thinking sessions. "If you were an animal, what would you be?"

If you involve other people, like using an employee survey or focus groups as an input, you will mess everything up. You will have to contend with input you cannot predict or control. When uou keep it just to management, everybody knows how to play the game: If I don't comment on MIS's poor service, they won't take pot shots at my department.

Don't even think about having an outsider give input on the external and internal conditions. Outsiders are dangerous and often make people see things from a different perspective.

Stay Polite and Don't Rock the Boat

This is an offshoot of the last item, and just plain common sense. If you keep your doubts to yourself, you will not be associated with a failure. Besides, you don't want to upset anyone.

Some companies, during the strategic planning process, appoint an official devil's advocate, whose role is to challenge the emerging strategies. (The Catholic church has used this method for centuries to scrutinize candidates for sainthood.) Avoid this role at all costs.

Advocate Doing Everything

This one is very effective. Everybody agrees that there are a lot of things to do, and we'd be better off if they all got done. But-here's the kicker-nobody wants to say what not to do. So lets just agree that we have to do everything. Put the strategies on a list, prioritize them, then agree to do everything.

Everybody gets assigned a grandiose strategy or two, nobody really finishes anything, and life goes on.

Keep it Secret

The competitive environment requires that we keep out strategic thinking under wraps. After all, we don't want it to get out.

Besides, what would the rest of the company do with it? We need to spoon feed them, break assignments down into bite sized pieces. They don't really need to know the big picture-probably wouldn't understand it anyway.

Let it Implement Itself

This one is a no-brainer. Everybody feels pretty good after the planning sessions, even if they get a little bit tired. Nobody is going to object if we don't fill in all the implementation details. The responsible managers will take care of it themselves, later on. If the strategies seem to move a little slowly, well, that's business. If we just let everybody responsible take care of their own area, we'll keep our noses clean. The CEO will have to do all the follow-up, and that's a tiring job.

Don't Measure It

Another no-brainer. Some companies spell out their strategies all the way down to milestones, deliverables, resources, etc. Some even put this information right on big charts in plain sight of everyone and their brother! Avoid this at all costs. Use the previous arguments, plus these two if necessary:

You can't measure what we do.

Our business is different.

If you find yourself facing metrics on strategy implementation, you have obviously not been very politically adept in implementing the previous suggestions.

Keep it Static

You put a lot of effort into planning. Don't blow it just because it isn't working out like you thought. If you start measuring business strategies and modifying them just because they aren't working out in the market place, you will always be planning, doing, checking, adjusting…forever!

Start Over Next Year from Scratch

By now, you are no doubt getting the idea. When next year comes around, enjoy the shrimp cocktails, have fun on the ropes course, and start all over. Forget about last year. After all, if you follow these principles, this isn't going anywhere anyway.

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