Strategic Planning Should Be a Strategic Exercise
Many managers complain that strategy-making often reduces to an operational action plan that resembles the last one. To prevent that from happening they need to remember that strategy is about creating a system whereby a company’s stakeholders interact to create a sustainable advantage for the company. Strategic planning is how the company designs that system, which is very different from an operational action plan in that it is never a static to-do list but constantly evolves as strategy makers acquire more insights into how their system of stakeholders can create value.
^ADJ: Strategy is hard work, coming up with a strategic plan as to how you are going to position the firm even harder - have put together some resources that have helped us and our clients with strategy, if you want a copy email me.
How to plan?
So here are a few rules of thumb for making planning suck less:
Do fewer things. Planning is the wrong time to introduce anything new. You must provide frameworks and constraints. Project planning has an inflection point. Don't wait to kill bad ideas. Minimize dependencies. Headcount planning won't map to your plans. What if money is no object?
^ADJ: Great article to get you thinking about how you plan, what are you really doing and are you leading effectively in this area.
What Happened When the U.S. Military Played ‘Shark Tank’
The U.S. Miliary adopts ‘Shark Tank’ and get some surprising results.
^ADJ: This is a really good reminder as to how the ground floor of your operations not only know’s more about how stuff actually gets done, but also how to fix it!
Symptoms of a broken product culture
^ADJ: I was having coffee the other day and we talked about the negative impacts of “fire fighting” in a company - I then came across this article, and thought it would be useful to review, especially Part 2 where there is good discussion on how to fix.
Oprah Winfrey’s Success Owes to Decisions That Avoided Common Traps
On the value of knowing your strengths, staying in your lane, and leading with authentic.