Strategy is not an Instruction Manual

I am finally catching up with a backlog of magazines to read (I haven’t even taken the plastic off of the September HBR—gasp!). In August’s Forum magazine (Association Forum of Chicagoland) Paul Meyer and Jean Frankel throw their two cents in on the “strategic planning, dead or alive” debate.

As I am sure all readers of this blog know, Jeff and I have been arguing in favor of “dead” for several years now. And (to repeat) this is not because we think strategy is unimportant. In fact, it is the importance of strategy that motivates us to spread the word of strategic planning’s death. As I mentioned recently, I think the process of strategic planning tends to generate weak strategy—that’s why it SHOULD die!

So we started our attempt to change the conversation with an article in Executive Update two years ago that talked about strategic capacity—the organizational capacity for strategic thinking, strategic conversations, and strategic action.

Meyer and Frankel’s article says some similar things—they stress the importance of strategic thinking, and they state (as many now are) that TRADITIONAL strategic planning is dead (emphasis on traditional). This is the most common argument I’m hearing now. “The way we USED TO do strategic planning is definitely bad, but our new and improved version really is great.”

I’m not convinced.

So what does the new and improved version look like? In the article, Meyer and Frankel suggest that boards need to be doing more strategic thinking. This will require changing what they focus on during board meetings (more on strategy, less on oversight). They must link strategy and budget. They must make sure the organization has the capacity to deliver on its plan. The strategy should be based on data, and you should measure it, and you should partner with others to get it done.

That sounds familiar. We have been telling our boards to do these things forever. I completely agree that boards need to do these things, and I definitely think they need to develop their capacity for strategic thinking, but I strongly disagree that telling them to do this will transform those plans that are gathering dust into “living and breathing” documents as Meyer and Frankel argue.

In fact, the goal of turning a strategic plan into a living document crystallizes the problem for me. Strategic planning is all about the plan! We need a better plan. The plan must be a living document. No!

What about the strategy?! Think about it for a minute. All organizations need a clear strategy. They need to have a shared understanding of what will drive their success and where they should invest resources in order to create the most/best value for stakeholders. This is certainly about anticipating the future, but not about predicting it. What strategy does for you is provide a guide—something that will help you in the future when you are faced with important, strategic decisions. Without a strategy you will simply act randomly in those situations, or (more common) you will fall back on what you had done previously (don’t get me started on “We’ve always done it that way”). Remember, the strategy has to be a dynamic guide because you don’t yet know what specific, key strategic decisions you will face in the future (if you already knew the future, then you wouldn’t need a strategy, would you? You’d just need instructions).

Strategic plans cannot provide that dynamic guide (no matter how much strategic thinking your board does) because they are mapped out down to activities and tasks.

Strategic plans are not guides; they are instruction manuals.

Instruction manuals work for simple problems (where the future is predictable, everyone sees things the same, and cause and effect is clear), but they do not work for complex ones, like running an association. For that you need a strategy. A clear guide. A clear direction. More specific than your mission, but less detailed than your operational plan. It’s the strategy that needs to be living and breathing, not the document.

You can also have plans, of course. I have no problem with groups of people figuring out exactly what they are going to do between now and X in order to support the strategy. Plan to your heart’s content, and be sure to feed back any learning you get while implementing your work into ongoing conversations about strategy. But the plan is secondary to the strategy (that’s why it is dangerous to bolt your plan to your strategy, as strategic planning does). When the world throws you a curveball (and you know it will, you just don’t know how or when), you use your strategy to guide your reaction, not your plan. Once you determine your reaction to the strategic issue, then you figure out what you need to do about the existing plan(s).

Sorry for such a long post! Can you tell I think this is important? Here’s the bottom line: we are losing sight of what really good strategy looks like, and strategic planning is a big part of the problem. Strategic planning actually makes it harder to develop effective strategy, because strategic planning confuses the work of strategy and the work of planning. Yes, we need to develop our boards’ strategic capacity, but we must go far beyond that. We need a better way of developing and modifying strategy (all the time, not just once a year!) and then ensuring that planning, budgeting, and implementation flow from that strategy. Let me rephrase that: we need better organizations that have the capacity to do the real work of strategy.

This will require abandoning the mindset of strategic planning. It will require change in the way you’ve always done things. It might require substantial change to longstanding organizational processes, structures, and even culture. But the payoff is huge.

Comments

[GordonG]

Hi Jamie

Is there any way of accessing the article you mention without (a) joining the assoc for $200++; (b) subscribing to 11 issues of the mag for $37.50 + o'seas postage. You make the article sound v interesting (I read a lot about Strategy which is why I RSS your blog), and I'd love to read the whole article, but am retired and not on any association staff or boards any longer, so most of the content would not be of particular interest. HBR have a system where you can buy individual articles for $6.95, and I use this option from time to time with them.

Gordon

[Chris Bonney]

Jamie-
Great blog. I really am on board with your concepts behind the difference between strategy and strategic planning. I've had some history at a large AMC and it was always about having a strategic planning meeting with our clients, which inevitably turned into an action item list meeting. Instead of bolting on to the plan as you mention, it seems people forget to bolt strategy the other way - up to the goals of the organization.

Anyway, what I'd love to see in a follow up posting would be a case study on an association that got strategy right. An org that scraps the paperwork and developed a true vision and strategy and then how that became valuable as decisions came up and industries changed. Is there such an organization?