Let me follow up on Jamie's post from Monday, with a few reasons why I believe strategic planning is killing our organizations, and doing serious damage to our community in the process:
1. It induces us to believe that the form and process of planning are more important than the content of strategy.
One of my great frustrations with strategic planning is how much time is involved in laying out very elaborate processes to create more flexible and adaptable plans, without devoting anywhere near as much attention to deep strategic thought around the content of those documents, and whether they embrace bold and intelligent choices backed by appropriate investments. The problem for knowledge-creating, synthesizing and brokering enterprises such as associations is that today, strategy is no longer simply the means by which we manage and measure disparate organizational activities. In the hypercompetitive, Web-enabled world, strategy is about something truly non-trivial: the ability to leverage the full range of available and accessible resources and relationships to create new and distinctive value for members and customers. So while process does matter, it is what our strategy proposes to achieve and what we can learn from it that will make the critical difference for our organizations in the long run.
2. It does not encourage us to carefully examine the sustainability of current business models.
It is a rare strategic plan that actually codifies the elements of a sustainable association business model for the future. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen such a document! Instead, we use strategic planning to dutifully go about the business of developing goals, objectives, strategies and tactics without stepping back and asking difficult questions, such as when we will exhaust our current strategy and business model, what will replace it and what capabilities will we require in order to make that shift and how will we develop them? Strategic planning values continuity over creativity, hindsight over foresight and the ordinary over the radical. It is small wonder, then, that so few strategic plans actually stretch organizations in our community to reach their full potential.
3. It does not challenge leaders to accept personal responsibility for creating organizations of the future
Right now, I suspect that many people under the age of 35 (and certainly under the age of 30) view associations as organizations better suited to meeting the needs of their parents' or grandparents' generations than their own. Among many people, young and old alike, associations enjoy a reputation for being rigid, highly centralized bureaucracies with a deeper commitment to defending the past and preserving the status quo than to creating the future. Strategic planning doesn't help the situation. Indeed, it exacerbates it by virtually eliminating the possibility of intelligent risk taking and genuine innovation, in favor of "doing what we've always done, because that's what the members want!" Sadly, too many senior volunteer leaders buy in to this way of thinking, and operate unapologetically yet myopically as obstacles to meaningful progress. Strategic planning offers nothing to either incent or require such leaders to accept personal responsibility for creating organizations that will thrive in a new world already in its early stages of formation.
Associations must break free of strategic planning's death grip on our community. We need a new approach to the work of strategy and, as Jamie pointed out in his post, we are working on one that we look forward to sharing here in the near future.
Yes, my friends, it is official. I am now an associate member of AARP. I received the notification letter on the left this weekend, confirming my membership in "America's leading organization for mature people." I don't know about you, but the whole "mature" thing sounded pretty impressive to me. Almost makes me want to stop listening to really loud music on my nano, while playing air guitar as I walk down the street.
