Building a Path to the Future
Peter de Jager is a provocative Speaker,
Writer and Consultant. His primary focus in on how we manage change,
technology and the future. In addition to speaking at conferences
worldwide, he's also written monthly columns for Municipal World and
Computing Canada. His goal is always to question what we
think is so, and in so doing perhaps open up new opportunities. If you'd like permission to reprint any
of Peter's articles, please contact him directly. You can contact him at Or sign the Guest
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pdejager@technobility.com
When was the last time you got in your car, closed your eyes, and drove out of the driveway into heavy traffic? Or, bought a house, without examining interest rate trends, and factoring in your current and potential income? Or, enrolled in a course, for no discernable reason?
Next question, where will your organization be in five years? Or perhaps more importantly, where would you like it to be in five years? Regardless of whether or not you can answer this question now, or tomorrow, or never, in five years your organization will be somewhere.
How we answered the first set of questions, should give us a hint about how to answer the more important question. Stripping away all the big dollar words, strategic planning is about knowing where we are, knowing where we want to go and what might stop us from getting there, and then choosing what we do daily in order to move slowly, but surely, towards that goal.
Every organization has, at some point or other, spent considerable time and effort producing a strategic plan. This is then placed on a high shelf and only brought down when something heavy is needed to prop open a door. Is it any wonder that most managers rightfully consider Strategic Planning a complete waste of time? If you’re nodding your head in complete agreement, then all I can offer you is this… you’re doing it wrong.
Here’s the problem. A strategic plan is typically a vision of the future, an ephemeral goal of little substance, built of hope, desires, dreams and other wispy things that fade away when we examine them too closely. It belongs to everyone who had a hand in its birth and therefore it belongs to nobody. This orphaned waif is then thrown into the hurly burly daily operations of our organization, where we expect it to produce tangible results. In reality, it’s torn to shreds by the conflicting fangs of shifting priorities and scarce resources.
A strategic plan is a peculiar object. By itself it’s a meaningless document. It’s a faraway landscape, beyond our blank canvas and it requires specific actions to shift it from being merely our personal view of the distant horizon, to a valuable work of art. Those specific actions are never found in the landscape itself, these actions are initiated by those holding the brush. That would be us.
Why the curious turn of phrasing? Flowery prose more suited to poetry than business article? Because if a strategic plan is to succeed, it must be more than just a collection of facts and figures, of measurables and objectives, it must become a shared vision of the future, it must become emotional, before we can make it become a reality.
This may seem a peculiar way to talk about a strategic plan, but it’s the only possible way we can think about it if we want it to affect our daily activities. A Strategic Plan, by definition, is a plan regarding the future; as such it is a list of objectives we cannot achieve today. If we can achieve the goals today, or even move towards these goals in a noticeable, visible, measurable manner each day, then it becomes a tactical plan, even an operational plan – it’s no longer just a nebulous Strategic Plan.
So how do me make this nebulous strategic plan a daily reality, if it’s only an image of the future? It has to insinuate itself into how we think. Consider the following analogy (I’d don’t know where I heard this, and I haven’t been able to track down the source. If anyone has heard it before and is suffering from less amnesia than I am, I’d appreciate knowing where I’ve stolen it from.), assume you’re in the lumber business. Each day you send your lumberjacks out to find the best trees, harvest them (then plant replacements), and return the logs to the mill.
Management goes off for the traditional 3-day strategic planning retreat (with the equally traditional cornucopia of never ending shrimp, fine wine and brandy). During their planning process, they discover – via their environmental scan – that there’s a river about 20 miles from the lumber mill. If the river were closer they could reduce power consumption by 50-70%. They dutifully set a strategic goal. Within 10 years they will divert some of that water, via a channel, to the mill. They’ll then update the mill. But they don’t have the funds right now.
How does this Strategic Plan affect their day to day operations? Not much, hardly at all. Each day the Lumberjacks will do what they did before the plan was put in place. They’ll head out, find good trees, harvest them (then plant replacements), and return the logs to the mill.
Except that they’ll look for good trees in the direction of the river. They might adjust their standard for ‘good trees’ just slightly in favour of trees in a straight line from the lumber mill to the river, they’ll plant the replacements for the harvested trees from that line, off of that straight line.
In short? They’ll slowly but surely start clearing a path for where they’ll, one day in the distant future, build the water channel. They’ll microscopically adjust their day to day activities by constantly asking the question, “Is what I’m planning to do today, going to move me towards, or away from, our long term goal?”
This approach is only possible if everyone has absorbed the organizational vision into their heart and minds. This is also only possible if the vision is clearly defined and desirable. And finally, it’s only possible if the strategic plan is memorable.
© 2008, Peter de Jager – Peter has been using this process for a quarter of a century – this article brings him another step closer to the distant river. You can contact him at
pdejager@technobility.com
You can read more of his early morning scribblings at:
http://blog.technobility.com
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