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Planning Overview

In The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning, Henry Mintzberg, after much thoughtful analysis and detailed review, announces “The Grand Fallacy”.

Thus we arrive at the planning school's grand fallacy: Because analysis is not sythesis, strategic planning is not strategy formation. Analysis may precede and support synthesis, by defining the parts that can be combined into wholes. Analysis may follow and elaborate sythesis, by decomposing and formalizing its consequences. But analysis cannot substitute for synthesis. No amount of elaboration will ever enable formal procedures to forecast discontinuities, to inform managers who are detached from their operations, to create novel strategies. Ultimately, the term “strategic planning” has proved to be an oxymoron.

In the context of BOLD Strategy, planning (analysis) both elaborates and supports strategy (synthesis) by identifying the specific actions that need to taken to achieve the strategy and by exposing new opportunities for consideration, respectively. While strategy precedes planning in the first iteration, both processes should run concurrently in a steady state, with open information channels between the two. Strategy needs to communicate directional changes to planning, and planning needs to communicate progress and status to strategy. Directional changes, progress and changes in status occur according to their own schedule, so asynchronous communication processes should be established. Efforts to schedule this communication will create frustration.

Effective planning supports three essential aims: first, and most obviously, it creates horizontal (sequential) purposefulness; second, it causes vertical (interdisciplinary) synchronization; and, finally, it animates and informs the strategic agenda.  The Planning process is designed to achieve all three of these results.

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Planning Team

Because planning is most effective when approached holistically, the “Planning Team” should include individuals within the organization who are responsible for each line of business and each major functional area. To organize this team, a high-level flowchart should be created to accurately depict internal customer/supplier relationships among the various organizational components. Individuals representing upstream or flanking stakeholders in the business environment may be invited to participate in specific areas of the planning process, particularly when planning major shifts in the scope or scale of the organization’s activities in the value network. Internal customer/supplier relationships are critical to identifying who on the team should to participate in the current assessment and planning for any particular area.

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Planning Processes

Analyze the Current Position

In analyzing the current position, the planning team examines how well the organization is positioned to create and dominate the necessary future. The strategy provides a frame of reference for what elements should be analyzed. Although “bad” strategy typically begins with a current assessment, “good” strategy dictates analysis of the current situation once the direction has been established and whenever it is significantly changed.

Analyzing the current position involves a systematic analysis of the organization's current business situation. The results of this analysis serve as the base of reference when the Planning team begins to chart a course to the necessary future.

Develop Plans

In developing plans, the planning team deals with defining the who, what, when, where, why, and how of moving the organization to its desired future. The planning team should focus on what must be accomplished to achieve and maintain a competitive advantage in the necessary future. The scope of elements addressed in developing plans includes both internal and external elements, ensuring that external impact is orchestrated as well into the overall plan as internal impact. In fact, and as a general rule, orchestration of plans should lead with the impact required on external elements, and follow with impact required on internal elements.

Key elements of the necessary future and the significant findings from the current position analysis are used to develop objectives, goals, strategies and initiatives. Techniques such as gap analysis, influence diagramming, contribution analysis, innovation profiling and impact packaging should be applied to optimize plans both horizontally and vertically.

Maintain Plans

A high-performing organization will make rapid progress against the strategic agenda as represented by the aggregate plan. As progress is made, status should be updated to reflect this progress. The visualized aggregate plan should be readily accessible to all stakeholders, especially the strategy team. The plan must remain accurate and up to date if it is to be trusted and used as the key coordinating mechanism for achieving the strategy.

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