THE REALITY OF LIFE AND STRATEGIC PLANNING
by Mike Manes
Use these ingredients to create a “planning entrée” — nutritious food for thought!
DISCLAIMER:
If you’re standing close enough to 50 years of age, this article will make sense. If you’re much younger, you’ve probably been “jaded” by the coarse (but probably more real) worlds of Roseanne, The Simpsons, Will and Grace, etc. You can’t appreciate, or perhaps even understand, television shows in the early days and how naïve they — and we — were. This article won’t re-invent strategic planning, but it will focus on the real side of the process.
THE INGREDIENT/ENTRÉE: REINVENTING STRATEGIC PLANNING
Remember such family sitcoms as Ozzie and Harriet and Leave It to Beaver? Did you ever wonder what their families were really like? Did June Cleaver vacuum the house wearing pearls and a pleated skirt? Did Ward ever yell at the kids? Did the boys ever get into real trouble?
Sitcoms in the “old days” of the ‘50s were nice, simple, naïve, and totally unreal. Today’s programs aren’t as “nice,” but they’re far more real.
Strategic Planning as a process is also simple, nice, naïve, and totally unreal. All too often, leaders and managers believe that their future lies in “writing a plan.” In reality, writing the plan isn’t the challenge — application is! Write a plan and chances are that it will end up on the bottom shelf; implement a plan effectively and you’ll see the results in your bottom line.
Hundreds or thousands of books explain the planning process. The best, and simplest, I’ve ever used is Organizational Planning Quick and Simple by this writer. It’s far from perfect, but do you really expect me to promote someone else’s book in this article?
From the most sophisticated academic analysis to the clearest analogy, the planning process is easy to define. My favorite is, “Planning is like making a jigsaw puzzle.” However, in the real world, such a simple process rarely works as effectively as it should, for these reasons:
Leadership is about change. If you don’t need to change — or if your world isn’t changing — you only need to manage the status quo. Since the future is about change, you have only three options: One is to do nothing and die, the second is to manage the change and survive, and the third (and best) option is to “architect change” and prosper. As Peter Drucker says, “The best way to predict the future is to create it.”
Churchill advised, “Take change by the hand before it takes you by the throat.” Einstein defined insanity as “Continuing to do what you’ve always done and expecting a different result.” In tomorrow’s world, change is reality.
Planning is a responsibility of leadership, not management. Leadership is about people. Management is about things/processes. People are always more important and challenging. A leader establishes the values of the organization, captures a vision, and defines a mission. This stage of the plan is not about consensus. As Margaret Thatcher stated, “consensus is the absence of leadership.” These are leadership issues.
You need to define your organizational values. These are the absolutes of your organization: The Commandments and the Constitution. Communicate these values and live by them as the foundation of the future. Don’t violate your values. If new hires aren’t compatible with these standards, don’t hire them. If existing employees can’t comply with the values, they must change or leave.
Capture a Vision – a future ideal. Make this big and bold: Bigger than what you’re capable of doing today (if you can do it today, it’s not a vision). Remember JFK’s challenge to “land a man on the moon and return him safely to earth”? When Kennedy shared this dream, his proposal was impossible. If no one questions your sanity or your vision, it’s not big or bold enough.
Leaders take “arrows” in the front — and the back. We all share images of the pioneer venturing into the dangerous unknown and risking death. As a practical matter, when leaders venture into the unknown world of tomorrow they’re vulnerable from 360 degrees. Although there’s risk from the front and the sides, the greatest risk comes from their backside. Often a follower will shoot the leader in an effort to protect the status quo — to save the leader and the organization from themselves.
Good employees, not bad ones, sabotage change. Look at the bell curve of your organization. On the left side, about 15% to 20% of the employees are your optimists, risk takers, and change proponents. These are the young at heart. The good news is that they’re adrenaline junkies who will always embrace change. The bad news is that if you don’t deliver, they’ll quickly burn out, leave, or lose their enthusiasm.
On the right side are the “retirees”: The people who quit working for you years ago, even though you’re still sending them a paycheck. They collectively suffer from “hardening of the attitudes.” Your expectations for them are so low that they have no trouble meeting them. The good news is that if you do change things, they’ll quit.
In the middle of the bell are your best employees: Those who truly believe in the organization. That’s the problem — they believe in the organization, not in the marketplace in which the organization must serve. Your ideas and the change these represent are an affront to the status quo of the organization: The employees’ comfort zone.
People don’t like change. That’s why we need leaders. “Change must be accepted … when it can no longer be resisted,” said Queen Victoria. Her comment applies to most of your employees. As John R. Campbell pointed out in Reclaiming a Lost Heritage, “For change to occur in an organization, individuals must change first.”
Diversity and consensus are essential to working the Plan, capturing the Vision, and achieving the Mission. These are the action steps: The how, what, when, and who of the plan. They aren’t leadership.
The leader must establish the values, vision, and mission. Leaders aren’t about popularity or consensus. Suppose God had assigned writing the Ten Commandments to a committee? Discussions would still be ongoing today and we’d have mountains of stone tablets.
What if Kennedy had sought agreement on the man on the moon vision? The best and the brightest would still be fighting him on the idea — and we’d still be talking about going there.
Winston Churchill observed that groupthink leads to, “weak and faltering decisions, or rather indecisions. When you take the most gallant soldier, the most intrepid airman, or the most audacious sailor, put them at a table together, what do you get? The sum total of their fears.” (Dale Dauten: Beware of the Conference Room, 10/08/2000).
To be successful, everyone in your organization must commit to the vision. You must get the folks involved by welcoming diversity and consensus.
Involve everyone in asking how, what, who, when, and where. The process should include discussion, debate, dialogue, dissent, definitions, etc. However, the final step is clear: A decision that must be followed by a group commitment. Those who can’t commit need to leave.
When the U.S. Marines landed on Iwo Jima, they didn’t take a vote. Their commanders ordered, “Follow me.” If they fell, other officers, knowing the vision and the mission and committed to both, assumed the mantle of leadership and repeated the order: “Follow me.”
Don’t get bogged down in the details. Details are inanimate facts, neither good nor bad in themselves. It’s been said, with equal truth, that “God (or the devil) lies in the details.” The way these details (facts) are handled will determine whether your plan succeeds or fails. If your team says, “That’s a great vision, but the devil is in the details,” they’re programming themselves to crush your dream. Don’t let this attitude take hold in your organization! Remind your team of the saying attributed to Michelangelo: “The opportunity is in the details.”
Establish an organizational culture that embraces change. The culture — the values and personality of the group — is nearly impossible to change. If your existing culture is at odds with your future vision, you might be better off creating a new venture to pursue your new vision and let your old company continue on its march to oblivion or obsolescence.
To create a culture of change, your organization must be able to think and act. In yesterday’s command-and control world, employees were told what to do, not how to think or take risks. To transition from “do” to “think,” you must create a safe and trusting environment that encourages taking measured risks. If experiments fail, “heads do not roll,” but rather meet to debrief the process and learn from the experience.
A culture of change depends on implementing the plan, monitoring the results, and adjusting the process. It’s about standing in the fire, taking the heat, and most importantly “becoming steeled” as a result.
I close with the thoughts of a management guru, an artist, a cultural icon, and a playwright:
“Business has only two functions, marketing and innovation.”
Peter Drucker
“What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?”
Vincent Van Gogh
“Change? Lead! Just do it!”
Nike
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends upon the unreasonable man.”
George Bernard Shaw.
Michael G. Manes can be reached at Square One Consulting, 543 Pebblebrook Dr., Baton Rouge, LA 70815, (225) 273-2243, (225) 939-5944 (Cell), e-mail [email protected], or visit www.squareoneconsulting.com.