“Happy New Year!”
Every July 1, this is how one of my P&G colleagues greeted me as I walked into the office. We’d spent the past three months writing the strategic plan. On July 1, the start of the new fiscal, we finally got to start doing everything we had been planning.
That list of activities survived about as long as the average resolution.
- End of Week 1, 23% were “on hold” or canceled
- End of July, about 50% of the plan was changed or abandoned
- End of August, 80% of it was irrelevant because of “new strategic priorities.”
And this was in the late 1990s when things were measured in months and quarters.
If it’s an event, it’s a waste of time
In the 1990s, change was largely linear, so a linear strategic planning process that ran consecutively with business planning not only made sense, but it also worked. Today, the pace of change is exponential, which means that linear, step-by-step processes no longer work. As Dave Chappelle said, “Modern problems require modern solutions.”
Unfortunately, companies are struggling to create modern solutions for strategic planning. In research conducted using the Cascade Maturity Assessment, most respondents stated that their company’s cadence of strategic meetings and updates is somewhat or completely ineffective.
Many of the executives I’ve spoken with are nervous about switching from a calendar-based annual planning process to something that’s more ongoing. After all, they explain, “strategic planning” is a huge “time suck” for the organization and distracts from the “real work” of running the business.
Except that strategic planning is an essential part of running the business.
If it’s a habit, it happens.
“We’ve built muscle and improved how we approach strategy…doing this repeatedly over the last few years.” – Director at a $10B+ revenue corporation with 10-50k employees (one of the top two scorers in the research)
If strategy is to be an automatic, ongoing, almost intuitive part of running a business, it needs to become a habit. Luckily, the same things that build personal habits – learning, repetition, sensory cues, goal pursuit – also build business habits.
SparkCraft Strategies (who did not work with the executive quoted above) helps organizations build both their strategies and their habits. MileZero and SparkCraft often partner on this type of work and, for over a year, SparkCraft has been working with a client to develop the organization’s strategic planning process and capability.
Defining the process was the “easy” part (not easy, just easy relative to everything else). The hard part is building tools that drive actions and decisions that require the critical thinking and creative problem solving necessary to be strategic. Over the course of a year (or more), SparkCraft works with the client to build a strategic thinking and planning habit, ensuring that strategy is inextricably linked with operations, not just bolted on.
If it’s the culture, it’s the gold standard
“It has worked because we grounded it (strategy) in culture and employees are growing and driving the change” – CEO of a $1-50M startup (the other top scoring company from the research)
Culture is the result of the values and tools an organization consistently uses. Culture, like habit, is implicit, more sensed than spoken. Unlike a habit, it’s shared, pervasive, and enduring. That means that (most) everyone senses, thinks about, talks about, and acts on it simply because they are part of that organization.
The CEO quoted above started by making strategy a habit. Monthly, the leadership team discussed, debated, and updated it. Quarterly, all-hands meetings shared it and invited questions, feedback, and dissent. And performance reviews and incentive plans made it part of how people were measured and paid. Over time, through consistent, repeated, and reinforced activity, strategy became part of the culture and the identity of the company. It is who they are and what they do.
Strategy only works when it is part of the work, repeated until it is who you are.
If you would like to see how your organization scores, click here to take the Strategy Maturity Assessment. Your results will be sent directly to me, not to Cascade, and you will not be added to a mailing list. Please note that some people have had trouble using Gmail and other free e-mail accounts.
Methodology note: The Strategy Maturity Assessment was designed by Cascade and administered by MileZero as a self-serve survey to a sample of MileZero’s own clients: 18 self-selected respondents from 18 different companies, varying in role, revenue, and size. Findings are directional and should not be interpreted as scientific, random, or representative sample. Scores come from a proprietary scoring of Yes / Somewhat / No answers and show relative patterns, not precise measurements. All findings are the opinions of individual participants as of the date they responded, not statements of fact.