Our Thinking

It is an article of faith that organizations need to adopt best practices in order to be strategically successful. Deciding to follow the crowd seems safe, easy and proven. In many instances, that perspective is not only wrong but dangerous. Here’s why.

Strategic planning is about making a major commitment to your future. Finding the right consultant to guide you is therefore a critical decision. And yet, too often, not enough attention up front results in a painful hiring process at best, and the wrong fit at worst.

A recent meeting participant suggested that short workshops are the only way a group can get meaningful discussion happening. By extension, they perceive that long workshops are simply show-and-tell sessions. May experience says that they’ve been railroaded in the past, and are being misguided today.

The idea of strategy execution is getting a lot of play recently. There is a belief that this is a new area of exploration, poorly explored, with very little written about it. This is an idea that is, quite frankly, patently absurd.

Few people in the world of business would dare to make the claim that they aren’t strategic. It’s viewed as a necessary capability. But one of the problems with the whole concept of being strategic, unfortunately, is that we’re not entirely sure what it means.

A recent conversation with a senior manager at a large, well-respected organization stopped me in my tracks. Their organization had no clear strategic direction. Not only was there no well defined strategy, but the absence of strategy was a conscious and deliberate choice of the executive team. Which is complete and utter madness.

Organizational crises take precedence. The temptation can be to react first, and act questions later. The consequence, though, is that you lose sight of what’s really important. Strategy needs to come first. Here’s why.

When we are looking for help, we often take a blinkered view, looking for specific boundaries and industry experience. That’s great for an operational role. Strategy development is a different animal. Different criteria can result in an entirely different level of effectiveness.