May

11

Separating strategy from planning conversations

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To be effective it’s necessary for leaders to separate strategy from planning, separating the why and what from the how. This is necessary simply because strategy and planning require two different thinking styles which are not complementary. As highlighted in a post on management-Issues:

“Ever been in a strategy meeting where everybody was focusing on the how instead of the what? The main problem with that is strategy meetings are for discussing strategy (the what), not tactics (the how)…..”

Organisations need a strategy and a robust plan to support that strategy. Strategy helps to guide an organisations decision making and planning describe the details required to help navigate the journey. In the post the authors suggest the following three questions as a useful way of keeping strategic discussions productive:

  • What results do you want? A certain percent of market share? “X” number of dollars in sales? “X” amount of increased profits? First things first: Identify the end results you want and don’t talk about anything else until you do. Be specific. What percentage of market share? How many dollars? How much profit?
  • What must you do to achieve those results? You’re on a roll, keep brainstorming! Here are more examples: Need to identify demographics of widget buyers. Need to check trends and make widgets in colors that are currently fashionable. Must identify the reasons why people avoid buying widgets and find ways to address those issues. Need to explore marketing our widgets in partnership with a complementary product, etc. etc.
  • What knowledge, skills, or attitudes must we acquire to do those things? … This question focuses on what you need to learn or be concerned about.

 

Trying to discuss planning or operational issues in strategic meeting leader to poor results. Wise leaders always separate strategic conversations from planning and operations. Do you have a social architecture that effectively separate these two conversations in your organisation or teams?

 

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One Response to “Separating strategy from planning conversations”

  1. Ed (from mystrategicplan.com/blog) on May 14th, 2008 1:55 AM

    Exactly! I recently came across Gresham’s Law in a HBR article- it basically explains why tactics so often crowd out strategy discussion from strategy meetings. It’s so important to separate the two.

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