GALT Consulting LLC

Last week, I gave you 3 Reasons why Strategic Plans Fail.  This week, I will give you the alternative.

Imagine being the coach of a football team.  You spend a lot of time analyzing the upcoming opponent.  You look at each potential match-up on the field and analyze the types of plays most likely to generate success.  You know, for example, that your running back can outrun their outside linebacker if you can pull an offensive lineman to block their speedy middle linebacker.  With all of this knowledge, you lay out the plays to call for the entire game.  Knowing that the results of each play will vary, you organize your game plan by down and yardage.  If it is 3rd and 19, you have a play.  If it is 3rd and 1, you have a play.  It is all mapped out based on your best information.

The game starts and you immediately notice that they are starting a new outside linebacker who appears much faster than the guy you planned to play against.  3 plays into the game, your star running back tweaks his ankle slowing him down.  The defense runs plays you have never seen before.  You are getting crushed.

You have 2 choices at this point.  Stick to the plan or pitch it.  If you are smart, you will pitch it...  well, not completely. 

The information you collected to create the plan is incredibly valuable and most of it still applies.  However, as the game begins, the information is changing and you are becoming more even more informed about the other team.  You need to use the information from the plan, and make some adjustments.  Furthermore, you have another choice.  Should you make the adjustments based on what you see from the sidelines, or should you ask your veteran players on the field what they are seeing out there?  I think you are getting the picture...

A plan is static.  It doesn't change.  It doesn't adjust.  It doesn't learn.  A system is dynamic.  It shifts and adjusts it's course based on improved clarity of the current situation.  You don't need a plan, you need a system.

Instead of spending all that time on the super play calling plan, let's say that you create a system to allow you to collect information and make better play calls during the game.  During a specific drive, you will rely on your coaches in the boxes watching the game from above as well as your own eyes to make calls, but you will also give your veteran quarterback the power to audible if needed.  Between drives, you organize your team so that information from the field flows to the coaches.  The coaches and veteran players adjust their gameplan accordingly.

Now imagine this type of system in your organization...

I took my family out to dinner recently and our waitress was really struggling.  She clearly was not the type of person that should be a waitress.  She struggled remembering details and had no concept of customer service.  I have been watching employees for a long time, and I am getting pretty good at spotting the difference between a lack of experience and simply not being hard wired the right way for a job.  This poor gal was not going to get much better. 

I found myself thinking about the impact of that single waitress who was making mistake after mistake.  The most obvious impact was that it had a negative impact on our dinner.  My 4-year old got her food a good 10 minutes after the rest of us (parents out there know what that is like!).  Another obvious impact was on the restaurant itself.  I won't be as quick to suggest dining at that particular restaurant again in the future.  

Think about the other, less obvious impacts of having the wrong person in the wrong place within an organization.  The waitress herself was absolutely miserable.  She hates her job.  She was pretty young, so this experience will also likely carry on to her next job.  She is getting programmed to dislike work and expect very little out of herself. 

What about the impact on her coworkers?  I noticed that she got very little help from her coworkers as she struggled around.  They were clearly tired of having to help her out.  The morale of the entire restaurant was undoubtedly impacted by this one employee.

The challenge to management is to not EVER allow this to happen.  Most managers would say, "yeah... I don't think she is going to work out" and leave her in the position to fail miserably.  I consider this pathetic.  Managers should move every day to find out the strengths and skills of their employees and constantly work to put them in a position where they can succeed, even if that means working for another organization. 

Last point... don't blame the waitress.  While we each have a responsibility to put ourselves in a position to succeed, I wouldn't expect a young waitress to know better.  I would expect the manager to know better.  Putting people in a position to fail puts everyone in a position to fail!

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Strategic Planning is well known.  I do it for a living...  and I have never written a strategic plan.  Strategic Plans don't work.  Here are 3 reason why...

1) You are getting smarter

The day after you print the plan you have spent so much time on, you are smarter than you were when the plan was created.  You have learned things.  The day after that, you are even smarter.  The same is true of your people.  They are getting smarter too.  Over time, something that seemed like a great idea when you created the plan may reveal itself to be a really bad idea.  A paper plan doesn't get any smarter.

2) It's a Different World

One of my client's spent months generating a detailed strategic plan for their organization.  The plan hinged on a key manager whom we'll call Bob.  Bob was mentioned throughout the plan as a key champion.  3 months into the plan, Bob left the firm.  The plan was immediately rendered totally obsolete.  This is an extreme example, but ultimately, any plan put down on paper refers to a world of the past.  The world is constantly changing and the plan won't change with it.

3) A Plan is like a Diet

Ever go on a diet?  Ever fallen off the diet?  Ever gone back on a diet?  Ever fallen off again?  Diets fail because they are temporary.  A diet is an initiative taken outside of your normal routine or world designed to force change.  A strategic plan is the same thing.  You get into the conference room and perform your analysis and get excited about the ideas presented, but then you go back out into the real world and struggle to apply it.  Diet's fail when something happens that the diet doesn't address like that special meal when you go on vacation or that restaurant that doesn't sell good carb-free options.  Strategic plans fail when the real world presents you with a situation not specifically covered in the plan.  The plan is dropped and you move on just as the dieter decides to order to the cheesecake.

So what do we do?

I wouldn't make a very good living telling people not to do strategic planning if I didn't believe that businesses didn't need a strategy.  That is the key... every organization needs a strategy, not a plan.  The key to implementing a good strategy is not to develop a strategic plan, but to develop a strategic system.

Sounds like a future blog article....