GALT Consulting LLC

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....