Summer is Over. Updating Your Plan? Update HOW You Plan Too

Covid-19 has meant businesses need to be “agile” and “responsive” but getting there may require a complete shift in how companies plan for the unexpected.

The day after Labour Day is the unofficial start of business planning season. At least for those organizations that have an annual strategic planning cycle, as opposed to a continuous strategy management process.

This shines a light on organizational resilience and how companies needed to adapt quickly. When the Covid-19 pandemic began to take hold, those that needed to wait until Fall to have advanced strategy conversations struggled. But those that had a way to continually manage strategy showed resilience (and results) in the face of seemingly relentless change.

It is unfortunate that organizational resilience doesn’t get a lot of airtime. In many occasions, teams that have shown that they can “quickly adapt” to meet an unplanned set of circumstances often do so through simple brute force: very high quality people being asked to go above and beyond.

This can work, but not reliably over time. Most committed employees have no issue digging in to get through a difficult time. This pandemic revealed exactly how quickly independent retailers could set up an ecommerce site, for instance, or how offices that needed you there could suddenly operate with existing technology with just a new mindset. But when these moments – company crucible moments, to borrow from leadership great Bill George – come one right after the other, something other than an earnest and capable team using brute force is required.

So why not plan for it?

The problem is that typical strategic planning does not enable organizational resilience as much as it should. Typical strategic planning starts and stops, is owned by a single individual, has steps that require hand-off, and is generally opaque to the larger organization: only senior managers get to see the finished product. Strategy management, on the other hand, is continuous, is owned by a team, is part of a smooth cycle, and comes with full transparency: the entire company understands strategy.

I admit that saying strategy management is better than typical strategic planning is a bit nuanced. But when teams organize to formulate, visualize, measure, and deploy strategy using comprehensive frameworks, the results deliver both high performance and organizational resilience. Typical strategic planning has high adoption (90% of companies have strategic plans) but is not effective (89% of companies’ plans fail to achieve profitable growth). Strategy management frameworks, on the other hand, have been shown to be 2-3 times more likely to succeed.

I advocate for the Kaplan/Norton Strategy Management Framework. This is a comprehensive framework that – when used properly – will enable the continuous management of strategy over time, allowing organizations to be much more adept at making change more easily (at both micro and macro levels), in a shorter time frame, and with a greater likelihood of success. If you have not heard of these gentlemen, I would not be surprised. But you may have heard of their tools. They invented the Balanced Scorecard, a tool that sits in the middle of their comprehensive framework. If you already use that type of a scorecard, you are already familiar with aspects of the larger framework. If not, I strongly suggest you give it a look.

Yes, companies need to be prepared for strategy planning at this time of year. But not because this is when they have always scheduled the off-site. They should be prepared for strategy planning at any time of year. 

There is a better, more reliable way. Contact me if the idea of building organizational resilience is appealing. Or if it at least sounds better than waiting for some time after Labour Day to think about strategy.