Strategic Planning: It's the Journey

by Don Harkey

I have heard a lot about Strategic Planning lately. Organizations who have struggled in the recent economy are realizing that they could have been better prepared. Unfortunately, many companies who thought they had a plan, found out that the plan didn't apply to rapidly changing conditions. I recently reviewed a plan from a professional firm that had been filed away shortly after it was created. The owner of the plan simply said that the situation had changed from when they created the plan. When would this not be true? Does this mean strategic plans are worthless? No...

When you want to develop a strategic plan, the steps are pretty universal. You look where you are, where you want to be, and then decide how you will get there. If you stop here, this is where your plan will become out of date before it is even completed. The most important step of strategic planning is to develop an understanding of who you are.

Last week, I took a Guerrilla Marketing seminar from Brett Curry (Curry Marketing). Brett talked about marketing strategy and the first thing he said was to develop a marketing message. You need to know who you are before you can go forward.

Imagine that you are standing in the forest with a trail in front of you. You are trying to get back to your camp. You develop a plan to get there. As you go on your journey, you find that your original path is overgrown with thickets. Are you going to cut through the thickets, find another path, or go back to the beginning and start over. Your decision might be based on the distance to be traveled, how much food and water you have, the temperature outside, how much energy you have... You need to have a clear understanding of the situation in order to make a good decision. If it is getting close to dark and you don't have a flashlight, it might be a good idea to punch through the thickets and accept the scratches that come with it. If you have lots of time, you might backtrack a little and find a new path.

The point here is that strategic planning is not about planning the path from where you are to where you want to be. It is about establishing the knowledge you need to make decisions while on your journey. There is no way that you can know what the future will hold, but you certainly can gain some clarity into who you are and what your values hold so that you can make decisions based on your strengths and abilities rather than on the heat of the moment.

Good strategic planning should apply to any situation, because it is a statement of your values rather than a concrete plan. It takes the foreseeable future and tests your values against it. It honestly evaluates your position and gives you insight into what you need to do to prepare for an uncertain future. It gives you clarity!