As we come to the end of the first quarter of 2023, many people may not realize that strategic planning for the coming 1 - 3 years has already started. It typically begins when a senior leader thinks about the following three questions:
- Where are we now?
- How did we get here from there?
- How will we get there from here?
Given it is still early in the calendar year and since these questions are so big, the answers to them are often revealed through sharing and dialogue with an executive coach, trusted mentor, or assorted other allies and confidants. It is a process of reflection and discovery. The goal is not to find the “right” answer as much as to find a greater understanding.
The best leaders I have met recognize that there are three problems inherent in the concept of strategic planning. The first problem is that some people in leadership positions believe that all the intelligence within the company is centralized near the top of the organization. Thus, this is where the best ideas and solutions will come from. They believe this is the foundation of the company’s success.
The second problem is that some people in leadership positions believe in the premise of predictable change. For them, the implementation of strategic plans are scripted on the assumption of a reasonable degree of predictability and control during the time span of the change effort. Furthermore, they assume that because they are the smartest people in the room, referencing the first problem, that everyone else just needs to execute the plan, rather than have input into it, or have an insight into how to improve it before or during execution.
The third problem is that some people in leadership positions have an assumption that with a clear cascading message, and the appropriate related information, everyone will work effectively. Team work and collaboration will abound. In specific, they believe that once a course of action is determined, and once that initiative flows from the top down to the front line that this will engender buy-in and ultimately commitment.
The difficulty of the above three problems is that they do not create clarity, buy-in, or improved effort. Instead, they perpetuate long standing, leadership myths that are detrimental to the health and well being of the leaders themselves and the company as a whole. For when we believe that everyone in a leadership position has to have the answers to all the problems presented to them, and when we believe that everyone in a leadership position has to be able to fix everything, then we set up people in leadership positions for failure and burnout.
Nevertheless, we do need to engage in effective strategic planning, recognizing that change is happening all around us, and within the company at the same time. While more formal strategic planning often starts in August or September, this early work done during the late winter and early spring is mission critical to the more formal process. And it begins by diving deeply into the three, aforementioned questions.
In order to answer the first question, Where are we now?, an individual needs to realize that leaders often suffer from context blindness, namely that people in leadership positions may see the whole organization, but may not be able to see the environmental context within which the whole organization is working and moving through. This is why the best leaders explore this question with an executive coach or mentor, knowing that this individual will ask them questions which will prevent them from suffering from macro-myopia, namely the failure to grasp “big picture” connections.
In order to answer the second question, How did we get here from there?, an individual needs to realize that leaders often suffer from temporal blindness, namely the ability to see the present without understanding how it has been defined and influenced by past decisions and choices, both strategic and operational.
Finally, in order to answer the third question, How will we get there from here?, an individual needs to realize that leaders must not only have a vision for the future, i.e. a picture of the future which meets the needs of the customer or person served, but, given today’s difficult challenges around recruitment and rendition of staff, also meets the needs of their employees.
From my vantage point, one element of answering the third question revolves around the realization that many leaders suffer from relationship blindness, namely they do not perceive themselves to be in relationship with others. In particular as they think about planning for the future, they do not reflect upon and consider how important it is to improve their relationships with others. Recognizing that organizational change is the sum of individual and relational change, we can not as leaders or as a company move into the future and be resilient in the process without improving our relationships.
When we step back and consider the totality of these three important questions, I think we find that we routinely suffer from organizational amnesia. In particular, we have forgotten our history, and our past strategic choices. In essence, we have forgotten our story of how we have gotten to this point.
FYI: To be continued on Wednesday.
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