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OK strategy buffs—and you know who you are—here’s a very interesting take on the subject by guru Richard Rumelt in this month’s The McKinsey Quarterly. See http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/article_abstract.aspx?ar=2039&l2=21&l3=37&srid=253

Here’s a typical quote: “Most corporate strategic plans have little to do with strategy. They are simply three-year or five-year rolling resource budgets and some sort of market share projection. Calling this strategic planning creates false expectations that the exercise will somehow produce a coherent strategy.”

Want more? “Now, lots of people think the solution to the strategic-planning problem is to inject more strategy into the annual process. But I disagree. I think the annual rolling resource budget should be separate from strategy work. So my basic recommendation is to do two things: avoid the label “strategic plan”—call those budgets “long-term resource plans”—and start a separate, nonannual, opportunity-driven process for strategy work.” I think the key thought here may be that strategy is an on-going, episodic or opportunity-driven process that ebbs and flows, but never ceases. What do you think? Is this what your association does?

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Happy strategizing