Acronym

From my review of the article:

Strategic plans are not necessary outcomes of strategic planning. The actual plans are necessities of communication. For the same reasons that we set agendas, we write strategic plans. For the same reasons that we record minutes, we write strategic plans.

When we don't need to communicate, we don't need plans. When we don't need to learn from the past, we don't need plans. As association leaders, communication is our business. Learning from our mistakes is vital to advancing our missions. We need plans. We need planning even more.

Everything "strategic planning" is about the process. Plan templates assist with collecting and organizing information. Facilitators are tour guides. Planners should adopt a process orientation. After all, strategic planning is the process of bringing people together to think critically about issues whose resolutions are keys to the success and long-term sustainability of organizations. Who would agree that willful ignorance of the issues central to the continued existence of their association is good for the gander?

Hollan is not mistaken though: most strategic plans really don't work! The cause, however, is not because strategic planning is a wasteful luxury, but because most attempts at strategic planning falter. Most planners simply miss the point — they fail to recognize that engaging in strategic planning for the plan is as useful as having a meeting for the minutes.

Should strategic planning be part of our organizational toolboxes--or should we find a new tool to work with?

It think it's obvious what camp I am on: http://www.diaryofareluctantblogger.com/2008/08/
traditional-strategic-planning-sucks.html

My two main problems (out of many) with traditional strategic planning are that:

1) the process is external to daily work. Strategic planning (or thinking) should be part and parcel of everyday work, communications between departments, management, etc.

2) the process is often board-level or executive level and leaves out the people who actually do the work of the organization. Everyone should have a strategic role to play, and from my personal experience the board has NO CLUE what it takes to actually keep the wheels in motion and no way of finding inventive strategic initiatives based on real interaction with rank and file members.

I have a ton more to say about all this but will leave it for later posts!

The problem starts in the title of the post, Lisa. I think the debate of for strategic planning or against strategic planning is doomed. It's a false question. Both sides of the debate make logical arguments about how best for organizations to be strategic, but both sides define what strategy means in fundamentally different ways. So both sides continue to make the same arguments and both sides continue to ignore the arguments of the other side. We keep asking the same question, and we keep getting no answer. I admit that I'm with Maddie on the side that thinks the strategic planning folks are misunderstanding things, but I find that the conversation is not advancing (although I still like to rant occasionally: http://snurl.com/3ktb7 ). The learning has stalled. Stop the madness!

I don't know (yet) how to transform the conversation. My sense is that it requires moving the discussion away from planning. Not that we won't do planning or even have planning documents. But as long as we focus the conversation on planning, we fail to tackle the issues of strategy that are eluding us. How do we understand our context and our capacity? How do we make choices organizationally? What gets in the way of doing what we need to do? How do we learn as organizations? Start with questions like those (instead of SWOT or what are we doing for membership this year) and I think we might start generating more insight here.

Jamie is spot on. We really have to reframe this conversation as the debate has gone on in circles beyond the association world (Henry Mintzberg and others) for decades.

At some point organizations and individuals have to make choices, both short-term and long-term. On what basis should those decisions be made and what values and criteria are to be used?

What the process is called, how the information is stored, or in what media it is promulgated matters less than the deliberations behind the criteria, the subsequent choices they influence, and the results produced.

Personally, I believe the best strategic frameworks to be simple and easy to communicate, yet robust enough to foster ongoing thinking about its implications and provide guidance to the diverse functional efforts of any organization.

The best way I can explain my views on this topic is to re-post an item I published to my blog back in April:

During a recent presentation, I began to make the case against strategic planning when I was confronted, once again, with the usual “okay, so what do we do instead” response. Since this conversation thread emerged near the end of my session, there was no time for a full riff on the subject, so I shared a few brief thoughts and invited the attendees to e-mail me with any follow-up questions.

In the time that has passed since that talk, however, I have finally realized something that should have occurred to me years ago: there is simply no way to make a compelling process argument against strategic planning. No matter how much we rail against the inherent inadequacies of strategic planning, which are far too numerous to mention, the “what do we do instead” crowd will always successfully minimize those shortcomings with the “we do it differently” argument, or diminish alternative approaches with the claim that “it’s all just semantics.” The association community, with some exceptions, is committed to strategic planning because it chooses to be, and it chooses to be because it doesn’t want to be convinced otherwise.

Last week, Umair Haque, who is quickly becoming my favorite blogger, had a great post on his new Harvard Business School blog that really crystallizes the issue:

Strategic imagination is tremendously difficult because it requires us to put aside yesterday’s tired assumptions and orthodoxies, and begin to actively rethink from scratch the way value can be, should be, must be, will be created.

The surest, most lethal killer of strategic imagination is being reined in by orthodoxy: thinking that tomorrow must be like yesterday. (Bold emphasis added)

This is the definitive explanation of what is wrong with strategic planning in any form: it is grounded in the belief that tomorrow must be like yesterday. Above all else, it is this deep-seated assumption that has made strategic planning an enduring feature of the association landscape. The vast majority of leaders in our community are terrified by the prospect of imagining a future that looks radically different from a past many still revere and a present they find disquieting but familiar. Associations have always been more comfortable with incrementalism, despite the fact that it is a total mismatch with the times, and thus threatens our community’s future prospects. As Umair writes:

Edge strategy isn’t for incrementalists. Those who think games built for an industrial era are still the only ones worth playing need not apply.

Rather, it takes a profound appetite for revolution: a profound ability to let go of yesterday’s stale, tired, and thoroughly toxic orthodoxies - to explode the shrunken, stunted strategic imagination the industrial-era firm suffers from.

Do you believe your association’s tomorrow must be like its yesterday? Or are you willing to imagine a future for your organization that requires revolution? If you’re still embracing the work of strategic planning, the answer is crystal clear.
_____

You can find this post at http://tinyurl.com/6jekd6 and a more recent and related post, "The bottom line," can be found at http://tinyurl.com/5cjpkt

Maddie Grant wrote:

My two main problems (out of many) with traditional strategic planning are ...

Jamie Noter wrote:

My sense is that it requires moving the discussion away from planning.

Strategic planning can have tremendous value to an organization when used correctly, in terms of aligning individuals with the big picture as well in terms of moving the organization forward without getting bogged down in the short-term concerns of day-to-day operations.

Strategic planning doesn't work when the planners are the wrong people or when planners aren't competent users of the tool. Who are the wrong people? Believe it or not, many individuals have real difficulty with thinking strategically. That's evidenced by the popular misperception that commercial ventures exist solely to turn a profit! The people involved in the process shouldn't be the people who think next week's membership sales supersede the mission.

Furthermore, judging whether strategic planning is successful does require a process orientation. Unfortunately, the process is more often approached as a wasteful annual exercise or an excuse to visit Hawaii. We need to plan for strategic planning. Goals and objectives need to be set. Return on investment metrics need to be determined. The value of the process needs to be established and the people involved in the process need to be convinced of that value.

Jeffrey Cufaude wrote:

Personally, I believe the best strategic frameworks to be simple and easy to communicate, yet robust enough to foster ongoing thinking about its implications and provide guidance to the diverse functional efforts of any organization.

Morgan, thanks for your comments. But I absolutely think there is a division between "traditional" and "non-traditional". There's a huge over-reliance on the "we have always done it that way" models like SWOT, which everyone hates but which no-one seems to question. No-one asks WHY these are meaningless. No-one asks why their strategic plans end up on the shelf. No-one asks, how can we change our organizational structure so that the work of strategy permeates everything we do, enables us to be nimble and flexible, empowers everyone in the organization to play a role in the future direction of the association? Poor governance? Sure. But you said it yourself - "Many people, however, prefer to blame the tool instead of to think critically about their implementation of that tool." I agree it's not about the tools - but it is about changing the way we work.

The nuance of this debate is both intriguing and noteworthy. In summary, it seems strategic planning works when the process is handled with finesse, in a way that engages the broadest possible cross-section of people within an organization; ignites imaginations; illuminates new possibilities, and conjures anew fresh visions for the future of an organization and its cause while leaving models and/or experiences of the past in the past. Done badly or perhaps in the "traditional" fashion, strategic planning doesn't appear to work to anyone's satisfaction. Okay.

While the passion for new ways of working together is evident, the fresh ideas and concepts so essential to replenishing the growing chasm between what works and what doesn't in strategy are still wickedly conspicuous by their absence. The vital (and sometimes tedious task) of finding ways to help volunteer and staff groups work productively together to achieve the long-term objectives of their chosen organizations remains.

If you’ve never experienced truly great or powerful strategic planning, worked through the dynamics of translating powerful goals into actionable steps and watched as a moribund organization steadily came back to life, then it's easy to imagine how one might reasonably conclude strategic planning is faulty and destined for the scrap heap of management frameworks. It just ain’t so.

Jeff De Cagna wrote:

This is the definitive explanation of what is wrong with strategic planning in any form: it is grounded in the belief that tomorrow must be like yesterday.

As I wrote to Maddie, the problems that most people fault strategic planning for causing are rooted in poor governance. Strategic planning is the process of engaging any number of people in introspective forethought. When we fail to be critical of our decisions, and when we fail to keep our chins up, that's when we fumble. Blaming the process for our mistakes is infantile.

"The table hit me! Bad table!"

Maddie Grant wrote:

I agree it's not about the tools - but it is about changing the way we work.

(That might have been what you were saying. If not, then there you go!)

Do you know of an organization that performs extremely well during a crisis? Maybe your own?

Organizations do well during times of crisis because executives, managers, and individual contributors all gain clarity of purpose, action, and expectation. Clarity, along with a sense of urgency, breaks down organizational barriers allowing people to work together efficiently towards the singular goal. These factors enable the organization to resolve the crisis quickly and return to normal operations.

On a day-to-day basis, especially during a period of continuous success, organizations tend to lose clarity of purpose and the sense of urgency. Over time, bureaucracy builds as a diminished focus on the organization’s mission prevents well intentioned executives and managers from relentlessly eliminating resource waste. Bloated processes make cross-organizational execution more difficult; driving employees to focus on their personal performance and success instead of that of the organization. Silos form and performance declines. Therefore, it is critically important for leaders to clearly define the organization’s goals and actions and to instill the sense of urgency that motivates employees to work effectively and efficiently together in pursuit of mission objectives.

Strategic planning provides the foundation for creating clarity of purpose and action on a day-to-day basis. A well defined, measureable mission supported by specific organizational objectives and reinforced by vertically cascaded, horizontally shared performance measures and effective executive and managerial oversight creates and maintains the clarity of purpose needed for continuous success. Without the unifying vision provided by strategic planning, an organization may lose sight of its goals, stray from the road to success, stumble, and ultimately fall; failing to keep pace with competitors in today’s extremely aggressive marketplace.

Final Thought…

Some organizations become victims to cyclic performance. When this occurs, the downward slide is typically viewed as a crisis for which the organization rallies to improve performance. Having realized a performance upswing, the organization becomes complacent, losing its focus and once again falling behind the competition. This cycle is often the product of ineffective strategic planning and will likely continue until a strong, unified vision is created and embraced by all members of the organization.

It is the hope of all StrategyDriven contributors that the concepts and materials provided on our website (www.StrategyDriven.com) will help you to develop and communicate the unified vision needed to make your organization truly StrategyDriven.

All the Best,
Nathan Ives
Principal Contributor and
co-Host, StrategyDriven Podcast
StrategyDriven

www.StrategyDriven.com

The "fresh ideas and concepts" are conspicuously absent because if you replace strategic planning with a better way to do it, you end up with strategic planning 2.0, which still misses the point. No matter how we do strategic planning, I think we overemphasize its importance and power. We put it at the center of this universe, and I don't think that's where it belongs. Strategic planning does not drive organizational success, and, worse, strategic planning has helped us to deify both strategy and planning. We view these things as outside of our realm, requiring consultants, requiring frameworks and complicated processes. Strategy has become something that not even a CEO and a bunch of CEOs on a Board could do without serious help.

My sense is that strategy and planning are actually much simpler than they are made out to be. They require hard work, for sure. If they were easy, then every organization would be wildly successful. But where we need fresh ideas and concepts is in leadership, structure, governance, culture, learning, engagement, relationships (and I don’t think fresh ideas in those realms are conspicuously absent). I go back to Patti Digh’s comment of "water follows the contour of the land." I feel like the debate about strategic planning is a debate over water quality, as if the water quality determines whether or not the stream flows close to the town. Water quality is important, but we need to move the land around if we want the stream in a different place.

Jamie Notter wrote:

"The "fresh ideas and concepts" are conspicuously absent because if you replace strategic planning with a better way to do it, you end up with strategic planning 2.0, which still misses the point."

I disagree, but only a bit. My point was that if we are to do away with strategic planning as we know it, what does come next? It needn't automatically be strategic planning 2.0---there is a sumptuous dialogue brewing about what frameworks or concepts would be more bountiful and productive for the not-for-profit world. Clearly, the corporate model has only taken us so far and is often a poor fit for the social goals of our community. Just maybe those "fresh ideas and new concepts" in leadership, structure, governance, culture, learning, engagement, relationships and communications can lead the way. Perhaps collectively we can find a way to bring all of those delicious and delectable new concepts together and fashion them into a new way of being in the organizational world. I'm not hooked on strategic planning 2.0 I'm just hooked (like all curious explorers) on seeking new ideas, fresh concepts and a new way of helping people do what really matter to renew and sustain their communities and organizations. If that means moving the land so be it. Let that discussion begin anew.

Maddie, I don't think you can be so sure in saying that everyone hates, but nobody questions models and tools like SWOT.

I regularly encounter folks who feel exactly the opposite, often because the tools they use have provided them with useful insight and/or helped them wrestle with some decisions.

Thanks Jeffrey - we obviously hang out with different crowds then. : )
I find it interesting that in the aritcles I read, examples where the process works are quoted defensively (like "look! It CAN work, we swear!). I am sure it does work for some (or when "done properly" or whatever). My argument is simply that for everyone who groans when it's mentioned, for everyone who grumbles that their valuable input is not included in the process, for everyone who gets handed The Plan after the fact and told to "make it happen" (not joking, this is from personal experience), for everyone for whom it's a ton of bricks dumped on their already overloaded shoulders, there has to be a better way.

If you spread the load, it's easier for everyone to carry and it makes people aware of their part to play.

It's not that the process that has come to be called "strategic planning" doesn't work, it's that it doesn't always seem to be carried out in a useful way.

Maddie Grant's comment about how "the process is external to daily work," is the key.

Thinking and acting strategically should be a part of everything we do. Unfortunately, many associations think "strategic planning" is a short-term exercise they have to do, so they do it, are proud to have done it, and are done with it.

Associations need to understand that thinking and acting strategically is a way of life. We need to learn how to do that in whatever way enables our associations to thrive.

Planning of any form is better than no planning at all. I think we can all agree on that. The difficulty with the premise here is the assumption that strategic planning can be difficult and cumbersome. Many times strategic planning is practice is wasting time for the purpose of helping all participants to feel like they are truly making a difference in the future of the organization. Strategic plans, however, can and should be quick, effective, living documents that can dynamically change with the evolution of your organization. Programs like QuickPlanner Plus provide a platform for creating an individual or organizational plan for immediate use.

This discussion is fascinating. It makes me sad to see so many people turned off by strategic planning simply because the flavor they have used was awful. All of these comments underscore one clear fact: there is a LOT of bad strategic planning out there. Bad planning models do NOT negate the basic concept that an organization that doesn't consider where it's going usually ends up someplace else.

This means strategic planning is vital, but most people are doing it wrong.

That fact doesn't surprise me. Most consultants who do strategic planning want to tell you what your strategy should be, which is the stupidest and least valuable way to do strategy. Most facilitators, who don't commit that sin, commit the sin of failing to focus - which is ironic, when you think about the core of good strategy. At the highest level, most strategic planning practitioners completely miss that the most important effect of a planning process is *how it affects the minds of the participants, and the way they do their routine work*. This also means that good strategy must be well deployed to create alignment through the entire organization - not just at the top, where it usually happens.

A very good measure of the effectiveness of any strategic planning process is *whether you address the same problems every year*. If you do - your planning isn't getting you off the starting line. I have almost completely stopped doing SWOT, for example, because a close examination of plans that rely on it heavily shows that there is little or no change in the answers from year to year. If you get the same answer every year, your company isn't growing - and your strategy is likely failing, or headed for failure.

I appreciate the passions that the topic of "strategic planning" brings out, and have enjoyed reading the responses posted here.

My goal, as the head of strategic planning & evaluation at our association, is to seek the valuable outcomes available from setting and agreeing upon strategy, while avoiding anything that detracts from excellence in organizational leadership. I tend to think that it is more important to have leaders engage in the conversation than to develop a "perfect plan" document. Let's break down the parts of strategic planning to explore where there is value to be mined:

1. Vision / Mission: If you can't boil down the purpose of an organization into something short enough for people to remember, it is likely that shared enthusiasm has been replaced by silos and petty politics. We have always done it that way is not usually a good reason to continue. My experience is that as many stakeholders as possible should be brought into the process of visioning in a real way.
2. Goals: Clearly articulating a few goals helps to cut across a complex organization and gives us a rallying point for addressing what is really important. These goals must be fixed enough to avoid whiplash among those who have to execute on them, flexible enough to reflect changing realities, and as broad-based in origin as possible.
3. Trends, Challenges, and Opportunities: I think that research (formal and informal) into what is going on out there should be a continual activity of the board and senior staff. A large diversity of internal and external stakeholders must be a part of this effort, which should drive strategy (i.e., data-driven strategy).
4. Strategies, Objectives: I have my doubts about the value of preordaining much detail in a strategic plan about how goals are to be met. There is so much that we learn in the execution that could not have been predicted when plans are made. As heretical as it sounds, I think that it is perhaps sufficient for everyone to know the vision/mission and goals, and have a general sense of the environment shaping their piece of the task. I have seen far, far too much time wasted debating the terminology of strategic planning (e.g., that's a strategy, no it is an objective, no it is a tactic...) and too much rigidity in execution (e.g., we can't do that; it is not a strategy in the plan). Lengthy strategic plans are probably going to be too removed from everyday work to be useful.
5. Metrics: I think that the jury is still out on the utility of strategic (as opposed to programmatic) metrics. You are likely to get what you measure, but how do you know in advance which outcomes are worth measuring? I'll take good, strategically-thinking leaders over good metrics anytime.
6. Interactivity, flexibility, and community-generated content: All good. Let's take advantage of new technologies to bring more stakeholders into the strategy process in ways that don't create an administrative nightmare.

My bottom line is that you can't run a large organization optimally without substantial work to identify and share a vision and goals. We should avoid making the process onerous or counterproductive. We should try to bring a broad range of stakeholders to the attention of decision-makers and pay attention to the trends shaping our environment.

Now, even after decades of association strategic planning, it is a work in progress with plenty of room for innovation. I look forward to the creative ideas still to come.

Novel suggestion: Let's just replace the term "Strategic Planning" with "Business Planning". At least we must all agree that organizations, and people, need to have plans, objectives and goals?

Because long term business planning is usually not part of regular management culture in many organizations does not eliminate the need for planning.

However, it seems that when the need for planning becomes so great due to lack of regular attention, the next step is to try and make up for the gap in long term business planning with a "Strategic Planning Exercise", what has become a less than popular cliche.

Strategic Thinking, translated into a business plan, that is kept up-to-date on an ongoing basis, is what we suggest is the most effective and practical approach. For those organizations that do not yet have a solid business plan, the "Strategic Planning" poject approach is appropriate to get business plan in place. But then it should be used as a business tool and updated as new information and business conditions change.

It is especially important when associations are contemplating significant new territory, such as international expansion, that they have a strategy AND a business plan well in hand.

Terrance Barkan CAE - www.agshq.com

So here's a question for the strategic planners: why combine strategy and planning? I've always seen them as separate (but obviously connected) elements. They are quite different activities, and I've always felt that combining them into one process or activity has given the strategy side the short end of the stick. I noticed in the Journal article that the process was always abbreviated as the "planning process" and never the "strategy process." I also think that when you view it as fundamentally a different flavor of planning (as opposed to tactical planning, for instance), then you end up with the mindset that I think supports the bad results that we keep getting (linear, not flexible, not connected to reality). The work of strategy and the work of planning are just plain different. I'm guessing that if we took a fresh look at the strategy work, we'd do it differently (while still doing the work of planning, which in general I think we're better at).

All I have to say is WOW. This is a lot of discussion on the in and outs, do and don't of strategy, planning, strategic planning, do you, don't you, etc. As an association executive who has run both a state and national association, I have found planning is a must for a couple of reasons:

1) It is critical that organizations identify their current and future threats so they can plan how to eliminate controllable threats and minimize the impact of uncontrollable threats on their future with contingency plans. It compels you to be able to systematically respond rather than react in desperation.

2) It is also critical in designing a plan to deal with those threats to look at the past for one simple thing: LESSONS LEARNED in how to deal with the threats.

Far beyond that, planning is about tomorrow and should be brainstormed in a way that you look at how you can transform your business and industry if money was no object. You then work backwards to what you can afford while also creating new innovation that creates the new funds so you don't have to compromise as much.

Our organization implemented a strategic plan that kept us on the front of innovation, yet focused on the prize. Results are we have more members, more new revenue and more member surplus than any other time in their 75 year history.

Right goal, focus and thorough implementation of what you actually put on paper are the keys to seeing a (whatever you want to call it) plan work.

Otherwise its like being a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat....

Of course the best option could be to just hire a psychic.

Let's just replace the term "Strategic Planning" with "Business Planning". At least we must all agree that organizations, and people, need to have plans, objectives and goals?

Because planning is usually not part of regular management culture in many organizations does not eliminate the need for planning. However, it does usually mean that when the need for planning becomes so great due to lack of attention to regular business planning, it

We find that a process for planning strategically may actually be more important in associations than it is in other kinds of enterprises. Associations belong to their members in a different way than companies belong to their stockholders. The missions of the organizations are quite different and so are the metrics of what constitutes success.

We define a successful association as one that consistently accomplishes its own goals and objectives and where those desired outcomes are commitments to achieving something of meaningful value to the memeber, field or cause.

In successful associations there is some agreement and documentation of what will constitute value. Those statements represent goals that member leaders - in consultation with staff - have agreed are worthy of pursuit.

Once the desired outcomes are defined, well reasoned decisions can be made about what alternative paths can be taken to achieve them. These judgments, in turn, allow for informed decisions about the kind of work required to accomplish those outcomes. Once the work required has been determined, it is possible to make good decisions about who is best to do what.

A process well conceived and consistent with the basic principles of strategic thoughtfulness does not have to be complex or time and cost consuming. A poorly conceived planning activity masquerading as "strategic" will never be worth the time and money invested.

My friends and colleagues Michael Gallery and Susan Waters have done a fine job in defining and describing common practices in their recent white paper on strategic planning in associations. Ignore the false promise of "guidelines" made in the hyperbole of promotional language surrounding the study. Their work is an accurate, useful and well organized anthology of tools and approaches that work especially well in the unique dynamics of associations.

So, why the periodic pronouncements of people declaring "strategic planning" dead? We have observed two primary reasons. First, many well intentioned detractors of strategic planning have been exposed to poor process facilitated by charlatans. What they said went wrong probably did. Second, other not so well intentioned detractors have sought to promote alternative approaches they offer by defining and describing strategic planning incorrectly and then condemning the facsimile they concocted.

Our concern for execs - especially less experienced CEO's - is that they can overlook the role of strategic planning in a participatory organization as a pre requisite for clarity about roles and responsibilities. Execs serving in new or complicated cultures are especially vulnerable when little, irrelevant or bad experience produces beliefs and assumptions supported by the false premises. Magazines, blogs and list serves can compound the damage when they grant "expert "status" to an ill informed opinion circulated without response.

When execs are terminated because member leaders don't like what they are doing - it's often because some alternative to a good process for planning strategically has been sold to the senior staff with false mantras.

We've heard and read that "no strategic plan" or "building alternative views of the future" without deciding what to do is a more "contemporary" management method. We've read proposals for "visioning sessions" with closers that declare that no strategic plan "increases nimbleness" in a "more uncertain world".

We've also heard explanations of CEO dismissals from member leaders who perceived that by agreeing only to activity that seemed "savvy" at the moment - rather than committing to pursuit of improved conditions for the members - the exec sought to reduce accountability while the kingdom continued to grow and consume resources.

How can we say this most simply? Without a process for planning strategically what's important remains undeclared and roles and responsibilities cannot be clear.

In participatory organizations like associations, when (a) desired results are unclear, (b) work seems unconnected to what matters to members, and (c) roles and responsibilities are confused neither the exec nor the enterprise can succeed.

Perhaps strategic planning, in its most traditional form, is moribund because it rests in the realm of abstraction and is not embodied in any meaningful way.

That large notebook of strategic plans tells me one thing (abstract) and the behavior of my leadership (and me and my coworkers and fellow volunteers) tells me another (embodied).

Abstract knowledge is not accessible in a difficult moment.

Which means that all the plans in the world don't sway behavior when a crisis hits or circumstances change.

If associations feel the need to protect themselves against all possible dangers and plan against them, while simultaneously opening themselves to running with new possibilities, they must understand a simple truth: Knowledge and rules and strategic plans are available before or after the crisis of everyday operation, not during.

Lindy Dreyer just posted a response to this discussion on her blog. Thanks for your thoughts, Lindy!

Peggy Hoffman also posted a response to this discussion, on the Idea Center blog. Thank you, Peggy!

I guess I am someone who believes that the exercise of strategic planning is not necessarily a bad thing if there is consensus and buy in to what comes out of the process. If the "plan" permeates throughout the organization, and the people who are charged with making sure it is followed through agree and embrace it, how is that a bad thing?

I am somewhat fascinated reading the comments of those who don't think strategic planning is a valuable exercise. Setting the strategic goals for the organization for the coming years is obviously a positive thing, and should give our organizations measurable goals and metrics that we can strive to meet.

I agree with Lindy's post on her blog that states that we should be spending time "developing talent, encouraging innovative thinking, fostering communication and building better, more agile teams of people who can envision the future without fear of change." I don't believe having a plan in place limits our organizations from doing all of these things...

I don't at all believe that staff cannot be innovative with a strategic plan in place. There are ways to be innovative in meeting and exceeding the goals that the plan lays out. I also don't believe that organizations must have huge bureaucracies in place if there is a strategic plan in place as is implied with the "more agile teams" comment.

As I see it, having a plan in place doesn't limit an organization - it gives them a framework from which to develop their annual tactical plans, and a vision of where the organization is heading as it moves forward. It also can and should be evaluated regularly to insure that it is still meeting the needs of the organization as Terrance Barkan points out above.

The debate goes on!

The serendipity of two very different takes on strategic planning in ASAE publications really has unleashed some great learning and sharing. I’ve met plenty of people in my association and consulting career that feel as the author in the Association Now article does about strategic planning. There are enough disappointing examples around to justify his concern. But I found the Journal of Association Leadership article a better approach: let’s figure out what the hallmarks of good strategic planning are.

After marking up the journal article I decided to make my own list of characteristics of good strategic planning. Here’s my short list. I have written more about each point in my blog, Signature Insights. Thanks for prompting or provoking me to reflect more deeply about what is happening when strategic planning is transformational for an organization.

1. A shared vision about where an organization’s passions and capabilities meet future opportunities to lead.

2. Audacious goals that challenge people to do their best and most important work in the world.

3. A strategy that focuses the work and resources of the organization and creates the momentum for change.

4. A real commitment to taking the next steps to make it happen.

5. A few high profile signature initiatives that signal the organization’s commitment to the new direction.

6. A discipline of accountability and adaptability that continues to recalibrate the strategic plan as needed.

At last count I’ve been through strategic planning with 72 associations. Here’s my take on the subject. Strategic “planning” is a misguiding misnomer given the outcomes it is intended to produce.

Flawed Purpose: Associations tend to mix strategic planning with business planning. The two are very different things, one flowing from the other. The desired outcome (forward progress) is best achieved when embodied not as a planning process but as a thinking exercise. Strategic thinking is an exploration of possibilities, weighing the pros and cons of likely outcomes and making choices about direction – and that’s all it should be. As an exploration of possibilities it should as unfettered by structure, process and its traditional terminologies as we can make it. Business planning is the structured, procedural methodology to implement directional decisions that flow from strategic thinking. Business plans direct, or if structured to do so actually form the operating plan and budget.

Outmoded Process: I agree with those who have grown weary of the SWOT as a task during the meetings. Truth be told, SWOT data is a necessary element to inform strategic thinking. But it need not be part of the creative exercise. There are plenty of ways to gather SWOT data and array it for decision makers to inform their strategic thinking. SWOT should be an ongoing research process, the results of which are continuously updated and made available 24/7/365 to facilitate strategic thinking by everyone, all the time

Inadequate Depth of Players: I wholeheartedly agree with those who say we need to broaden the base of players beyond committee and board. If you buy into strategic thinking instead of event-centric planning, you can engage huge numbers of people in exploration, ideation, outcomes visioning and impact assessments. Frequently deployed, properly focused questionnaires and surveys and polling engage people from all association audiences and perspectives in strategic thinking. Arraying the results and making them available – to everyone, all the time – keeps the juices flowing and informs the choices/decisions not just at strategic thinking “events” but as a matter of course in the day to day decision making process.

Changes like those I’ve suggested would make the old and often ignored “strategic plan document” obsolete. Instead multiple players would be engaged in ongoing strategic thinking, interspersed with frequently revisited directional choices and decisions informed by all that thought sharing. This in turn directs adjustments to business/operating plans and updates the SWOT data available to everyone, all the time. And thus we come full circle.

Quick update from me - just got handed The Plan this week (25 pages not including appendices), and asked, "Maddie, would you rewrite this so it makes sense?"

Yeah. OK then. [...]???

Strageic Planning is exactly as it is described by every post here - sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It isn't the plan, rather human factors the separate the success and failure. We put too much stock in credentials and experience - yet the world is dynamic and experience doesn't count for much. At IBM, it took Gerstner from the tobacco and biscuits industry, not Akers (a life-long IBMer) to save the company. It's the bottom-up strategic model that has allowed the Japanese auto industry to render the Alfred P. Sloan business model irrelevent for the last fourty year. It's hubris, a dim corporate IQ, and ignorance that ensures the plans that are written fail.