Get on the right road
We once teamed up with a major accounting firm to help rescue a publishing and market information company that was in perilous shape, with rapidly worsening financials and competitors aggressively chasing its long-time customers.
While many things were wrong with this organization, the major issue was that senior management and the Board continued with "business as usual" for many, many years while markets, customer needs, competitors, technology and everything else changed around them.
The company's long-time winning formula became less and less effective and market share in key segments was silently slipping away. But with the focus almost exclusively on "the way we do things around here and always have, thank you," the deterioration was only addressed when the return to ownership went to zero and it could no longer be ignored.
The tale of our one-time client may be extreme, but it demonstrates that not being strategic can only lead to bad ends.
In fact, the more we learn about strategic planning, organizations and organizational leaders, the more we understand two things.
Interrupting "normal business" to engage in planning is a big commitment that leaders most of the time are not willing to entertain.
Interrupting "normal business" to plan is almost always exactly the right thing to do.
In business, we think in months, quarters and annual cycles. We are operationally driven by the calendar and the routine and immediate demands of the marketplace, our workforce and all the other stakeholders with whom we must interact.
So where does strategic planning fit into this picture? For most, it represents a big interruption, a diversion from all the normal, important work of serving customers and other stakeholders.
In the normal business cycle, strategic planning is typically given a "tip o' the hat" when entering into the annual budget process. "Gee, we need to refresh our plan." Maybe you do refresh it or maybe you don't but know you should. There just isn't the time and will to do it right.
We contend that you always need to be strategic in your decisions and operations, that the key things you do must be driven by carefully crafted strategies that are moving you to a compelling vision of an ideal future for your organization.
If you don't have a fresh vision and current strategies in place that are moving you to it, our counsel is to take the time NOW to engage in a planning process to articulate that compelling vision, find a set of dynamic strategies that will move you toward the vision and get to work implementing the strategies. We further counsel that you put a strategic management system in place that assures that you are implementing your strategies and that you re-engage in planning on an on-going basis as you move forward.
Otherwise, you may unknowingly be on the road to oblivion. In the case of our former client, that wrong road led to management being dismissed, sale of the company, and little value remaining for the former ownership. Had they been strategic the outcome could have been so much better!
