Ep 11 - Season 2 - A Podcast for Real-Time Insights in Long-Term Strategic Planning

It's the Jump Leap Long-Term Strategic Planning Podcast, Episode 10. Your company or organization needs effective long-term strategic planning. That's your emerging point of view. Why? Why do you have it? Well, maybe you think it's good for the planet. Or maybe you believe it's the way to achieve permanent competitive advantage. Or maybe you're concerned about creating long-term value for shareholders. Or perhaps you just want a good challenge for some reason and a desire to move the needle in a sustainable way to make a difference that would last. But you've probably noticed that leaders of organizations, maybe your organization, your company, For-profit and non-for-profit alike have a hard time thinking and planning for the long term. You have some ideas as to the reasons why. There is some stuff you read someplace, maybe in a blog or in a newsletter. You saw a YouTube video, seen a few over the months, last few months or years, and maybe you have a few colleagues who share your convictions, like they have the same ideas, but Is that enough? Tune into this episode, the first one in our brand new season, as I share the ways this podcast will tackle this wicked set of problems. I'm Francis Wade, and welcome to the Jump Leap Long Term Podcast. And welcome back. And if you're new to the podcast, or this happens to be the first episode that you're listening to, well, this is the first one in a brand new season. And I want to tell you a little bit about the format so that you can understand kind of what you're listening and tuning into and why it's going to be different from several other kinds of episodes. But the first is this is a solo podcast, one in which I don't actually have a guest. Many of the future versions or the future episodes, I will have a guest and we have a whole setup that's very different where we're trying to solve a difficult problem. The guest and I, we have bells and buzzers and all kinds of different ways in which we explore the problem that help us to illuminate a new way of maybe thinking about the issues that affect or impact long-term strategic planning. Uh, but the primary— one of the big ways in which this podcast is different, either the solo version or the version in which I have a guest, is that we spend a great deal of time examining the nature of the problem, teasing it apart. Now, that's not by accident. Einstein actually said that if he had an hour to solve a problem, he'd spend the first 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions. Why? Well, good diagnosis leads to precise answers. And my hope in this entire podcast series, either the solos or ones in which I have a guest, is that as I tease apart the problem, the nature of the issue, that you're able to see something that's brand new, that's serendipitous, that's kind of a lucky insight maybe because of the nature of the way in which the question is being sort of addressed for the first time. Um, there's not many strategic planning podcasts on the internet, and most of them focus on interviews. Well, this is not an interview. Well, obviously, if I'm here alone, I'm not interviewing myself. But even when I have a guest, it's not an interview. The point is to, to give you a way to diagnose your current situation by hearing me or my guest and I diagnose a problem. That way you could take back bits and pieces of our thinking and apply it to your situation. And today is no different. So one of the ways in which we're all so different is that we tell stories. So Luis and Miguel are brothers. They're both raised by their parents to believe in the power of planning for the long term. For example, as kids, they were persuaded both their parents to invest time in learning another language. As a result, after 15 years of continuous effort, they're both bilingual. But as they compare notes over a sumptuous holiday meal, they realize that they are both failing in a big part of their careers. So let's tackle or talk about Luis first. He works as a vice president in a for-profit company. And guess what? Their executive team is split right down the middle. Some believe there is no need for long-term strategic planning, that they just need a nice vision statement. The other half of the team believes that they desperately need a long-term strategic plan, but the process to get one takes too long, costs too much, and even after you put one together, it doesn't last long enough because things are changing too much. The world is too VUCA. Both sides, you know, both camps are aware of the opposing point of view and they don't believe that any reconciliation is possible. As such, Luis can't even convince them to meet to decide on the way forward. So over a turkey meal, he complains to Miguel, you know, in the end, my brother, we are destroying shareholder value and, you know, some of us even know that. We're doing it. But this insight isn't enough. Telling others that we're doing it isn't working. And Miguel, his brother, well, he doesn't have any answers for him. He doesn't even work in a for-profit company. Instead, he works for a well-known international organization which sets lofty long-term goals every 10 to 15 years. So there he's well acquainted with the idea of BHAGs, Big Hairy Audacious Goals, because his organization sets new ones new wicked— they call them wicked problems in some schools of thinking— that are very, very difficult to achieve. And unfortunately, that's exactly what happens in this organization. He complains, or he explains to Louise, their failure to make tangible progress between these multi-year visions doesn't bother too many people. They are quite happy to engage in some hit or miss, just as long as everyone stays working together harmoniously at the end of the day. So he complains, "It's as if no one is really accountable when we fail to do proper planning. We just set another long-term vision at the end of the old one and keep moving." So the two siblings, Louise and Miguel, they have very different problems, but in the end, the lack of tangible results are showing sustainable change is not happening in both their organizations. And instead, short-termism has become the habit. It's become the norm. They both need help, but the truth is it needs to come in different ways. So as I've shared these— this, this story or their stories, you may be able to relate. In terms of where your organization sits or where it lies. And I imagine that if you've listened this far and you are going to continue listening, that you're already someone who is tending towards having an effective long-term strategic plan in your organization, that you, you, you're at least curious and maybe you're extremely committed. But the point is not just to have the plans. You want long-term results, and you see planning as a means to accomplish these results. And when that planning doesn't take place, several things happen— don't happen as a result. But you see yourself as someone who you're willing to, to speak up and to say something about the lack of long-term strategic planning and and you're willing to advocate for it, even though, you know, you're up against, you know, some degree of intransigence. There's probably some opposition, some people who say all kinds of things about long-term strategic planning. In the case of— if you're in a for-profit business, if you're in a nonprofit, there might be some who just say we just need to set the goals and forget them. Um, but at the end of the day, you, you want the, the direction and the inspiration that comes from having a true north, from having a long-term commitment. Um, and no one— you've tried to convince people, you've tried to have conversations outside of the ones who already believe, you know, your colleagues who are on your side, so to speak. And when you have these conversations, it doesn't seem as if the needle is really moving in the minds of those who lead the organization. So you, you, you speak to them, you, you know, you, you try to convince them that yes, this is important, and yes, they need to go— if they do believe in BHAGs, they do believe in big visions that need to go further than just saying these visions. But as you speak to them you don't see things happening. And if you don't change the way you communicate, sort of improve the way you communicate, then they'll never buy in. It's unlikely that they'll buy in. And even worse, you know, it'll actually turn off some of your stakeholders. And if you're in a competitive situation, that'll ultimately mean that in the long term, your organization will lose, lose out against the competitors who are trying to basically beat you to the punch, that their long-term planning will ultimately surpass your company's short-termism. If you're in a nonprofit, what you would see is that the problems that you're trying to tackle will not be solved. You won't actually make any, any, any progress. Numbers won't change in your favor. And you could be, you know, you could be in, you know, the most altruistic organization, the most service-oriented, you know, the one that really wants to tackle long-term problems like climate change, diversity, ESG. You know, that's a popular, popular phrase which many of these concerns are being captured But the lack of leadership and your inability to spur on the right kind of leadership keeps leaders kind of in this fog that prevents them from producing what you want. Whether you're a for-profit or a non-for-profit, you want results, right? So if you're in a for-profit You, you want to see things like long-term value increasing over time. You want to see multiple stakeholders involved. You want to see measurable results. You don't want to see the, the company disrupted or going out of business because of some new technology or changes in the environment or in climate or new regulations or, or new new legal requirements, changes in the social fabric. Sometimes there's even change in politics. So you don't want, you don't want your company to, or your organization to suffer because these trends are underway and you're not able to react because no one is thinking beyond 3 years. See, if the result of all of these changes are happening in a 10-year horizon, then unless you have a 10-year plan, chances are your organization is not doing anything about them, or it's not doing enough about them. And along comes a new technology that, let's say, it's, it's going to come to fruition in 4 years, like an OpenAI, maybe something like that, but your plan only goes out for 3 years. So chances are you're going to miss it because Your strategic plan just isn't long enough. And you know, you in both profits and nonprofits, you don't want to have your folks, as a result of, you know, the things that they're saying and believing, to stop believing. You don't want them to lose their belief in long-term strategic planning. Among those who do think that it's a good idea. You don't want them to, you know, buy into some of the common misconceptions, um, in the for-profit world, to buy into the idea that it, it's, it's not going to work for whatever reason. And in the non-for-profit world, that all we need to do is to set the vision and it's up to everyone else, other organizations, to be inspired and run with it, that all they need to do is just get serious. So those are some of the things that happen if, you know, if you're not able to take your communication and your ability to create results to the next level. And you know what people usually do when they're confronted by this inability to make a difference in long-term strategic planning around them is that they— some people, you know, they start to shout louder, become more shrill, make demands or threats or warnings. They'll send endless articles out to their stakeholders and say, here, read this, look what the experts are saying, send out a bunch of links to videos and podcasts. Or they make overblown claims that if we don't do this, then we're not going to be successful. And that approach, while it's typical and it's common, doesn't always make the difference that you want it to make. And that's one of the, one of the questions we want to tackle in the podcast series: how do you get past the typical kind of approaches to making long-term strategy real? Okay, so why don't those solutions work? Well, they're not likely to move the people who don't believe that anything different should be done. So there are people who, you know, in the for-profit world who believe that long-term strategic planning is a waste of time. It costs too much, takes too long. Um, even when you have a long strategic plan, it, it doesn't last long enough. And for frankly, it's too hard, it's too difficult. It's in this world, it's a lost cause even before you start. So they believe some version of that and say that it don't even bother to start. Others say, I would love to start, but I don't have a magic wand. You know, I wish we could have it, but how do we get around, you know, the cost, the time, the effort? How do we get around these things? I don't think that it's possible to get around these things. They don't even want to try. Um, and if you're in a non-for-profit, there's the— you have commitment on your side to produce the result. Everybody wants long-term results in both scenarios, but they're not willing to do the strategic planning, the details, detailed kind of thinking about the problem and what's necessary to accomplish it. And it remains just a vision, an idea that everyone is committed to, and it doesn't turn into results. So if that— those are the typical sort of the ways that people try to solve this problem. It's kind of a communication problem on the one hand, but that's a part of it. And in order for you to make the difference there's some new and different ways that you may need to communicate to your stakeholders. And that's one of the big topics that we'll be looking at during this season of the podcast. So you don't know how to convince and persuade people to sort of see things differently, to some degree, see them the way you see them, or even to go past the way you see them and come up with better answers than the ones you have. You're just not able to move them from the, maybe a sense of the rigid, rigid kind of, kind of rigor mortis that's set in around their point of view. So how do you communicate so that that happens? Also, we'll be looking at where you'll need practices. And when I mean practices, I mean confidence in knowing that if Miraculously, someone said, okay, okay, Francis, enough. Go ahead, you be the sponsor of the next strategic planning, long-term strategic planning process. And you go, what, me? Because it's like a little bit like the dog that catches the car, right? You're like, what do I do with it once I get— once I catch it? So you want to have an understanding of, you know, when you get a green light What are the exact steps you take to execute? What are, what are the best practices that are available in long-term strategic planning in today's world, 2023, 2024? Not the ones that, you know, you, you may borrow from the 1950s, which were very rigid, and not the ones that you may borrow from centrally planned economies, which were, were also didn't work, but The ones that are appropriate for today's world. And during the season of the podcast, we're gonna bring on guests who will speak to them. There's a number that I've identified and they all exist in the Jump Leap newsletter in terms of the practices, the step-by-step, how do you go from day 1 to day 30, 45, 60, whatever it is that signifies the end of the planning process. How do you execute an effective decision-making retreat? So those come down to particular skills that you need to execute with groups of people, and they're very specific, um, they're learnable, they're doable. But there's more than just executing practices because you can't just copy what I've done with my clients, which is where my practices, my best practices come from in terms of my experience. And I can't just send you a bunch of academic articles or 5 books and say, here, read this and good luck. You need more than that. You need principles. And the principles underlying the practices will help you to execute the processes, the activities, the routines, the interventions, the initiatives, the projects in your organization, the way that would work for you. Now, you're the expert in the culture of your organization. So many things that I say, you might just say, Francis, really? I'm not from the Caribbean. That's not gonna work in my environment. You have every right to say so, and you're probably right. Instead, What you want to catch is the principle and, and to ask yourself and to get answers from me and the other guests. What are the principles that they're using to come up with this particular practice? And how can I use that principle and gain some understanding of the nuances of long-term strategic planning so that I don't violate these principles as we go through our implementation in my company? So we'll be highlighting these principles. They're not timeless in the sense that nothing has changed, because that's just not true. The practice of long-term strategic planning has changed tremendously over the years. The principles, some have been around for a long time and some are brand new, and They all need to be incorporated into the approach that you fashion for your organization, for the intervention that you imagine you wanna make if you do get a green light, right? I love green lights. I love for you to get one. And I, you know, my vision for the sort of where we're heading as a planet, as a set of organizations, as a set of companies, for-profit, non-for-profit, NGO, governmental, is that every single organization has an interwoven short- and long-term strategic plan that's been created and is being implemented. That's my vision, you know. I— in that world in which I sort of have this vision, all the sustainable challenges that we— sustainability challenges that we are so occupied with today are addressed because the organizations are addressing them. Almost as if I could go back in time and say 30 years ago, if we had started all these organizations doing long-term strategic planning, long-term visioning, it's a part of it, then our long-term commitments would have solved the issues that we're now finding so difficult to solve as a planet. And they would also create long-term value for shareholders and other stakeholders, for your employees, for your customers, for your suppliers. Anyway, it's a world in which there's like a— it's amazing win-win. So imagine if— I imagine that if you're listening in and you want to solve this problem in your organization, you want to go past the frustration of any frustration in your organization, your company not being able to make progress. You want, you want something different to happen in your company, in your country, maybe perhaps for the whole planet, perhaps for, you know, human, humankind, human society that would, you know, deal with and handle these long-term threats that are now so prevalent and so we're so conscious of right now. Our well-being is at risk, the environment is at risk, the profits of companies are at risk, the success of countries, sorry, is also at risk. Short-termism is killing all of these outcomes that none of us— all of us want, sorry, We don't know how to address the decline, a decline in long-term value. You know, like there are companies that have destroyed long-term value because of their short-termism, like Kodak or, you know, Blockbuster. Thousands of people laid off and hundreds of— sorry, billions of dollars destroyed in value because short-termism took over. And they weren't able to think about the kind of— think with the kind of planning, use the kind of planning that would have made the difference. So those are some of the ways in which we think about how to solve or what needs to be solved and what's at stake and what it would be like if we don't accomplish our objective. So if we don't do our job here on this podcast that that's what's at stake for us. And that's what we say is at stake for you also as you listen in. It's much bigger than my concerns or your concerns. They're big concerns that whether you focus on a company level or in a planetary level or somewhere in between, that there are things that we committed to and can't have because we're not implementing long-term strategic planning and long-term visioning effectively. So really, what I want you to leave with as a result of listening into this season is a kind of a quiet confidence that as you listen, you know, your way of communicating the difference that long-term strategic planning or interwoven short and long-term strategic planning can make in your organization The way you communicate it will grow, that you, you, it'll expand and you become stronger. I also want you to be able to come here and click onto an episode and find, find out, oh, here's a new, here's a practice I've never thought of before. Why are they using that? And they ask a question around, oh, so there are some principles that they're using, but where does that principle come from? And can I use that principle in my organization that when you listen to an episode, you walk away a bit more confident than you were before? Like you've grown and you've heard something that's provocative in the sense that I gotta go find out some more about, is there more to find out? What's the source of this? What's the, you know, is there a paper I could download? Is there a website I could visit? Is there a LinkedIn article I could listen to. You know, where can I get more of what I, I, I need so that I can understand where this is coming from and why these people are talking about this in this particular and very peculiar way? You know, I just read a quote today saying that long-term strategic planning is, it's a peculiar and a weird way for humans to think, and that's not, it's not in our DNA to approach life this way. But it's a way that I see makes the biggest difference possible. For survival skills are one thing, but we humans have the capacity to think bigger and to think of more. It's just that there are ways to think of bigger and more. Big hairy audacious goals that go way beyond what Collins and Porras, who coined the term BHAGs, way beyond what they said in their book. There's way more, and it has to do with putting strategies together to achieve these very big commitments. So I would say there was a— as we're out to destroy, let's say, is kind of an old way of thinking that long-term strategic planning is not important. For example, I read a great analogy about Formula 1 racing, and I think we're going to return to this analogy several times this season, which is that when you're in a Formula 1 or you're in a NASCAR, you're in the, you know, you're driving the fastest vehicles in the world in a race, not drag racing, but you know, you're on a circuit trying to win a race and there's all these other cars flying around the track. And the analogy that I heard from the Category Pirates in their article on strategy, which I'll drop in the show notes, is that it pays to look to the next corner because that's where you want to keep your direction and you want to keep your focus. You don't want to focus on the bumper of the car ahead of you. So the old point, the point of view that's become very popular is that all you need to do is to focus on the bumper of the car in front of you and don't worry about that corner that's coming up. Now, the analogy has to do with driving as opposed to planning, but I propose that there is a perfect fit between that idea and what we're trying to accomplish. That with long-term commitments and a true north, that keeping your eye on the horizon or on the next corner is powerful and it allows you to deal with the car that's in front of you. It includes the car that's in front of you. However, if you only look at the car in front of you, then what's coming up in the next corner is something that you'll be blind to. And that idea that long-term strategic planning is essential to the well-being of all the way from organization to club to family, church, all the way to planet is vitally important is what one point of view that we're out to establish. We'll also establish that long-term strategic planning is— it's too important to indulge in the idea that it's too hard, too long, and it's too temporary to even bother with. Yeah, we'd love to do it, but we can't afford it, or we're so busy, or it takes too long, or some of the, the, the unproven excuses that get passed around as conventional wisdom, and we're out to surpass those and get past them. And if you're, again, if you're in a nonprofit, that we're out to get past that point of view that all you need to do is to set these big goals and then watch them happen. That it takes the science, the art, the principles, the practices of strategic planning to make them a reality. So we're out to establish this brand new point of view. And to do that, as I've sort of hinted so far, we realize that you have a communication challenge, may have one. Francis, you know, I believe, but how do I get other folks to believe? How do I get the people who, you know, don't think this is a serious conversation, that the world is changing too much? How do I get those who want to believe but they think we need magic wands to get past the cost and the difficulty and the durability and the length of strategic planning? How do we get past those things? And how do we communi— how do we communicate to the people who believe in a vision but don't necessarily believe in the planning it takes, the kind of planning or the quality of planning, the depth, the details, in order to turn those visions into measurable results? So there's a communication challenge that we're out to help you to resolve. Um, once again, there's a challenge of picking up the practices and the skills. And I'll, you know, we'll probably mention things like volunteering in organizations in order to get the skills in long-term strategic planning. If your organization isn't ready to put you in the next board retreat and have you lead, no problem. We'll talk about practical ways for you to pick up the skills, and they'll give you the kind of confidence you need so that you figure out the step-by-step and why we say do this practice, use this tool, don't use that one, don't— beware of this trap, apply this principle in this way, make sure that you're using it faithfully and don't violate it. And if you do, here's how you compensate. So we'll have all of these kinds of conversations about it. The practices and the principles. And we hope to arm you with enough so that, as I said before, that your confidence, the level of your confidence, moves and increases with every episode and every time you tune in to listen. So just to close out, what can you expect? Episodes like this one, which is a solo where I dig into one wicked problem. And by the way, you can Google wicked problems, or let me drop the link in the, in the chat— in the, sorry, in the show notes. Uh, I'll just make a quick note of that, that a wicked problem has a very specific definition, and it's a very interesting one. And I'll, I'll invite you to sort of dwell in and think about wicked problems. I'm hoping to get a guest who can talk to us about wicked problems, hopefully. So there'll be episodes like this one. There'll be episodes where I invite a guest to come tackle some wicked problems. And the guests, I can tell you, the way we'll tackle the problem is by both of us bringing what we know together to, you know, even though it may not ultimately have a final solution, we'll be bringing our knowledge and our experience to bear. To see if we can move the needle, make a difference, make some progress. You also can also expect recordings of my articles. I'll have both free articles as well as articles that are for those of you who are paying to be subscribers. And by the way, I invite you to subscribe to the Jump Lead newsletter and gain access to the first 7 mini books which outline the process I follow in retreats, a little bit of pre-retreat and a little bit of post-retreat. But really what I focused on is the, I would say, the most challenging, which is the 2 or 3-day offsite. So I invite you to become a paid subscriber and you'll immediately get access to those 7 mini books that take you through the steps that I use. And I explain the principles why I do these things that I do, um, and why I believe they, they've worked. And what's my experience? Well, I've led over 50 long-term strategic planning retreats, what we call interwoven short and long, where there's both a short-term and a long-term strategic plan. And I've led them over a period of over 20 years, and all of them have time horizons of between 15 and 30 years, almost all of them. Few outliers, some a few, some more years and some fewer years, but we have a standard recommendation of 15 to 30. And we're currently undertaking a study here at Jump Leap around the 50 and what makes, what makes the approach that we're using work and why, what doesn't work and why. And those— the results of our study are being included in podcasts like this one and in the ones that you'll see and the newsletters that are written and ones to come. Okay, so that's where my experience comes from. My company is called Framework Consulting if you want to look us up and see any of the articles that I've written. I've also been a a columnist for a newspaper here in Jamaica, major newspaper, for the last 11 or 12 years. 12 years, I believe. Um, and every 2 weeks I write an article on either productivity or strategy. Most of the most recent ones have been around strategy. So if you want, you could go and read those. Some of them are behind a paywall, I'll have you know, but you can also dwell in the questions I've been sort of asking and answering that way. And that's another way to inform yourself around what's happening in terms of the work I've been doing. So with those invitations, I'd like you to subscribe to the podcast, come over to the website strategyconf.fwconsulting.com, or just check the link out in the show notes. Come over, subscribe, and I'll let you know whenever there's a new release that's been added in. And if you keep listening, I'll tell you about the next episode that's coming up here at the Jump Leap Long Term Podcast. So this is Francis Wade, and I'm going to be signing out now and hope to see you and meet you at some point. Let me know what you think of this episode and the ones that are coming up. I wish you all the best and take care. Bye now. So in the next episode of the podcast, I'll draw a distinction between the past-forward mindset and future-back mindset. Don't miss it. And if you like the work we're doing, feel free to follow us at our website strategyconf.fwconsulting.com. Www.jumpleap.com, or like or leave a comment on one of the popular podcast apps such as Stitcher or iTunes. This is Francis Wade, and I'm signing out from the Jumpleap Long-Term Strategic Planning Podcast. See you later.