Ep 20 Shifting from Weak Proactive to Strong Pre-Emptive Strategic Planning

The Jump Leap Long Term Strategy Podcast, Episode 20. Your company has a problem implementing its strategic plans. On a given day, it devotes all its attention to emergency issues and sets aside the contents of the last plan. But these are no lazy or dumb people who are involved, your colleagues. They're well-intended. They know they need to be proactive. But when it comes to implementing a strategic plan which drives daily actions, one that's filled with not just short-term but mid- and long-term projects, No one knows why more urgent items always get in the way. But you think there must be a way to make long-term and midterm challenges more important now so that they get implemented. Tune into this episode to join me in tackling this wicked challenge. I'm Francis Wade and welcome to the Jump Leap Long-Term Strategy Podcast. Welcome back. If this is the first time you're joining our show, you may be a little bit confused because this isn't quite, you know, an episode or a show or a podcast, which is like many others. So you've tuned into a solo version of the podcast, and we're going to spend quite a good amount of time diagnosing the problem that I hinted at in the introduction. Now, the reason that I'm gonna do that is because I want to share the underlying thinking with you so that you can find your own solutions. If I just jump to an answer too quickly, you wouldn't understand exactly how I got there, and even, you know, did I get there fairly, and do you agree with the kind of logic that I used along the way. So We take a slightly different approach here on this podcast, whether I have a guest or not. More time in diagnosis before moving into solutions. And kind of who we're following, you know, there's a couple of smart people who recommend that you follow this particular kind of attack when it comes to tackling problems. I like Einstein. Einstein said, if I had an hour to solve a problem, I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the issue and then thinking. So let's jump right in. So let's start with a story. Gary, or Gary, say Gary is a member of the C-suite in his 2,000-person company. In prior strategic planning retreats, the company has put together plans, which unfortunately it hasn't implemented. Everyone from the board and senior management team are, once again, they're smart people, they're well-intended, they mean the best, but in the daily battles to solve problems, important projects are lost or get lost or have been lost in the competition for attention. In other words, there was always something more urgent to pay attention to. As such, He started to believe that their strategic planning retreats have fallen into a slippery nice-to-have zone. In fact, the one that's coming up next is being conducted at a fancy ski resort. And for the first time, families are encouraged to attend. So you could bring your kids, you could bring your spouse, significant other. Where did that come from? Well, someone on the board had the bright idea that this might result in better attendance and more engagement, because both of those have been problems in the past. But to our protagonist Gary, this sounds more like a vacation day. It doesn't sound like a serious opportunity to make some long overdue decisions. And he's concerned that the most difficult challenges are once again being soft-pedaled just as they have been for 20 years or more in past retreats, past offsites by prior leadership teams. In other words, the team won't make the necessary investments as a result of this activity. Competitors will continue to gain more ground. New technologies will be— continue to be disruptive, and succession planning that they've been talking about forever will just continue to be pushed off. It'll continue to languish. So how can Gary gain the right level of attention from his C-suite colleagues as he prepares for the next retreat in a month's time? Can urgency be somehow added in to the equation, but can it be done at scale? So this is not, as you can imagine, this is not a Gary-only problem. This is a problem which is pervasive in most companies I'm aware of, and it produces the kind of strategic planning that sort of slides into that nice-to-have zone that I mentioned. And I'm gonna imagine that you know what I'm talking about. Um, if you have no clue, and this might not be the podcast episode for you, but I think you should still tune in because most of our listeners, and maybe you, want to develop that sort of urgency or an appetite for what I would call big strategic planning. In other words, a retreat or an offsite or workshop or a process that moves the needle significantly. And you want to do that not just because you want to have a dramatic opportunity to spend 3 days, but you see that there's connection, a connection between the way a retreat is conducted and whether or not the plan is implemented. That the two are actually, they go together. And that from a change management point of view, one is a continuation of the other in the sense that they're inextricably linked. One sets the stage, but momentum that you create during a retreat is what carries over into the implementation, or not. At the same time, you may be convicted that this is important and that this is vital and this level of urgency needs to be crafted and that there may be no exceptions to this particular idea. There's no such thing as a non-urgent strategic plan, you know, like, oh, let's just, you know, have a normal one. Normal, have a normal one. Well, There are people who you work with. They could be your colleagues if you belong to a company, could be your management team, could be your board members, could be your— if you're in the C-suite, it could be the managers who report to you. Um, it could be your stakeholders. Um, they don't see the big deal. You know, if you're a consultant, it could be that your client is like Boring. The client could be like, yeah, we're just going to do the same thing and we want you to come in and work with us. And we're really, you know, want to look 2 or 3 years out and kind of look at a few issues. And you can hear in the tone of voice that the client isn't asking for anything important. It's just like a continuation of something that already exists. And inherent in their point of view, the folks who feel the opposite to you do, or the most opposite, is that this is kind of an optional activity, right? It's a nice to do, nice to have. And it should be reasonable that, you know, this should be— this should fall within comfort zones that have already been established. So it shouldn't be too demanding. There should be time left over to go to the beach. As I remember, a client or a prospect said to me, you know, time spent with family is really important, and that's a big priority at this retreat. Oh boy, I could kind of go to town on this. But see, right, that point of view is one which, if you believe in the urgency of doing big, important, game-changing strategic planning, that, that point of view, as it grows like a cancer, it will all— which drives you bananas. Hope you're enjoying this free excerpt from the Jump Leap Long Term Strategy Podcast. Interested in finding out more about getting a subscription to full episodes? Visit www.longtermstrategy.info. Why? Well, it's not just that, you know, as I said, you want a dramatic retreat. It's that you see that there's high performance is at stake, and it— when the company doesn't perform in a, at its best in its strategic planning, it opens the door to destruction. It becomes like a Kodak or a Blockbuster or any other number of companies that performed poorly because of bad strategic planning. If you lack, for examples, I, I, I point you in the direction of the Company Man YouTube channel. Company Man. And on, on that YouTube channel, uh, there's a fellow who covers a whole range of corporate failures, and the common denominator among all of them is bad strategy. And the, the list— and he tends to cover the ones which are very well known, companies that are well known that you just don't hear much about anymore, like Bed Bath Beyond. And he covers their— tells their story from the point of view of here is bad strategy and here is— there is a result it produced. So if you lack for examples and lack for inspiration, or if you think that urgency is just, you know, something that people make up, um, just to create excitement, go check out— check out that video, that video series on YouTube, Company Man. So as you find yourself, you know, with folks who feel differently from the way you do, you may find yourself struggling to inspire others to adopt this level of urgency. Um, and as you do so, you may find yourself drifting away from them, uh, in terms of how you think and how they think. And you feel this separation that you're no longer together. And the more you push you wander is the more you may be ostracized or you may be seen as different. And you know, who wants that really? Um, but underneath it all, you think, God, there's got to be a better way than my just fighting and saying the same thing over and over again. There's got to be a better way to, to produce action that's inspired, uh, at the highest level to the board the C-suite, the top managers, the stakeholders, particularly who make all the big decisions, the stockholders, anyone who cares about the company in sort of this very visceral way, either because they're in a position or they own the stock, or they just believe in the company's mission. If you're a nonprofit, it might be a matter of belief. If you're a government, it might be a matter of service. But anyone who's at the— in a leadership role who has a part to play in determining the strategy of the company, it's got to be a way to inspire people to think about strategic planning in an urgent way. And that's the problem that we're essentially tackling in this episode. Um, what we want ultimately is for them to commit to a particular kind of long-term strategic planning. And as you may have guessed from the, the title of the show, it's something to do with the difference between being weakly proactive and strongly preemptive. So you want to become someone who's effective at, at creating the right kind of urgency. And that may take you developing a particular kind of literacy. And we'll talk about this particular kind of literacy because this could be really important to you because as you look forward, let's imagine that if you turned off this episode and you walked away and said, you know, I don't think there's any way to solve this problem, If you don't follow through and listen to this episode or take the matter seriously, or take the— consider the point of view that urgency is something that can be accessed if you use the right technique or the right way of thinking, that the next retreat that you walk into, it could be like the one that Gary is gonna walk into where the skiing is more important than the strategizing. Or the family time, you know, hanging around the fireplace in the lodge, the ski lodge, is the best part of the retreat. No, I don't ski. I live in Jamaica. I lived in the US for 20 years and I never once, I never even went skiing once. So I regret. But I imagine that a ski resort, a ski resort and strategy, sort of represents a kind of a status quo, low expectation by those who are attending, that there's not much expected from it, that, you know, the hanging out is as important or more important than the activity itself. But what happens over time is that if the company continues in that vein, which many have, colleagues come to see strategic planning, the regular exercise, whether it's annual or biannual or wherever, biannual, whenever it's done, that it's something to, you know, not expect anything from. It's something to do something to find that you're too busy to do. It's something to resist. It's something to avoid. It's something to, you know, it's something to give lip service to. It's something to invite your mom to because you want to spend time with your mom. And that's really what you have at stake instead of a corporate outcome. That's game-changing. You know that over time, your colleagues will become kind of lazy and slip into a comfort zone. Where strategic planning becomes this really optional, like optional kind of nice-to-do activity. So some think, like the board members think, that board member that I mentioned thinks that making them more fun or more casual or more family-oriented is the answer. As you can imagine, I'm not going in that direction. I'm asking How can you make them more urgent? No, just saying they need to be more urgent or this is high priority or saying a whole bunch of words, exhorting others to take this with utmost seriousness probably won't do it any longer. Maybe it worked in the past. Today, people are like, well, Well, show me or tell me. And if an explanation doesn't come out that is compelling, you know, they'll spend more time with mom, with their wife, their spouse, or a significant other, or time with their kids while they're at the retreat. So, that kind of solution doesn't work. And it comes from a low barrier, a low, let's say, a low hurdle. And the hurdle, I think, has become that as long as we're doing strategic planning, we're checking the box because it means that we're being proactive enough. And as long as we're being proactive enough, then that's enough to convince others or convince ourselves that we're being good corporate citizens at some level, that we're, we're being— we're doing the smart thing. This is what we were taught in MBA school. And, you know, if a couple of cool insights come out of the retreat, then, and that's a sign of success. And this kind of, um, let's call it low standard, has become I say prevalent in strategic planning activity. And it's enough to be weakly proactive, that, that, that's enough, as opposed to strongly preemptive. So I'll, I'll talk about the difference in a few minutes, but as you may imagine, I'm starting to evoke a world in which proactivity For example, if a board demands that a senior management team be proactive in its thinking, that may translate into, okay, well, no problem, we'll have our usual strategic planning retreat and we'll, you know, we'll look 3 to 5 years out. And we'll produce a report and we'll present the report to the board. And that's enough. So I was in a curious retreat or report once. I saw a report given by a senior management team to the board. And it had that nature to it. It had the, we're doing a great job at the strategic planning activity because we're doing it. And as you can see, we're looking to the future. And that, you know, that's enough, right? And the board members, I would say, at first said, yeah, okay, that's what we asked for. Yeah, we kind of, yeah, this is what, this does check the box. But as the discussion unfolded and got deeper and deeper, board members started to ask for more. That this wasn't— yes, it was proactive and yes, it looked to the future and yes, you could check the box, but it, it didn't seem to be big. It seemed to be pretty small. Now, where does that small thinking kind of come from? Where do this— where does a small strategy come from? Or a check-a-box strategy? Well, part of the reason is that teams tend to take a shallow view of the past. Shallow meaning short-term. So they're looking to the past. You've reached the end of a complimentary clip from the Jump Leap Long-Term Strategy Podcast. To hear the full episode, go over to www.longtermstrategy.info. And grab a subscription or a free trial. See you there. Here's an excerpt from our next episode with Barry Eustance.

Roll that forward. What then happened in 1997, you had the merger of McDonnell Douglas and Boeing, and the focus of the organization changed. It is reported, from, from the focus on engineering excellence to stockholder returns. Now, in that sort of case, what happens?

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.