In this podcast episode Francis Wade reads his Jamaica Gleaner article critiquing the common corporate practice of limiting strategic planning to a five‑year horizon. He argues that five‑year plans are dangerous because they tend to become superficial revisions of outdated thinking, fail to engage and retain top talent, and ignore rapidly accelerating technology trends. Drawing on two decades of consulting experience, Wade illustrates each point with examples such as Digicel’s disruptive entry into the Caribbean mobile market and the impact of the Great Resignation on employee discretionary effort. He then advocates for much longer planning horizons—15 to 30 years—supported by concrete methodologies like backcasting and the Merlin Process, which connect future aspirations to present actions. While acknowledging the difficulty of crafting long‑term visions, Wade stresses that grounded, audacious goals are essential for staying competitive and avoiding strategic danger. The episode concludes with a call to action for listeners to visit his blog for further resources.
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Hello and welcome back to Chronicles from a Caribbean Cubicle podcast. This is Francis Wade, and here's an article I wrote for the Jamaica Gleaner. It's entitled, "Why 5-year plans aren't strategic, they're dangerous." Almost all corporate plans cover the next 5 years. However, Many companies go not a single month further. In other words, they survive on one 5-year plan after another. If you have ever questioned the wisdom of this practice, keep reading. Your strategic planning team meets and decides to limit its time horizon to only 5 years. Why? It's too hard to know what will happen in the future. It's true. The past 2 years have brought COVID, the recession, a war, and other rude surprises. Companies' best intentions lay in tatters. Given the amount of change we have experienced, some say it's folly to think past the short term. In their mind, leaders will be so wrong about the future that it makes no sense to think too far out. The idea seems perilous. If your managers are thinking along these lines, they aren't alone. Around the world, the focus of attention has been on survival tactics. They keep the top line viable, limit costs, micromanage workers performing their duties, and secure supply chains. Why then should your company consider the creation of a new long-term plan? Here are 3 reasons we've gleaned in 2 decades of experience with clients who craft 15- to 30-year plans. Number 1, your 5-year plan is just a dull revision. If your executive team is like many, it may be mailing in the strategic plan in a half-hearted effort and minor revisions. The old plan merely becomes a new one. Your pre-COVID thinking is fully preserved. This contrasts with the best companies, which are undertaking a fundamental rethink. They realize that more changes have taken place in 2 pandemic years than in the prior 20, shifting the underlying unmet needs of customers. Furthermore, competitors are using the opportunity to craft blue ocean spaces which have never existed before. Consider the way Digicel entered the mobile phone market in 2001. Inside the walls of the incumbent, Cable Wireless leadership fought the notion of a pent-up demand for cell phones. The long lines on the first day of free competition propelled the new entrant to regional prominence. If your company is too busy or lacks the energy to do a rethink, prepare for its own rude surprise. Number 2: Your 5-year plan is for you, not them. While the Great Resignation is slow to reach the Caribbean, this hasn't stopped the big disengagement. Your most talented and accomplished employees are withholding discretionary effort, searching for outside opportunities, and starting side hustles in the meantime. Their faces are on the screen, but their dreams lie elsewhere. However, when you announce a fresh strategy, their ears perk up. They want to see whether or not there is something worth staying around for. Unfortunately, if all they hear is a new 5-year plan, they will accelerate their plans to leave. It's written proof the company's leaders are just as clueless as they suspected and self-serving. The fact is, a long-term strategic plan signals that the future is being secured by savvy creativity rather than lost by selfish short-sight, it could craft a legacy to be celebrated. Number 3: Your 5-year plan ignores technology trends. The whole point of planning for a long horizon is to place intelligent bets now that shape the future. Understanding technology trends help you to do so effectively. In your industry, these transformations have probably accelerated due to COVID. Companies who have accepted this fact and planned accordingly are thriving. By contrast, the laggards are stuck teaching their employees how to use Excel and PowerPoint in face-to-face classrooms. They already failed. Perhaps they believed that digital future would take care of itself. Today you know the truth. Organizations which fail to invest in younger, digitally savvy talent will reap the sour fruit of stale thinking. Their strategies won't disrupt their industries. This isn't to say that it's easy to craft a 30-year strategic plan. However, some believe it can be captured in a nebulous vision statement. Unfortunately, in today's fast-moving world, these pronouncements arouse the suspicion of staff. Fancy words aren't enough. Without a roadmap, they simply won't trust grandiose statements which have no foundation. To carve a credible route, adopt tools like backcasting and the Merlin Process to connect the future to today. Yes, people want Big Hairy Audacious Goals , but they must be grounded in feasible logic. The timing may be right for you to create more than a mere 5-year plan. It could exploit opportunities which, perhaps for a limited time, beckon your organization to achieve great things. It's the best way to stay out of danger. Thanks for listening. Do you have an unsolved problem in your Caribbean company related to strategy, productivity, engagement, or business process improvement? Just visit a searchable listing of all my prior articles and you may be able to help yourself to a fresh line of thinking. Go to blog.fwconsulting.com or see the show notes.
