Replay: Jumping Hurdles - How Leaders Craft Their Long Term Strategic Plans Webinar

Here's what CEOs say: I know that I should be doing game-changing, long-term strategic planning, but— Now, there are a few who would say, I don't want to do game-changing, I want to stick to the short term, and I don't do strategic planning. So there are a few who are like that, but today we're not focusing on them. Instead, today we're dealing with the question of what comes after that but. And we're going to start a journey to dismantle all of the reasons and excuses and explanations that CEOs give when they know that they should be doing game-changing long-term strategic planning, but they have nothing written, no plan in place, nothing actually put together, maybe a thought in their head, but they don't have a formal plan. So if we haven't met, my name is Francis Wade, and welcome to the webinar today. And I'm going to pop over into the chat just now and make sure that you're hearing me and that your fingers are working because today is going to be an interactive session. So let me jump over into the chat. Just let me know that you're seeing what I'm seeing, then I'm going to stop talking to myself. Are you there? Oh yeah, okay, so here we have Michael from— you are not hearing. Michael, if you're not hearing, you could refresh your browser. Might be explained— explanation why. David Martin, how are you, sir? Uh, Saleh Al-Ansari, welcome. Tammy T, welcome to you. Up— sounds as if we're up and going and you are hearing me and I'm hearing you. And welcome to today, because today, as I said, is going to be interactive and I expect you to use your fingers mostly. Oh, and somebody just dropped an emoji. Please drop an emoji as you hear us talking. Practice that emoji click, make sure you know that, you know how to get that going. Okay, let's start with a poll. So this poll is kind of based on the question that I just asked, and let me know if you can see the poll. Should be on the stage right now. Can you see the poll? We have to scroll down a little bit to see the, see the answers, but go ahead and answer that poll. Okay, I see some answers coming in. Question is, from the CEOs you have met, how do most of them explain the lack of a written long-term, which is a game-changing long-term strategy? Because that's what we're here and that's what we're about. From the ones you have met, how do they explain the fact that they don't have a written long-term strategy? Go ahead and answer in the poll. Uh, we have a— looks like we have a winner already. This is interesting. Too busy is currently winning by others. Say shareholders want immediate returns, could be other stakeholders as well. Followed by, let's see, too busy, still winning, don't know how to get started, my board would never go for it. You know, executives get short-term incentives, so the executives in the C-suite aren't interested in anything long-term because they're around for 3, 4, 5 years and then they're gone. But looks as if we are still winning with too busy, and in second place we have shareholders want immediate returns. Interesting. So thanks for responding and keep going. If you're just joining us, we have a poll on the stage, and I'm going to use these answers in the way that I think about how to respond to what we're doing today. Too busy, still ahead. Great. So it looks like, uh, if you're not seeing the numbers, the actual responses: 47% is too busy, 25% is shareholders want immediate returns, but the clear winner is too busy. Of course, we're going to ask the question, too busy doing what exactly? But anyway, I'm going to close the poll. Thank you all for responding, and Let's get going. I'm going to share my screen. Thank you very much. And let's get my screen shared. I'm going to tell you a little bit about what the purpose of today is, which I think you've probably already figured out, but let's see. Okay. Quite getting there. Okay, so the purpose of today is to answer the question, what comes after the but? So we know that the excuses are out there and the reasons are being given, and what we want to know today is, but why? Why? Because we're interested in finding out exactly what we can do about it. See, we're not just watching and criticizing and passing judgment on those who should be doing long-term strategic thinking that's game-changing. We want to ask, what can we do about it? What difference can we make? So as I mentioned before, today is going to be interactive. There will be a giveaway at the end in the form of a quiz. First who answers the quiz gets the giveaway. Um, after the presentation is done, I'm going to be in the chat and we're going to be answering a couple questions. If you have a burning question, just stay around for that moment. But also, if you have a question as we are proceeding, put it in the Q&A. You'll see that there's a sign that I put here with a— points to a little Q and an A. It may not be purple, but that's where you drop a question if you really want to get my attention. That's the easiest way for me to find the questions that are sort of on your mind as we go along. So you may not know that today's webinar is the first of a series. We're gonna have a webinar in May, another one in June, and what we're leading up to is a virtual conference on June 20th to 21st. You will hear more about that later. But you— let's talk about you some more. Are you in the right place? You may think that, well, I'm in a for-profit, is this really for people who are out to improve shareholder value or long-term value? Answer is yes. And for many companies there are very few, if any, long-term BHAGs— Big Hairy Audacious Goals— long-term measurable results that companies commit to. By long-term, I mean 10 years plus. Now, I know there are some companies who say, well, our long-term starts on in year 5. That's not what we're talking about. That's more of the same, just disguised with a different name. We're talking about our long-term commitments, and for-profits, many for-profits have CEOs and executive teams that don't make public any long-term commitments. So if you're in a for-profit, you're in the right place. If you're in a nonprofit or an NGO or in a government kind of role, you may know that your, your organization is very good perhaps at setting long-term goals, like the SDGs, for example, Sustainable Development Goals. They're well established, they're very aspirational, they have a measurable outcome, they're SMART, in other words, but they may lack a detailed strategy or a strategy to get there. They may have set those goals and basically said, "If you build it, they will come." So is that true? We'll find out today. Or maybe if you are someone who is not, you're not in an organization that does strategic planning, but you're someone who cares about the topic because you're a leader of some kind, you're a change agent or an advocate, maybe for social change, you're a consultant, perhaps you could be an author or content creator. You care about these ideas because you realize that they will and can change the world, and they're not being taught, and we don't talk about them, and we don't really confront the fact that the long-term problems that we're facing as a planet are a function of short-termism. And companies of all kinds, organizations of all kinds— and by organizations I include, like I said, for-profit, private, family-owned, public, and nonprofit, NGO, government. I even include clubs, churches, schools, any organization where people get together, because where we come from here at Framework and Jump Leap is that every organization can develop a long-term strategy and will be better for it. And that could reverse some of the decline that we've seen in achieving global change, like climate change, making a difference there. So I want you to imagine for a moment that you're able to talk to leaders in a way that helps them to close these gaps. I want you to imagine also that you could help companies commit to realistic, big, hairy, audacious goals—BHAGs—that they're not scared of doing so and actually gain the benefits according to the folks who came up with the idea and the research that they conducted. I want you to imagine that you could have a say in how nonprofits achieve their biggest visions, like the SDGs, Sustainable Development Goals, or Net Zero 2050. Here in Jamaica, we have Jamaica Vision, Vision Jamaica 2030, Vision 2030 Jamaica, sorry. So question for you, what would it be like to be able to persuade the C-suite leaders in the world— and when I say C-suite, I mean profit or nonprofit, anyone who's at the leadership level— to commit to game-changing long-term strategy as a matter of course. Now, I don't mean that it's done instead of short-term strategy, but in addition to. Put that in the chat so I know that we're on the same page here and that your commitment is kind of similar to mine, if not exactly identical to the same. What would that be like? Drop a note in the chat. Let's see. This is the part where you use your fingers. By the way, I should have told you to turn off Facebook, turn off Netflix, turn off Twitter, whatever else you were doing in the meantime, and focus on this. Marceline says fulfilling. Chris, really powerful. Great. Who else? What would it be like to have that kind of influence and leverage and to make that kind of difference in the world? Empowering. Yeah, very good, Paul. You know, when I think of, of this being empowering, this conversation, this possibility, I think of being able to influence any organization, if not all. And I mean the ones around you right now, not the ones like the UN where it's this mega organization. There's thousands of people and they're somewhere in New York. No, I'm talking about the school that your kids go to. I mean the clubs that you belong to. I mean the Rotary that you attend. The temple that you're part of the congregation, which you're part of the congregation. All of them. If all our organizations were to do what we're talking about today, we wouldn't even be talking about climate change. It wouldn't be an issue. So I I hope that you are able to start to see where these obstacles come from, that they're not mysterious, they can be understood, and that if you have concerns about engaging people in the idea of long-term strategy, that this will help you to go beyond your concerns. And you also, I'm hoping that you'll be able to have something to say to people who look at you kind of funny when you say long-term. And they say, "I can barely get through the week." Barely being able to get through the week and creating long-term game-changing strategy are actually not mutually exclusive, but people don't know that because we live in a world of urgent concerns. Well, what can you say to them to actually be effective? In our series, starting with this webinar, the one in May, the one in June, and the conference, we're going to be helping to give you ways to think and ways to speak. And you will get some of your suspicions confirmed. You may have thought, hmm, maybe the reason is, and maybe the reason might be, and maybe it's just that people aren't. We'll be talking about some of those. But above all, I want to encourage you to pursue your aspirations to make a difference. Okay, so let's put up another poll because I've used this term and I want to make sure you know what I'm talking about. What the heck is a BHAG? So can you see the poll on the stage? If you can't see it, drop a note in the chat. What— oh, I got a typo in there. What do you think of BHAGs? Never heard of them is the winner at the moment. So Big BHAG is a Big Hairy Audacious Goal. The idea behind it came from Built to Last, Collins and Porras, which was written in, I believe, 1994. We're going to be talking about them a bit in a bit, a few more minutes. But you perhaps have never heard of a BHAG, but it's just a big commitment, and it's an essential part of long-term strategic planning. Why? Because the point is not to spend not to have to spend more time, put more time in your plan than you need. It's that BHAGs don't happen by themselves. They need this secret element that we're going to talk about. Okay, most have not heard of BHAGs. No, that's not true. Some, some believe in both. Great, so we have some true believers. Couple don't believe in BHAGs. Excellent, great. Some believe but Not long-term strategy. Okay, so there's some mixed opinions. Great, thanks for voting. I'm gonna take that poll down. Gives me an idea. I'll use the term, but I'll be explaining what it means all the way throughout, so I'm not just throwing around. But let me ask you this: what happens when people don't make big commitments? What happens when people don't make big commitments? Drop an answer in the chat. So I'm not just asking this for you to think about it on your own. One of the points of, or, us doing a series of webinars and a conference is to get people talking to each other who care about long-term strategy and care about game-changing results. So Tim says fighting fires versus building Very good. They don't remain consistent, Tammy, right? The pandemic comes and blows them all, all of their commitments away, and they start looking for short-term survival. They make small commitments and get small results. Chris, thank you. Nicholas, don't know where you are going to. If you don't know where you're going to, enroll, take you there, right? Losing the meaning of life. Why work when work devolves into a paycheck in exchange for an activity? Then there's not much there to inspire us, make a difference, touch us, and move us. The good news is that most CEOs, almost every single one I've met, would never say that they don't believe in BHAGs. They want to leave a mark on the world. In the public sector, they want, for example, to produce amazing planet-changing results like the 17 SDGs. They were created in 2015. Their target date is 2030, and in those 15 years, there are 17 wicked problems that the UN has stated it wants to solve by 2030. Huge game-changing results. In the private sector, companies like Facebook, Netflix, Apple all have introduced game-changing solutions that change their industries, that open doors where doors were closed, that give opportunity where none existed. Now, you may say, well, why are CEOs— why do they want these things? All right, let's be honest. Some of them want to save the planet. Some of them want to make a difference. Some of them care about people and they care about customers so much that And then there are others who really just want fame. They are concerned about their bonus. They realize that their stock options are going to vest in a couple years, and after that they're free to do what they want, and they're planning to not stay more than a few years. So there is that. Some just want everyone to you know, think of them highly in the sense that they have left the legacy, that they didn't come and waste the time that they were there as a CEO. People wouldn't say that when he was a CEO or she was a CEO, the place got worse and is 10 times, 10 times, 10 times worse, 10 times better or worse. He left a disaster and thank goodness he's gone, or she's gone. Most CEOs aren't interested in that. They want to be thought of. Now, a lot of CEOs I've met are, like myself, big egos. Oh, but that's okay, because if we can get them to not necessarily change but commit to more than a little list of things that I have there that are more personal and individual, given how many organizations there are in the world and how many CEOs I think believe in BHAGs if you ask them and want to do game-changing, produce game-changing results, that we should have 1,000 people at this webinar, right? Well, we have you and the role that you can play in conversations with them because a lot of them are going to say, you know, what can I do with the short time that I'm here? Lots of ways to answer that, and we won't answer all of them. But think about a CEO or a leader of any kind, any organization committing to results that are beyond his or her tenure or even beyond his or her lifetime. We like leaders like that. Unfortunately, most CEOs don't live that way. So my friends, CEOs themselves may not be the instant solution. Leaders may not be the ones who take this to the next level. But guess what? Here we are. Here we are. There's a bunch of long-term type of thinking people right here in this webinar. And I say we are at the heart of this because we're the glue that connects a commitment to producing BHAGs or accomplishing them and where people are right now. So interestingly, the authors of Built to Last, Collins and Porras, after they produced their book, a couple years later they wrote an article for the Harvard Business Review, and in that article was this diagram. And it was the first time they sort of slipped in an afterthought, which was that, guess what, 10 to 30-year BHAGs, if you can't read that, In the blue, it says envision future 10 to 30-year BHAGs. For the first time, they actually acknowledged that, guess what, BHAGs aren't a 3 and 4 year journey. BHAGs take time, which puts the onus on us maybe as long-term strategists and long-term thinkers that perhaps we are the hidden glue between CEOs accomplishing their wildest dreams, society, planet, because we're the one who connects today with the biggest aspirations that people can imagine in their lives. Unfortunately, we as a human race, we're not very good at this. We have some psychological limitations. We don't really understand long-term strategic planning. And right now, the head of, uh, the Secretary General of the UN Antonio Guterres said, unless we act now, the 2030 Agenda will become an epitaph for a world that might have been. I read his words, studied what the UN is doing, and I said, I think this is a lack of strategic planning, long-term strategic planning, because many of those goals, as I said, come from that world of if you build it, they will come. And that's not That demonstrates a lack of understanding of long-term strategic planning. Because guess what? We human beings have a very hard time getting big things done. Oh, that turns out there's a book by this name. Oh, I didn't properly— oh, but I'll read the names: Bent Flyberg and Dan Gardner. So I emailed both of them, and I've been reading excerpts from their book, but caught both— heard both of them on podcast. And a couple examples they gave was of the Montreal Olympics. So the Montreal Olympics was 720% over budget, and the Sydney Opera House, 10 years and $100 Australian dollars over budget and overtime. Turns out less than 1% of big projects hit their budget, time, and deliver the features that they promise. So as you listen to these experts, and they've, they've studied thousands of companies, they have the data, you see that back to what I said before, boy, we have a problem. We need BHAGs. In order to accomplish them, we need long-term strategy. But there's a big problem when it comes to accomplishing anything that requires a multi-year commitment that's of a sizable nature. So hearing this, you may think, oh, let me give up. No, let me disappear. Because it could lead to a feeling of frustration, which leads to even saying, let me just give up on this and just live my life and just keep going. Forget about the next generation, they can figure it out. Well, they probably won't. There's a picture of someone running before COVID and what it looked like after COVID. And you probably have seen similar pictures that COVID, when we stopped polluting the atmosphere in the way that we've been doing, cleared up temporarily all kinds of environmental problems. Temporarily illustrating that we have long-term issues that we have put into place just because we've been living on this planet and doing the things that we do, maybe innocently, maybe not so innocently, more ignorantly maybe. But if we don't make long-term commitments and create long-term strategy to accomplish it, we have a problem. Okay, so I have a great, great question in the chat, or comment in the chat, from the Tech Execs who say their business are changes too fast for long-term planning? Great question. I'm going to introduce to you a model that we've been using, and I'd like you to consider this because I'll use it as an example of what you can learn from hanging around a conference where we're talking about this issue and this issue of game-changing long-term strategic planning only. So kind of an obscure article from 2008 from, um, Andrew Curry and Anthony Hodgson. Journal of Future Studies, seeing in— it's really three horizons. But let me give you an idea of what this talk is talking about, their paper is talking about. So this idea is based on the fact that initially, what they call the first horizon, there's a pretty decent fit between what companies do and their external environment, their markets, their customers, the technology, the regulate— government regulations, what investors are willing to pay for, and so forth. It's a pretty good fit. And over time, that fit sort of naturally decays. So Jeff Bezos says there are some things that don't change. And his thinking is brilliant with respect to figuring out the things that don't change. Here we're looking at the things that do change, things like products being offered, services, and so forth. So there's a natural decay. So let's jump to the third horizon these authors came up with. And what they said is that as you consider the future, there are actually pockets of the future available today. So I've seen this. Because in a strategic planning retreat, and I've been lucky to have, fortunate to have been part of more than 50 long-term strategic planning retreats where we have came out with long-term, meaning 15 to 30 years, and short-term strategic plans, all bundled together, interwoven. But these ideas about the future actually come from, start from the very beginning. Of the retreat. In other words, they're available. So the retreat starts, and mostly what the conversation is about are these things in first, the first horizon. But then we start to explore what's happening now that tells you what's going to happen in the future. And we start to build a future, a vision based on these, you might call them weak signals. That are available today. So I skipped over a horizon. There's a second horizon, these authors say. So what's the second horizon? So the second horizon is kind of an in-between. It's when you realize that the products and services that you're offering are no longer— they're going through a decline. You kind of come up with something to fill the gap. But what you come up with to fill the gap isn't based on the future, it's based more on the past. In other words, it's kind of a stopgap measure, the kind of the short-term thinking that we talked about earlier, kind of thing that you do to make sure you don't go out of business right now. You may realize at the time that it has no long-term future, but this is what's going to pay the bill, so let's do it. So there's three horizons in every strategic planning retreat. And they all coexist. Now, here's the sort of the difficult thing that I've seen, is that there is a messy middle. According to— that's a phrase that I came up with, but I borrowed it from, from these, these, these authors. The messy middle is what strategic planning retreats are all about. It's coming together as a group to decide what's in the first horizon, what's in the third, and what should be in the second. And if you see the slopes of these graphs, or in other words, how fast these things are changing, you can imagine if you've never been in a retreat that's looking at 15 to 30 years out, there's a considerable amount of conversation and discussion and sometimes argument over what's the nature of this messy middle and how to navigate it. So this is just a— let's call it a preview to some of the ideas that we'll be talking about at the conference. But I wanted to introduce it to you because I wanted to contrast it with the short-term school of thought. So the short-term school of thought says we don't need to look past— you see where that blue blue block starts. We don't need to look past that point. We just need to look at that little piece that is at the front of the window. Look at that window. Everything else we can ignore. Now, it may sound crazy to you, but this is human nature. And I've— I know I've seen it. I'm sure you have. But let me ask you, why is the short-term school of thought so tempting? Why do companies organizations, in many that have failed. There's the Kodaks of the world, the Blockbusters, the BlackBerrys, and so forth. Why is this school of thought so tempting? And why do they— you know, obviously they did see a diagram like this one with 3 horizons, which is like, oh my God, they do exist. Instead, they kind of focus on that first bit, right where it goes up. And they're able to project and say, oh, look, we've done well in the past, we're going to do well in the future. Mike McPherson says more knowns and less unknowns, right? Very good. John says don't have to seriously commit. Marceline says it's because it's familiar. It's extremely comfortable, right, to stay looking at the short term. It's, it's, I could, from experience, like, there's way, way harder And I actually wrote a letter, uh, an article in the Jump Leap newsletter on a comparison between a short-term retreat that I did and a long-term retreat. Turns out the difference in time was only 4 hours. Anyway, I invite you to take a look and see why it was only 4 hours. So the time difference is not that much, but the way of looking has more to do with a frame of mind than it does putting in a whole lot of extra hours. Richard Adams said it's a path of least resistance. Yes, so we have our work cut out for us because the easy path ignores the three horizons. The easy path says just stick to the first horizon and make your plans from there. So a little bit about myself, um, and my background. I mentioned before our experience in my company doing long-term strategic planning, or what we call interwoven short and long-term strategic planning of a game-changing nature. So I've always loved game-changing ideas and the idea of a transformation, starting from when I was an ardent churchgoer. And I love the idea of transforming oneself. And I used to convince people to come to church and become— change the religion that I belong to and come and be a believer. And I love the idea of being able to share the gospel and having people learn from it and grow from it and become different people. So I've always loved this idea of people can transform. Later on, however, I continued my— and I'll show you some more details about how I transferred it into actually corporations. So I started to do transformation work in companies. And what we discovered is that we could be effective in inspiring employees, and they came up pretty excited and pretty turned on. And we had a feeling that we were letting them loose to do great things. And we were, but the great things weren't defined. So we had our clients come back to us and say, you know, you've excited our staff, they're extremely engaged, and they're turned on. I know they want projects to do, because that was a part of the programs that we would do. But we don't know what projects to give them. And I would say, oh, um, What do you have in your strategic plan? And they would say, huh? Because they didn't have a strategic plan, not really. They would have a bunch of problem-solving sessions, but not a real plan. And they would decide, they said, you know, we don't know what to tell our staff. We don't know what direction we need to send them in. So we, in our company, said, well, we need to figure out a way to give folks direction, give our clients big directions so that they can accomplish these big possibilities, these BHAGs, these awesome things that the company could produce. So I had that as a commitment, but nothing really happened until September of 2000 when the article written by Robert Kaplan, Kaplan and Norton, and David Norton, the two folks, two gentlemen in the top, top top right-hand corner, came out in the Harvard Business Review. And I grabbed that— I didn't grab it, I read the article. But I read it, reread it, reread it, and then started sharing with everybody that I knew. And that became our way of starting to do long-term strategic planning, because it gave us a way to explain cause and effect relationships that I just never seen before. So I was a happy camper. However, over time, we've developed some nuance to what we do, and I've packaged those nuances, some of them, into 3 secrets today. And I'm gonna think that the 3 secrets may apply to the situation that you're in. So let's jump right in and take a look at them. So the first secret is how to multiply your impact without having to sort of go back and study a bunch of books. I do a lot, do a lot of reading. Now, you know, I came to my epiphany and my commitment 20 years ago, 24 years ago. Wow. Because I read an article. But there's other ways to do this that are way more effective and offer a great shortcut, let's put it that way. So one way is to be around other people. And that's why my colleague and I— I didn't mention her, Dale Pilgrim-Wade, she's in the chat and she's the co-host of everything that we do. But that's why we've put on 10 online conferences since the start of COVID because we realized that conferences offer an experience. And I'm going to come back to this model in just a moment. I mentioned that I love personal development. And the way I came to think about personal development was that it was something that you read in a book or listen to an audio. So Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robbins was the first thing that I picked up and listened to. I had the book, but I was too scared to read the book. I got the audios, listened to the audios driving in the car. I was scared because I thought it would tell me to quit my job and go become a monk or something, you know, a fear like that. But anyway, I listened to these audios. In his audio, he mentioned the book A Return to Love. And these three books are among the first that I read. My access to developing myself and growing myself was by reading, individual study. And I thought that's what needs to happen. Until I did this program. I did a program in 1994 called the Landmark Forum. 200 people in a room for a weekend, and I saw something happen. I saw things happen faster than I thought were ever possible for me and for the other people who were there. Why? It wasn't because there was one person with all this wisdom, no, but it was 200 people who were talking to each other about the same things. And I saw more happen in my life in that weekend than I ever thought. It was way past anything that I imagined. It, it, it was inexplicable. And if you'd asked me before, can such a thing happen, I would say no. So there's something that's possible in a group, especially an immersive experience where you have access to other people. So our conferences are a bit different. We're not here to offer you just an opportunity to attend, watch, and disappear. Instead, we want you to join our online community, talk to others, talk to the experts, not only listen to them when they're experting or when they're presenting, but talk to them in the community, which will be up for the entire, entire conference experience. We also give access to 24-hour content so anyone from around the world can enjoy it. We also have live panels and interviews. But the point is, we want to give you access or a way to find these insights that you can't find in a book or an MBA, presented in a way that you can immediately use. So let's call it the fast way. So I could tell you from having looked for articles and speakers for the last couple years for our conference In the area of game-changing long-term strategy, it's hard. Finding people is difficult. So you can go along the path that I— I could even send you all the names of 100 and something people that I'm in conversation with. But like the paper that I mentioned, the insights aren't sort of in a book somewhere. You can't take an MBA course. Game-changing long-term strategy, not to my knowledge. At the moment, the best way to find, find information and to make progress and to make a difference and to add to long-term thinking in the planet is through other people. And other people who are attending and hearing from our experts in different ways and shapes is the method that I'm offering. You'll also hear from people like me who will talk about our method and framework that we use for long-term game-changing strategic planning. So the old method— believe it or not, I got this from ChatGPT— starts with a vision statement. It looks at where you are today, then you brainstorm projects and you delegate them to people. That way doesn't work. I want to offer you the endpoint method that we use. And there'll be some unique opportunities during the conference to learn what these steps are all about. You actually start with a zero base or an empty blank canvas, kind of like zero-based budgeting. Create a snapshot of where the organization is now, which I'll talk about later. Pick a target year that's in your— the sweet spot for your company and your industry. Create alternatives for that target year. Pick a single alternative, backcast that to today, and then create a short-term strategy map, which is not the way Kaplan and Norton really talk about using strategy mapping, but we find it's more effective. So these details will be available. They're available right now at the Jump Leap newsletter, but you'll hear them in, in way more accessible fashion when you take the conference. Okay, so back to the conference learning model. This is the one that I used when I took that Landmark program. You have an experience, maybe one that's like a wow, can't explain that, but oh my goodness, what an insight. Kind of insight that makes you see the world differently from that point on. The way after I read the strategy mapping article, the world looked different from that point on, and that's just that narrow area. Extract your learning from it. Test it for real, you know, with perhaps with yourself if you can, with your own company or group. Apply it enough times so that you can then routinize it or make it a part of what you do on a regular basis. And also a part of what you say to people when you believe that they should be doing long-term strategic planning and they aren't. That now it becomes a part of your kind of the things that you say. All right, so don't forget there's this whole business of leaving a question in the Q&A, and I don't see any questions yet. So we're coming to the end of that first secret, um, but go ahead and drop a question in the Q&A if you have a question based on what I've said, anything that I've said so far. Um, or Dale, if you've seen any questions in the chat, just, uh, point me to them or give them to me. But anyway, the good news is that the first company that I ever did a strategic plan planning retreat with created a 25-year plan, and they're doing pretty well. They're now a multinational conglomerate, came from just being a company with basically one, one offering, one, one offering in one country. Okay, so I'm not seeing a question. Um, don't forget that Q&A button. Dale will remind you as we go along. See, the question— comments are related to what I said before. All right, let's move on to the next because you may have a, you know, a concern that Me, Francis? Me? You want me to do something to engage in like this whole change the world business or help my company to accomplish some outstanding game-changing results? You want me to have a conversation with my CEO or my chairman or the C-suite? Well, yeah, but fortunately there are some frameworks that actually come naturally to us as planners. That we can borrow from. We just need to think of them in a particular way. So I'm gonna suggest that we could use a storytelling framework. I'm going to come back to this set of steps because it actually fits right into what we do. If you're in a strategic planning position, or you've been around and you've done planning, I'm going to suggest that there's a way for you to position what you have to say so that it communicates and moves people to action. So before I mentioned those storytelling, storytelling framework, and, um, I learned storytelling the very hard way back in 2003 when I wrote a book called Bills and Perfect Time Management Adventure. I knew nothing about writing stories. I learned by picking up books and listening. I don't think there were many podcasts at the time about that subject. This was the slow way. It took me a long time. And these are great books. Joseph Campbell, very dense. Dwight Swain, very old book, but very, very interesting about how to craft stories. And Randy Inger-Marson, Ingram Hansen. Ingram Hansen has a great newsletter on fiction writing. So the book that I wrote was a piece of fiction. It had to do with productivity. And I knew, as I said, I knew nothing about this. Fortunately, today, there are better frameworks. And I want to share a couple of them with you. One of them is the And-But-Therefore framework. Now, this one has made a tremendous difference in the way I communicate Partly because it's so easy to pick up. Essentially, it says, we're here today, we have all of our commitments to producing long-term, game-changing results, we're smart people, but— so the ands lead up to a but— but there are a number of people in powerful places in companies that believe in long-term thinking but don't actually do anything about it, like make actual plans. Therefore, we could make a difference with them if we develop the right kinds of storytelling skills. So I just used and, but, therefore in a simple construct. Now that construct I use every single place I'm actually writing to share, persuade, convince, Anywhere I do any of those kinds of sell, any kinds of activities regarding changing or sharing people, where I would like us to go, what BHAG I'm committed to, what I would like them to do in terms of making sacrifice in order to get there. So that's a great framework. The other one is called StoryBrand. And it's a template to fill out actually before you even start writing or even considering your message. It helps you to frame the background of your story, figure out who the protagonist is, the villain is, what the different stages are, what the inner conflicts are. All very useful. Now you might say, "But Francis, I'm not interested in writing a novel." Well, I suspect, however, that you are interested in crafting game-changing long-term narratives. And not just have the world be filled with an all about problem-solving episodes. So I'm going to say that those of us who are committed to the long term need to be great storytellers. And one way, one reason is that we need to be in the game of sharing our vision with other people, you know, having a long-term narrative like that the Apple narrative has it all of its ups and downs. It went from $300 million revenue in 1997— 1977 to $95 billion in 2021. And there's a heck of a narrative along the way with its ups and downs, and many having to do with the long-term vision that Steve Jobs and others held But more specifically, between 2001 and 2010, according to the book Lead from the Future by Johnson and Soskovich, Steve Jobs and company and his colleagues came up with a vision of an Apple ecosystem. Now, today we take it for granted that all of the Apple products, they don't all just work together, but they are part of an interdependent, interlocking kind of functioning ecosystem. So no, you don't create an ecosystem that takes 10 years to develop by following 3-year plans. No, according to the authors, what they did was they sat in 2010 and said, we need to stop selling products, we need to sell an ecosystem. So I invite you to go and check this out. And how it evolved. And we kind of know what the story is. It took them from $5 million in revenue to $25 million in revenue, somewhere there. But it was the breakthrough that took Apple from being a computer company to being an ecosystem company. So that story, we can look back and say, oh yeah, we could see the story now after the fact. But long-term strategic planning is about crafting these narratives ahead of time. And that's what separates it from just mere problem solving. So I have a hard time in retreats, and maybe you've seen this problem, where people who come in think this is another problem-solving session, and they try to seek immediate resolution to issues that come up in the conversation. And I warn them early on, and then I tell them halfway through that, no, we're not here to do that. No, no, no. We're not here to solve immediate problems. We're here to craft a future. Different kind of activity, different kind of muscle. It requires a future-back mindset as opposed to a present-forward mindset. Again, from the book Leading from the Future from the authors that I mentioned before. Regular meetings, you can go back to problem solving because it has its place. But creating and crafting a long-term narrative doesn't happen every week. It happens— it's rare. Maybe happens every few years. And there's a lot of emotions based in that kind of planning. Go back to that framework I mentioned before. One of the big changes that we made, I'm going to share in a minute, is to think of who our protagonist is in any story we want to tell and who the villains are, what the problems are, who the guides are. And then there's a bunch of steps, steps to outline whenever you tell any story. And fortunately for us as planners, we're already have an idea that in the long term, you need to be talking about narratives with numbers. So I'm not saying that these don't have measurements, they do. But really, to have it have the emotional resonance that it needs, we need to be storytellers of a long-term nature. So one way in which we've applied this in the last, in the last few is in the creation of what we call the snapshots. I mentioned the snapshot before. And part of what we ask in the snapshot we used to ask is that attendees come in and present their areas of expertise or what's happening in the company from their perspective, like a financial perspective, human resource perspective, operations perspective. And from there, we would create the snapshot. And, you know, they would show numbers like these. And, you know, we would kind of say, oh, yeah, look how bad things are. You really need to move forward and think about the future. Right? But the snapshot would be kind of like bad news. Well, a client of ours said, why is it just that? Why don't you tell us or give us a way to understand where we are? And the snapshot became our way of doing that. And we infused the snapshot or new version of the snapshot with storytelling in which the client is the protagonist. They have a history of what brought them to this point. Like Apple, it's filled with ups and downs. There were villains to overcome. There were internal struggles to get past and to create a brand new future, it means accepting that you're the hero, and you can now craft a brand new destination for your company. Now, in case you're saying, okay, well, that sounds, that sounds pretty idealistic, or it sounds empowering or affirming. This is what we found just from our experience. And this really came from, you know, being in the field and doing what we do. Okay, so here's a question from Tamar. Tamarra, I think. How does one get— let me put it on the stage— divisional managers with competing priorities to see the importance of value in reporting on departmental performance against the organizational strategic objectives? Great question, Tamarra. In the moment— so there's two ways to think about this problem. In the moment, there's the unwillingness for them to report. And that often comes because the future isn't present. So we recommend you actually taking steps to presence the future before meetings like this, when, in other words, they need to consider making a sacrifice for the greater good. So if the greater good isn't present in the sense that, you know, some companies, they read their vision statement, but it's not just a plain old vision statement, it's a high-quality vision statement. And it takes them back to the strategic planning retreat where they created their BHAGs. So there's practices to engage in, in those meetings where they are discussing competing priorities. In other words, you are looking to change the context of the conversation around priorities. And then the second bit is much more long-term, is to get them in a long-term strategic planning retreat. And interesting thing happens, things happen when folks get together and commit as a team of 20 people to big things, things start to move and things start to change. Okay, and I can only say that they come away with a whole different kind of commitment that's not about them, not about their department, but it's about the company some 10, 20, 30 years in the future. It's interesting what happens when you go 10, 20, 30 years in the future. You start to not care as much about trying to hold on to your budget this year. Because essentially, you're asking them to change context and to commit to something that's much bigger. Now, I'm not going to tell you that that's easy, but that's why we're having a conference, right? Alright, so here's a third and final secret. How do you help CEOs think differently? How do you go after the Big Kahuna without pressuring them to become defensive? So I'm going to offer you something a little bit different, and maybe you might think off the wall, but sometimes there's a board, or there is a board— there are board members who are not being engaged in strategy in the long-term future of the company. So we've had a lot of success just asking questions like, shouldn't the board be involved in this? And getting back a little bit of a kind of a blank, blank look. Because in many companies, boards are not engaged in long-term strategy. They're not even engaged in long-term goals. They're more about the compliance. So the third secret is to learn about boards. And let me, let me come back to this one as well. But here's a couple of statistics. That demonstrate what I'm talking about. So McKinsey has shown that companies are twice— that outperform, which outperform, spend twice as much time as their— on strategy as their average peers. So these are boards we're talking about, board members. 34% of directors believe that the boards they serve on only 34% understand their company's strategy, and I think that's very generous. What I've seen instead is that in this particular case, a company that we worked with, they developed that thought short-term strategy that we talked about before. They presented to the board, and the board said, we want more. They said, we're tired of you bringing these short-term issues for us to talk about. And they listed off a bunch of the same short-term problems that the board seemed to be talking about every meeting. And every time we're talking about this thing and that thing, and it's all stuff that could be done in a short space of time. But we're here to do big things. What's the big thing that you're coming to ask us to give you permission to do? Now, that's not— I'm not saying that the entire board said that. All in one, in unison. It was more like a grumbling that I heard across the room during the meeting. But there are board members who join boards with the expectation that I'm here to contribute to long-term thinking, long-term goals, long-term strategy. And I'm best used when I am engaged in that kind of activity. Compliance, yeah, but because that's necessary. But if that's all I'm here for, you know, it's not all of that. It's not all that fulfilling, right? So in another strategic planning retreat, actually the very first one that I ever led that I mentioned before, we were in the client's living room and she had— we had a flip chart and we were writing on the flip chart and we came up with a 25-year strategic plan, as I mentioned. And she said, "I have to call the chairman." And I was like, "Why? Why do you have to get him involved in this?" So as the future started to unfold, as she started to define it, she called the poor fellow, older fellow, from wherever he was in the world, and he dropped whatever he did and came over. And within an hour, he was a part of the retreat. And it was just the two of us. Don't do that. Do it that way any longer, but this was at the time. She also called her second in command and he came over as well. And then it became a strategic planning meeting in which all were engaged. And it turns out they'd never talked about what to do in the future. They never talked about BHAGs in this way. Just hadn't been a topic of conversation, even though these were really smart people, really committed. And love their customers and love the building, the business they were in. So it takes something to craft this kind of conversation and to tap into, if you're familiar with the Jobs to Be Done structure, that every board member, as I mentioned, joins a board and they have in back of their mind a job they want to get done. Unfortunately, it's not— they're usually not asked that way. By the way, I noticed that it's 12:30 and I'll be done in a couple more minutes. Every board member joins with a job that they want to get done, and the way to get it done is to think and anticipate what that job is going to be done— that job to be done might be that already exists inside of them that you could tap into. Remember, we're talking about convincing the CEO, so you may not be able to convince the CEO directly.. But you may be able to get boards and board members moving as one with respect to what they want to see. Okay, so I'm going to skip over this question in the interest of time. There are the Kodaks, the BlackBerrys, there's the, the Blockbustles of the world which did not engage in strategic plan, long-term strategic planning. So we started off by saying that there are some things that are beyond the but, and we're out to in the next webinar, two webinars and conference, answer these questions around the but. And so with a few minutes that we have left, are you ready to hear the best way to learn some more, some details about learning opportunities we have coming up? Could you put a response in the chat if you're ready to hear that? There's a question, and I'll answer the question as well, but drop a yes in the chat while I deal with the question. How do you introduce risk assessment associated with a lack of long-term strategies, or is that fear-based? Not at all. So the way that we do that is in a retreat is by doing a premortem based on the ideas in the strategic plan. No, that's easier to do than do it in the abstract because everyone at that point sees the value of the strategy they put together, so the question is an easier one to answer. However, just talking about the risk of a long-term strategy, and I've talked with some risk assessment folks, is more difficult to do. I look to industry examples. I can get pretty creative if you have to do it. But it's easier said, easier done in a retreat than it is when you're actually doing the planning than it is outside when it's just a theory or something someone has never seen. Many folks have never ever even seen a strategic plan that goes for longer than the 5 years that they're used to. Okay, you're ready to hear some more. All right. So here's what we have. Following today's webinar, there'll be a webinar on May 16th which will address companies that don't have a long-term future. Now, they may have a paragraph or vision statement. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about something that has a year on it and has details about that destination. On June 6th, we'll talk about how about those companies that do have these BHAGs, this vision already set up, but they don't have any glue. They just build it and they will come. They don't have any strategy in between. There's nothing except you guys go work on this. And then finally, we'll be rounding it out with our conference coming up in June. And today I want to tell you some more about the conference. You know what it's going to be focusing on. It's going to have some of the best thinkers that we've found in the world on this topic, all in one place. I believe it's for the first time because I've not seen anything like this before or even heard of it. Could be wrong, but we come at this from a point of view that this is a strategic, game-changing focus. It's different from the focus that you might find in for example, um, forecasting or foresighting, or that futurists come from. We're really coming from a practical result and working our way back. So the first day we're going to have 24 hours of pre-recorded videos. We're in the middle of recording them right now as we speak, from experts around the world, as I said. Second day we're gonna have more on-demand videos available 24 hours. We're also going to have live events which are going to be based around our time zone, which is GMT -5, UCT -5. So I encourage you, if you're serious about making a difference in the way that I have described, that you get a full ticket. Now, among the things that you'll get with your full ticket is access to all the videos, all the replays, live and pre-recorded, for at least a year. And the cost of that is $179. We also have a visitor's pass available. It's not the same, you can imagine, as the full ticket. Once the conference is over, that's it, and you probably won't have access to all— you will not have access to all of the content that a full ticket gives you during the conference. As well, but it does give you a sense or a taste of what the conference is all about. And today, if you already register, you will get— use this code. Now, the, the, the discount, I went to look at it, and it's about, it's about half off, but it depends on where you are in the world. In here in Jamaica, we It's a little bit less because it's using what's called parity pricing. The price depends on where you are in the world. So it's about a 50% discount, thereabouts. Okay, so I invite you to, to put yourself in at this point and start accessing some of the, some of the content from the prior years because we'll give you access to the Sustainability Strategy Conference which we held in 2023. So Dale, could you drop the, drop the, the link with the call to action? And I mentioned before that there would be a giveaway. And let's put that, put your memory to the test. Let's see. Okay, there is a link that you could use to register in the conference right away. But there's a question in the chat, so let's find that question. Secret 3, Tammy, hold around, stay around for a few minutes afterwards, and I'll put Secret 3 back up on the screen. No problem, I'll reshare that. By the way, there will be a replay. The replays are available at this location on this URL after this webinar is over. Okay, so here's the question. First answer, correct answer in the chat, what are the names of two books I have mentioned today? First person to put two correct answers in the chat. Sharon Cutler-Hills asked, what is the early bird window? Sharon, we haven't completely decided yet, but Okay, Chris, Chris, no, there's not a book called Balanced Scorecard that I mentioned. But Tamara Miles says Return to Love and Awaken the Giant Within. So Tamara is the winner. Tamara, did you ask me the question as well? Yes, you did, about the, about the— great, so you've won, you've won. So congratulations, and thanks everyone. Um, let's see what else I have. So The next time that I'll see you will be at the May 16 webinar. Again, we were focusing on companies that don't have a long-term vision. Many of those are private sector, private companies, publicly shared companies, for-profit companies. Many of them fall into that bucket, if not most. So folks, I'd like for you to— I'd like to thank you for being here, and I'm going to put the recording on pause. And thank you for your engagement. You've been extremely engaged, which I enjoy and we love. And on behalf of my co-host and I, I wish you all the best until next time. Mark— put this date in your calendar and we'll see you on May 16th.