Too Much Strategic Planning…Not Enough Strategic Thinking

Helpful Note: Some receiving this on mobile device email shared you can’t open them by clicking on “…” The title is the link! Now, this week’s missive:

Over the last month two CEOs asked me for help developing strategic plans. After participating in long meetings with each of them during which we discussed their business, their organization, their vision for the future, and the outcome they expected for the help they were requesting, I was struck by the similarities in the discussions.

Both executives lead large, well-respected, industry-leading organizations, one a non-profit and one a corporation. And both shared the same story and reasons for needing a strategic plan: they were looking for better ways to improve operations, continue rapid growth organically and through acquisitions, improve profitability (yes, non-profits like to end the year ahead financially), fight off competitors, and remain thought and operational leaders in their fields.

What was most striking about the two discussions however, was the metamorphosis that occurred from conversations about strategic planning to engaging in strategic thinking.

Traditional strategic planning, as Julia Sloan explains in her exceptional book “Learning to Think Strategically”, is based on “linear and rational concepts on problem solving, decision making, and planning.” You wind up with “a master plan supported by incremental action plans.” Your bookshelves are likely filled with books touting a variety of strategic planning methods that follow this model.

Strategic thinking, in Sloan’s research, is a totally different animal. It’s based on “imagination, broad perspective, juggle, no control over, and desire to win.

Strategic thinking is all about breaking free from accepted wisdom and the constraints your organization places on you and coming up with a big idea. A big idea that’s a novel solution unique to your specific problems and company.

It’s a rare commodity in most organizations and one their leaders often lack.

It requires cutting through the resistance and inertia, the unwillingness to change, the comfort with what is, the fear of the unknown. Successful strategic thinking requires you to be brave enough to blow up accepted beliefs, overcome the naysayers, and devote all your resources to realizing your ideas.

Most importantly, you must own without reservation what you envision. You must believe in it with every fiber of your being.

Strategic thinking requires you to question the foundations of your business and your worldview. You need to ask questions like:

What business should we be in…and how can we add value to it? Who are our ideal customers…and what capabilities do we have or can we build that no one else can offer them? How will our unique ideas overpower the competition…and launch us past them on a trajectory they can’t match?

And then, in spite of all resistance, you must be willing to be strong, focused, and follow through to wherever the answers lead.