With supply chain disruptions, chip shortages, another Covid wave, and stock market volatility, talk of any sort of “planning” may feel like a bad joke. In fact, you may have already resigned yourself to a fire-fighting strategy, committed to doing whatever it takes to stay in business another day, the future be damned!
I understand and think that developing a single, rigid PLAN is a fool’s errand. Time spent strategic PLANNING, however, is key to being resilient in the face of change.
“Plans are of little importance, but planning is essential.” – Winston Churchill
Planning gives you a chance to pause and
- take stock of your current situation
- inventory your resources
- evaluate previous goals and your progress toward them
- update your competitive analysis and
- re-assess the environmental factors likely to impact your progress.
With this knowledge, even if you never use the resulting plan, you’ll be better prepared to respond faster and more effectively to changing conditions.
Key to planning in a volatile environment is starting from an assumption that any plan will change and building opportunities to change into the plan.
Say what? Isn’t the whole point of creating a strategy to have a map (or compass) to provide an unswerving path forward that keeps the company from getting distracted and sidetracked?
Yes – and no. Remember that a strategy is created under certain conditions and with assumptions based on those conditions. If the conditions change, your strategy will also need to change. At a minimum, you will need to evaluate periodically whether the conditions (resources, threats, opportunities, and constraints) are such that the original strategy still makes sense or is no longer viable.
Changing your strategy does not mean the time and energy spent developing the first strategy were wasted or that the original strategy was *wrong.* Each time you develop a strategy, you and your team deepen your knowledge of your market, your offerings, your collective capabilities, and your limitations that will serve you well in untold ways going forward.
Bottom line: DO develop a strategy. And DO evaluate the strategy (a) periodically (appr every 90 days) when things are going well and (b) anytime you’re not seeing the expected results.
More on Emergent Strategy and Scenario Planning – an approach to strategy development when conditions are too unstable to agree on a single strategy – in future posts.
These are uncertain times. As always, a no-pressure Discovery Call to explore new options for your company is always free. Click or call (+1 512-497-9097) to schedule.
