From Static to Supersonic: Revving Up Your Strategic Planning

Upon observing the labor-intensive and sluggish nature of our strategic planning process, I realized it severely hindered our organization's ability to adapt. The traditional annual process, supplemented by quarterly adjustments, involved numerous meetings and extensive reports but failed to keep pace with the dynamic need for change and reprioritization. This inefficiency resulted in missed opportunities, decreased productivity, and employee demotivation.

The strategic planning process fundamentally influences the organization's adaptability by dictating budgeting, resource allocation, and performance targets. Efforts to address these issues through localized improvements, such as agile projects or more frequent committees, are constrained by the slow strategic planning process and yield limited results. Additionally, increasing the frequency of strategic planning activities, such as conducting them monthly instead of quarterly, produces mixed outcomes due to the inherent work-intensive nature of traditional planning methods.

To enhance the organization's agility, we must accelerate the strategic planning process by fundamentally challenging its underlying paradigms. We explore four shifts to accelerate and streamline strategic planning:

⦁    From stability-oriented to future-oriented
⦁    From predictive to adaptative
⦁    From directive (top-down) to collaborative
⦁    From centralized to decentralized
 

By Bruno Collet | Chartered Managers Canada

From Stability-Oriented to Future-Oriented

We’ve all been there: juggling the massive ongoing IT program, the seemingly endless list of “important” product improvements, and the obligatory “keep-the-lights-on” projects. It leaves little room for true innovation. Instinctively, we prioritize unfinished initiatives, reluctant to pause or cancel anything—even when it no longer makes sense. How to break free from a strategic planning process that mostly perpetuates last year's initiatives?

One successful approach is creating an innovation basket. We allocate a guaranteed 10% of the total budget to this separate portfolio of experiments. The selection criteria? High opportunity and high uncertainty. And our success metrics focus on knowledge generation rather than just delivering a solution.

To safeguard this innovation budget, strong leadership is essential. Crises may arise, tempting us to redirect resources elsewhere. But with the innovation basket in place, we stay committed to transformational and high-adjacent initiatives (see HBR’s innovation ambition matrix below).

Some organizations distribute their total budget between the three categories, for example 60% for core initiatives, 30% for adjacent (growth) initiatives, and 10% for transformational to explore entirely new markets and innovate.

From Stability-Oriented to Adaptative

When our director of strategic planning unveiled the division’s roadmap to the management committee, the room buzzed with agreement. The roadmap was hailed as both ambitious and realistic, meticulously outlining milestones and objectives. Each manager could envision their role in bringing it to life. However, I could see something was amiss. Indeed, the roadmap presented only one route. If you embarked on an uncertain journey, would you be comfortable with only one route to your destination? I don’t think so.

A robust roadmap anticipates alternatives and incorporates options. In the short term, tactical choices abound, but over the long term, we must challenge fundamental assumptions about our strategies’ desirability, feasibility, and viability. Changes to strategic plan go beyond regular change management. To be proactive, we need strategic anticipation.

The time cone perfectly illustrates that a sound strategic roadmap must address multiple horizons, each with its options.

From Directive to Collaborative

Most organizations rely on a directive top-down strategic planning approach. In a top-down approach, executives set broad goals. These goals then cascade down, shaping objectives and KPIs for various products and functions. It’s a method that keeps pace with market shifts, but it often misses the mark on the practical side of our operations. Similarly, it can leave our teams feeling out of the loop since they’re not really involved in the decision-making process.

True strategic planning is a co-creative joint effort that seamlessly blends strategy and execution. The W framework* exemplifies this, fostering a two-way connection between high-level strategy and on-the-ground action. Despite its apparent benefits, it’s not widely adopted. Leaders may claim they practice this integrated approach, but often they’ll focus too heavily on one aspect, neglecting the balance needed for success.

Here’s how the W framework operates:

• Context: Executives provide a strategic overview, empowering teams to craft initiatives that leverage opportunities and mitigate threats. This is more than just dictating actions; it’s about setting the stage for innovation.
• Plans: Teams propose detailed plans in response to the provided context.
• Integration: Executives synthesize these plans into a cohesive strategy, ensuring alignment across the board.
• Buy-In: Teams review the integrated plan, make necessary adjustments, and commit to the direction before moving forward.

Companies like Airbnb and Eventbrite have successfully implemented the W framework, demonstrating its effectiveness in connecting strategic vision with tangible results.

* Clivati, P. (2022, November 1). Using the W Framework to build your growth strategy. Medium.

From Centralized to Decentralized

Even when abiding to the three good practices above, it’s still possible to hobble strategic planning by centralizing everyday decisions regarding changes in budget and resources, among others.

Decentralizing decision-making enhances responsiveness to changes by empowering local managers and teams to act swiftly based on immediate circumstances.

Autonomy allows for quicker adaptation to market dynamics, customer feedback, and internal challenges, as decisions are made closer to the operational level where real-time information is most available. Decentralization enables quicker execution of strategic initiatives as local units can adapt and align their actions with the strategic plan without waiting for prolonged approvals from the central authority. This agility ensures that strategic shifts can be implemented promptly in response to external changes.

Moreover, when operational decisions are decentralized, top management can dedicate more time and resources to strategic planning. They are not overwhelmed with day-to-day operational issues and can concentrate on long-term goals and the overall direction of the company.

Additionally, in a decentralized structure, employees are often more motivated, as they have greater control over their work and can see the direct impact of their decisions. This empowerment fosters innovation and creativity, encouraging the exploration of new opportunities.

However, succeeding in decentralizing decision-making to accelerate strategic execution necessitates a clear vision and goals, comprehensive alignment mechanisms, performance metrics, and incentives aligned with strategic objectives.

Conclusion

In conclusion, transforming strategic planning from past-based to future-oriented, stability-oriented to adaptive, directive to collaborative, and centralized to decentralized is essential to accelerate strategic planning for fostering organizational agility and innovation. By allocating a dedicated portion of the budget to high-opportunity, high-uncertainty initiatives, organizations can break free from outdated cycles and drive true innovation. Adopting adaptive roadmaps that anticipate alternatives makes the strategic plan more resilient to unforeseeable changes, and incorporating collaborative strategic planning through approaches like the W framework enhances engagement and alignment. Decentralizing decision-making empowers local teams to respond swiftly to market dynamics, ensuring that strategic shifts are implemented promptly and effectively. This holistic approach not only accelerates change but also aligns strategic execution with long-term goals and vision.
 

About the Author:

Bruno Collet is recognized for his expertise in improving organizational adaptability and accelerating decision-making and value creation, epitomizing the essence of business agility. With a professional tenure spanning nearly two decades, he has provided invaluable guidance to executive leaders, facilitating organizational transformation through the clarification of priorities, strategic alignment, governance optimization, and the building of cross-functional agile teams, among others.

His engagements across various domains, including information technology, human resources, marketing, and finance, afford him a comprehensive perspective of the complexity of contemporary organizations. Bruno Collet’s methodology advocates for an iterative implementation approach, underpinned by robust change management and evidence-based practices.

Possessing an MBA alongside a Master’s degree in Computer Science, Bruno Collet holds the PMP certification and is an Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP). He teaches organizational design at UQAM ESG+, agile leadership at HEC Montreal, and instructs for the Order of HR Professionals of Quebec and the Project Management Institute (PMI Montreal).