I (on the right in the photo) spent Tuesday working with about thirty-five folks in a day-long strategic planning session. Painful as a seven hour meeting can be (this one wasn't), I have always found sessions like this to be, if done right, a really beneficial use of organizational leaders' time once or twice a year. I am always struck (regardless of which organization I am working with) by how many truly smart and knowledgeable people are out there working hard to make the team successful every day.Of course the fact that an organization would hold such a session is no business secret, and moving from group to group I have found the format to be mostly the same: wild brainstorming in the morning is gradually narrowed down to group consensus on a few of the "best" ideas. Provided that too much group think hasn't set in by the afternoon, everyone walks away feeling like their team has a renewed sense of purpose and direction. Wonderful.
...But what happens after the day's work is done?
It is on this point that I am truly curious to know how you or your organization moves forward with its great ideas, so please give me a shout via email or comments below.
You see, it's somewhat easy to come up with grand visions of where we want to go. Think about this, we do it all the time in our personal lives. "I'm going to lose weight!" "I'm going to better communicate with friends, family, and colleagues!" "I'm going to really impress the boss with the great work I'll do this year!"
Well, OK!
"How you gonna' do that, sport?"
In answering this question for myself and for the businesses, organizations, and units I have worked with, I've learned that that if we've gotten this far, we've already screwed up. Consider an organizational tagline that I wrestled with a while back: "Organization Alpha will leverage its market leading capabilities and become a leading provider of blah blah blah, returning value to its employees, customers, and other stakeholders." Ring a bell?
Now, look at those personal aspirations I mentioned earlier. What if we changed them to, "I am physically fit," or "I am a great communicator," or "My work is top-notch." See how we completely changed the mood and meaning of the statement by moving from an aspiration that focuses on the plan to one that focus on the results? Try it again with the organizational vision above; what about:
"Organization Alpha is a well-known and sought-after leader in blah blah blah." Substitute your product or mission for blah blah blah and you've got something that might work. Cut out the organizational gibberish about "leveraging" your "capabilities" and "providing" miscellaneous "things" to your "stakeholders." Tell the world (and your own people) what you are, what you stand for, and why your great at it. If you're not great at it, figure out how to be, or find something else to do with your time and resources -- that's why you gathered all those brilliant people into a room for an all-day session to begin with, isn't it?
The bottom line is this, if you focus more on the road than the destination, if you don't know what you or your organization want to be, then you'll spend more time "planning to plan" and less time serving the people -- customers, tax payers, investors, students -- who keep you in business.
Luckily, most of the folks that I spent Tuesday with get this. That's why I love working with them.
