Rethinking strategic planning for our complex world: It’s more mudmap than roadmap.

“I’ve been to a few of these, this one is really different. It’s great”, I heard this as a participant sidled up to me over coffee. When the world is vastly different, how we go about strategic planning needs to be also vastly different.

A mudmap is an old Australian bush term that used by white explorers to navigate land that was (to them, at least) uncharted and unexplored. When meeting on the bush trails these explorers would literally map out the terrain in the mud, sharing their knowledge to help a fellow traveller.

Strategic planning in the post-Covid world is more like the emergent nature of a mudmap than the certainty of road map, when we are more likely to find ourselves in uncharted and unexplored terrain. As facilitator of the process, I have some knowledge and can serve as a guide, but it is essential that we draw on the local knowledge and context. Clarity of direction (vision), clear principles for framing progress (pillars) and ways to engage the wisdom in the room to mudmap our way ahead.

During a recent strategy workshop at The Lakes College in Brisbane, we had engaged in a day of deep thinking and rich conversations? with the board and executive. It's all very low-tech as we use tactile materials, rather than techie solutions. We have an actual map on the wall to shape the day. There are times when we deviate, follow a rabbit trail, and then we make our way back to the road.

In our complex and uncertain world, crafting strategy for the future can no longer rely on the application of a formulaic process, working through a linear means to an end. Instead, setting up the conditions for emergence, through an interplay of dialogue to surface the core principles that are embodied in the life of the school.?

It goes a little like this: I know some things about the big picture context and future-ready trends, the team from the school know things about their context, and together we seek to converge our collective knowledge through applying adductive reasoning - “the smartest person in the room IS the room itself”.