Through the swells, onward with conviction

With the acceptance that 2021 doesn’t magically spell an end to the turbulence and discombobulation of the year gone, leaders all around are confronting the prospect of strategically planning on sea legs, with a less steady sense of footing than they’re used to. 

It’s true there’s no necklace of garlic, no precious golden ring or Doctor Strange cape that will imbue you with unflappable confidence, ward off the frightening forces or help you see clearly beyond the immediate swirl to predict the absolute right play for tomorrow. The agitation will remain. You just have to plan from where you are, in the place you are, with what you have, dealing with the conditions set.  The levelling news? None have it different. So… how?

Maybe here’s a useful starting point. Butcher's paper or whiteboard, team around the table, 3 columns – “Big questions”, “Default” and “Flex”. First, the questions. Use them as discussion fodder, have the crew chew as few or many as you see fit.

1. What’s our core business? (What do we do here?)
2. Who are our customers? (Who pays for us to be here?)
3. What are we trying to achieve for others? (Our Mission or Purpose)
4. What are we trying to achieve for ourselves? (Our Vision or BHAG)
5. Regardless of conditions, what are the principles, values or standards we’ll hold ourselves to, that will embody our brand?
6. What do we possess in-house, in order of value, that can be purposed and deployed to help us?
7. What at the higher level do we truly know about our enterprise (good & bad) based on our history?
8. What do we know about the common patterns or nuances of our operating environment, our marketplace or customers based on the records of the past few years?
9. As it stands today, where, as it pertains to achieving our goals, are we strongest / where must we continue deploying and leveraging…
10. … and where do we clearly need to change gears, strap heels or bridge gaps internally to be better, stronger?
11. Today, how is our operating environment looking, feeling and behaving? (What bubbles right to the surface and pops in your eye?)
12. Where do we feel the most likely impactful market changes will occur in the year or three ahead?
13. With the information we have, what do we perceive as the greatest opportunities worthy of our focused pursuit and lesser opportunity cost payments?
14. What are the most likely challenges we’ll need to overcome or navigate to maintain progress towards our ambitions?
15. What don’t we know (but better get our skates on to try and figure out)?
16. What, in the context of that analysis, is the most important decision we need to make for the year ahead regarding…(insert the appropriate topic, such as…) … OUR PEOPLE?
17. … OUR CUSTOMERS?
18. … OUR OFFERINGS?
19. … OUR PARTNERSHIPS?
20. … OUR ORGANISATION?
21. … OUR BRAND?
22. … OUR RESULTS?
23. … OUR GOVERNANCE?
24. What’s the most important message we need to keep alive and communicate internally?
25. What’s the most important message we need to articulate and communicate externally?
26. In the context of this bigger picture, what’s the most important thing each person around this table needs to fully own and get moving on in some way today?

Not an exhaustive list by any stretch, and change the language to suit your culture, but a solid Cook's Tour around the discussion points most pertinent to most strategic planning processes. Here’s where the other two columns come into play.

“Default” are your agreed responses as they stand today. Maybe they’re what the Board signed off on a year back. Maybe they’re your best collective guesses sitting in the room together right now. Maybe it’s about keeping in train that which you’ve already sunk any category of cost into (and there’s not yet a sufficient realised reason to shift the thinking). Start there. The default 2021 planning foundation.

“Flex” is a mobile category. A rolling discussion you can come back and back and back to as part of your calibration and governance process, but also one that you might even be able to populate right here in your first conversation with the team, where an alternative set of thoughts, insights or ideas can be teased out, as a healthy, diligent contrast to the default line.

• What’s a potentially different way or vantage point? Something that might, just might be a better fit in light of changing or prevailing moods, evolving circumstances or ossifying realities?
• What deviations to or other-shaped iterations of our current approach could we perhaps consider, that might have merit, that might even be more loved or workable tomorrow?
• What can we throw up as a “what about...?” concept, to provoke, to challenge, to polarise or test our convictions to the default?

In sizing up the “default” and “flex” responses, one thing is key (and you can make this a fourth column if you like) – land on a firm, agreed (albeit temporary) position at conversation end. Sliding door option analysis is intensely valuable, but futile if you don’t pick one and step into it. The carriage you choose won’t likely be forever (except for maybe questions 2 and 3, maybe). But for now, for progress, you must choose. To move.

The value of these questions and answer categories is undoubtedly more in the thinking, conversation and contribution collisions than in the documented words. But what can and probably should stem from this is the foundation of a more flexible, current and workable strategy and the plans that will ultimately serve it. 

Diarise the time, book the room, go to Officeworks for new textas, gather the gang and begin again like Michael Finnegan. And keep doing it, regularly. Place emphasis in different sections of this list each time, for sure, but if there’s a hot tip for making strategy work in this moment of sweeping sandstorms and sloshing seas?  It’s GOVERNANCE. Reviewing, reassessing, readdressing, rethinking, reconsidering, redeciding, replanning and then resuming. Regularly. Re. It means “again”. Dynamic days demand it.

Hope this helps you. And if you want help herding the cats, working through the options and landing on big decisions that best fit you and subsequently drive your aligned plans and actions? It’s how I help clients. Please get in touch ASAP, and we’ll get you moving through the sea mist with a little more conviction.

(To play you out, a sea shanty trending on TikTok, sparked by a young Scot, great at the core, made better by the proactive contributions of a diverse collective of others. May you be the catalyst for something amazing for others, and may you allow your crew make it better.)

Troy Forrest is the Managing Director of Strategy Road Pty Ltd, Forrest Workshops and The Road Travelled. He coordinates The Swarm, a collective of 28 independent professional service providers, consultants and advisors, and he has been facilitating strategic, business and sales planning processes for more than 150 organisations large and small over the past 15 years. Perhaps yours is next. Contact Troy on +61 4 430 308963 or [email protected] to discuss your strategic planning needs, and view a sample of Troy's style, substance and approach in the free weekly YouTube series "The Advisory Deck" .