Strategic Planning

    Uncovery, prioritize, motivate.

    0

    Many consultative processes that involve business understanding and improvement follow a fairly obvious 3-step path.  It starts with discovery, moves to strategy then ends with programs.  I’d like to suggest an alterative to those fairly common steps: uncovery, prioritize and motivate.

    Uncovery is a little different from discovery in that it presumes much of what you need to know is known and obvious, it just needs to be seen anew and parsed. Discovery suggests you are looking for things for the first time.  

    Prioritization is about deciding what’s most important to the business, consumers and future value.  You can’t be all things to all people. Anyone can strategize, not everyone can decide which of the children to take in the lifeboat. Poorly run companies try to have it all and be everything to everyone —  and they fall into the fruit cocktail category.  Lots of different fruit, everything tastes like pear.

    Motivate replaces programs.  If your goal is to motivate behavior, preference or action (we love action), then motivation is how you should be thinking. Not activation. Or direct response. Or awareness. Motivation is your starting point. Programs are the language used to deliver the behavior.  If you start with the language you’ll often find yourself speaking in tongues.

    No go forth and plan. Peace.

     

    Strategy is not a curveball.

    0

    Strategy is not a curveball.  It’s not hard to hit. It’s a fastball.  Strategy should come in straight, have a predictable trajectory and as long as you can put the bat out there and swing level, you make contact.

    Here’s where things can go wrong.

    1. 1.    If the strategy, as an organizing principle, is not straight forward. If it’s malleable enough for the person who sets it to approve work product that isn’t over the plate. Strategy is not subjective.  Setting curveball strategy is mismanagement.  Strategy can change, mind you, but not on the fly.
    2. 2.    If the strategy is straight forward, well-explained and outlined, but not adhered to by team members, it’s a fail.  Strategy used as a guide, or directionally – open to personal interpretation — is useless. Carrying out the metaphor, the pitch is a fastball, but the hitter is just mad swinging all over the place.

    The “s” word (strategy) is as over-used and misused as the “b” word (brand). But it is the most fundamental word in business. Peace.