Power Changes the Order of “Strategic Planning”
Last week, I wrote that the biggest task of developing strategy is often not developing the best ideas. Rather, it’s proactively shaping the context such that a leader has the power to actually put forward—and then act upon—those ideas.
If you buy that, then the typical Develop → Communicate to convince → Implement sequence of most strategic planning processes is out the window.
Instead, the order might be: Weaken or eliminate potential dissenters → Launch an “open” strategy process → Communicate the “consensus” decision.
Or it could be: Implement an under-the-radar pilot of your preferred strategy → Launch a strategy process next year that emphasizes “things we know are possible” or risky things we’ve never tried → Scale the pilot.
Or maybe: Conduct a six-month campaign to scare everyone about all the issues the organization might face if it doesn’t change → Manufacture a “crisis” that requires urgent action → Announce action on a new strategy, while claiming there was little time for deliberation or wide input.
Those aren’t necessarily good approaches. But I’ve mentioned them here to point out that the most critical parts of “strategic planning” may need to occur before any formal process starts.
Leadership Wisdom
“The leader should of course be out ahead of the people. He should have a clearer perception than they of where the country should be going, and why, and of what it takes to get there. But he has to carry the people with him. It makes no sense to blow the trumpet for the charge, then look back and find no one following. He has to persuade. He has to win the people's consent to the vision he holds out. In the process—in the wooing that precedes the winning—he can learn a great deal about their concerns, their reservations, their hopes and fears, all of which are things that, as a leader, he must deal with. In that same process he can also get a better idea of the kinds of compromises he is going to have to make.”
— Richard Nixon, in Leaders: Profiles and Reminiscences of Men Who Have Shaped the Modern World