A CEO could see the business as entrepreneurial and agile, while a middle manager could see the same business as bureaucratic and slow. An HR person could pride himself on great internal communication, while a salesman on the road might wonder what is going on back in the office.

All these perceptions are real to the holder, and to understand the differences is the first step to beginning to actually getting everyone on the same page, rather than just imagining they are.

Don’t you owe it to yourself to find out?

More sober reflection leads me to think about the question in a more considered way.

Let me first consider what happens if you do not have a strategic plan. There’s a proverb which is supposed to be Japanese (which probably means the provenance is unknown) that says:

“Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare”

So you need a vision to know what you are aiming at, together with a plan of action or a strategy to know how you are going to achieve your vision.

So the risks of not having a strategic plan include:

• Not being prepared for changes in the environment that your organization is facing
• functions or individuals in the organization following their own agendas
• inconsistent communication to customers, staff and stakeholders
• inefficiencies and ineffectiveness throughout the operation.

So back to the main question: What do you need to have a successful (or potentially successful) Strategic Planning Process?

The first clue is in the question. To be successful there has to be an ongoing PROCESS. Strategic Planning should not be relegated to an annual “event”; it should be part of the fabric of an organisation, a living document, and very definitely not the contents of one of many dusty ring-binders on a CEO’s top shelf.

The second aspect that is crucial is to understand that while a Strategic Plan must have a long term perspective; it can only be achieved through short term activities. This thought has the added implication of reminding corporate leaders that their lofty objectives need to be broken down into chunks that can be digested and implemented by lesser mortals.

My third area is the Environment.  When creating a strategic plan you need to examine the external environment and try to foresee the impact that this environment could have on your company over the next few years. Different aspects of the environment will have more or less impact depending on your business arena. The areas that are commonly considered include, political, regulatory, economic, social, green environment and technological.

As important as these macro issues are, you probably need to give even more attention to your competitors, customers, consumers, suppliers and vendors. You should know as much about all of these participants in your market place (or components on your value chain) as you do about your own organisation.

My fourth area would focus on your own company capabilities and operating culture. If your strategic planning process is going to result in an effective strategy, you must understand and acknowledge your company’s capabilities in all areas.

This is a tricky area because many of us wear the so-called rose coloured glasses where everything looks slightly better than it is. Let me digress for a minute to tell you a real story. I met with a CEO of a packaged goods business and asked him what the three key capabilities his business had, which positively differentiated them from their competition. Among the areas he mentioned was their speed of decision making, their nimbleness in taking advantage of a fast evolving market, their entrepreneurialism. All good stuff and really all linked. I subsequently talked about these areas to a range of middle managers in the organisation. They were surprised to say the least. Their view was that the decision making process was laboured and bureaucratic resulting in bottlenecks and delays in effecting key decisions.

Different descriptions of the same business. Surely one must be wrong?

Further investigation demonstrated that each party was right from their own perspective. Once decisions reached the CEO and his senior management team, they were incisive and quick. What was not fully appreciated was that department heads were sitting on decisions, tweaking areas, demanding more information, before the proposals even reached the CEO.

Anyway enough said….. You must understand your real capabilities not the ones you would like to have!

The fifth aspect you need to embark on a sound Strategic Planning Process is a sense of direction coming from the top. A common focus provides direction. A short, simple, inspiring vision created by the leader establishes the stretch for the organization in the direction of where it wants to go.

The last area takes me back to that Japanese proverb. Remember the bit that said “Vision without action is a daydream”? You need to bear that in mind when you sort out the participants for your Strategic Planning Process.

Participation in strategic planning is key to the plan being successfully translated into action. Everyone in the organization should, at some point, be involved in the strategic plan. People tend to own what they help create. It also works to create a common culture throughout the organization and reinforces the need to get behind the organization’s future direction.

So that’s my six core components for a strategic planning process. There are others to be sure, but start with these and you will have a great process that will result in a clear single-minded direction for your business, a business that understands itself and its environment and a business which has the internal commitment to turn great words into successful actions.

In the words of another Japanese proverb,  ”Nito wo ou mono wa itto wo mo ezu”

And if your Japanese is a little shaky “One who chases after two hares won’t catch even one.”

If you’re interested I can talk more about strategy itself, rather than the prerequisites for a strategic planning process….let me know.

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Harold Geneen, late of ITT said it well:

“You read a book from beginning to end. You run a business the opposite way. You start with the end, and then you do everything you must to reach it.”

So what do you do when your carefully thought out strategy, or your elegant operational plan are just not delivering the results you expected (or worse the results that you promised your bank, board or stakeholders!)

Certainly one place to start is with your assumptions behind the plan, but another start point and one that is far too often ignored is to determine how far your employees or functional managers share your perception of the company and its objectives.

We all know the quotation that “Perception is Reality” (though I had to remind myself that it was Lee Atwater who said it first).

Anyway I digress, if an employee or a function or a level of management perceive that your company is, for example, risk averse; then that is their reality it doesn’t matter whether it’s objectively true, it remains a perceived “fact”. To follow that example through, it might then very well be that your staff are spending far too much time preparing reports to justify future actions or defend past ones. That’s time they’re spending NOT driving your business results.

So when results don’t meet your expectations, certainly look at the assumptions behind your original plan, but also look at the perceptions within your business of your business. In the best of businesses, these perceptions can pretty much match an objective reality. When there is dissonance in the perceptions of field staff or office based staff; or between junior management and senior management, then you have the beginnings of a muddle, which might turn into an issue that detracts from achieving your objectives.

So my advice is to look at the perceptions within your company, recognize that not everyone shares the same perspective. When there are major perceptual differences, face up to them and get everyone pointing in the same direction, even if they are still not quite marching in step.

“For every action there is an equal and opposite re-action”.

As it is with celestial spheres, so it is with business; while in the short term the action may not be equal or exactly opposite, things do have a way to even out over time. But this is not a rant about action and reaction or proactivity or any of those aspects; this is about the dangers of inaction – the dangers of a lack of action per se.

Think about it, your actions lead to a ripple effect of other actions and reactions, a ripple effect of change or progress going through your business; your inaction leads to nothing, zilch, nada!

Now I hear some of you say, that you need to prepare, or need extra information or just one further piece of analysis, and maybe that’s true to a degree, but you need to be careful not to use the need for preparation as an excuse for inaction.

You will never know everything there is to know before making a decision; you will never have perfect knowledge before you act. You will need to make a judgement call, and some risk is implicit within that – but that’s what leaders do – they make a judgement call, they act.

Even if the results of action are not always clear; the results of inaction are: nothing happens!

The much quoted Winston Churchill said it well.

“I never worry about action, but only inaction.”

And he helped win a war, not just improve a business!

End of rant

Anyway that’s my interest fully declared. Now Rogers have an interesting system of recording discounts. They can only last for 12 months and then it is entirely the responsibility of the customer to renew or renegotiate. A month or two ago I did just that. I kept my requirements identical and simply roled over the 20% discount for another 12 months.

And this is where I made my first mistake, I assumed that as everything was the same as before my invoice would be the same too. Silly assumption, entirely my fault. (In case you miss the tone there is a hint of sarcasm here!)

So when my invoice arrived and I queried the increase, I was told it was because some of the costs had been prorated over the month end and everything would be back to “normal” the following month. Now I’m quite good with numbers, and I didn’t really follow their proration argument.

I was then given a definition of proration by the customer service agent (which I helpfully corrected because she was a little fuzzy on the detail). I then explained that I understood what proration was, but did not understand how Rogers were applying it in these particular circumstances.

So always the helpful customer I asked the customer services representative to caculate my projected invoice going forward (taking any nasty proration out of the equation) and was told it was increasing by around 9%

Now I was confused so I asked three or four questions more:

1. Was my invoice of thee months prior correct? (Yes)
2. Had there been any price increases since that time? (No)
3. Were my discount levels and package the same as before? (Yes)
4. Why then had my cable bill increased?

I was told by the customer service representative that my bill was correct, notwithstanding the logic of the previous questions.

I gave up with this particular person, and asked to speak to someone else. In the end I got through to someone in the (so-called) Office of the President, who agreed with my logic, and promised to sort out the issue.

Three months later the issue is unresolved. Every month my bill is increased and subsequently rebated after a call from me. I have suggested that Rogers put me on the pay roll as I seem to be the only one checking billing, but so far they have demurred!

Now in many ways Rogers is a great company, but their customer service and billing systems have long been woeful. They desperately need to look at things from their customers’ perspective rather than from their own internal view. Otherwise they will lose customers to an increasingly large number of competitors.

I wonder whether they have ever mapped out the actual customer experience and compared it with the ideal. That would be a good place to start.

I saw this quote a few days ago. Now I’m known (by some) for my diplomacy but really this is nonsense!

What is this fixation that Social Media Marketing is the be-all and end-all of marketing? Its this sort of sloppy thinking that has led to the the denigration of marketing from a core strategic function to merely a peripheral communications role.

Sure Social Media is an important communication medium (one of many), but Marketing should be about so much more than communication!.

Unilever has a nice visual which demonstrates a little what Marketing really entails. So much more than Social Media!

Unilever Marketing

I have always favoured a methodology that is unstructured in terms of input, but which has an organizing architecture built around it either before during or after the session by a third party moderator. Using this framework, participants are then encouraged to use this framework so they can group and rank their raw input and generate potential projects.

Ideas need to be grouped and organized; otherwise, you are just left with a long list of ideas on a flip chart that you will probably never look at again.

Here are a few other techniques that suit different personalities and different situations. Just to get you thinking:

Top That

Nothing drives innovative thinking faster than a little competition. In Top That, a highly interactive problem solving technique, groups compete against one another to develop THE single most innovative idea to solve the challenge. After developing concepts, groups exchange their best ideas and are challenged to improve one another’s top ideas. This is a very effective method for cross-building ideas and evoking a higher level of creative thinking from your group.

Deep Thought

This is a silent problem solving technique that begins with individual idea generation and then grows exponentially involving every member of the group. Participants write down an idea for the group to consider, ideas are passed around, and continually build upon by colleagues until the collective genius of the group has been written down. This non-verbal technique is a safe, effective way to engage the shy, self-conscious, or “silent thinkers” in your group to contribute his or her ideas.

Investigative

This investigative problem solving technique utilizes a similar method used by top news reporters to uncover the “a-ha!” facts of a story and solve mysteries. By examining a challenging problem or issue from the five perspectives (viewpoints) of  “Who,” “When,” “Where,” “Why,” and “How”, a group can quickly uncover important new insights into the motivation(s) of human behavior, the causes and effects influencing a situation, and opportunities surrounding the timing or location of a situation.

SCAMPER

SCAMPER  is another well known problem solving technique based on the theory that every new innovation is in some way, shape or form, really an adaptation of something that already exists. Each letter of the SCAMPER acronym points to a different way groups can play with the characteristics of the challenge to stimulate new ideas, or explore new possibilities:

• S = Substitute
• C = Combine
• A = Adapt
• M = Magnify
• P = Put to Other Uses
• E = Eliminate (or simplify)
• R = Rearrange (or Reverse)

Mind Mapping

A popular problem solving technique that closely mimics the brain’s natural process of making spontaneous associations. The process begins with a key idea word or concept that serves as a focal point for the challenge; next, related ideas triggered by the key word radiate outwardly in all directions. This technique is a powerful way to visually explore, conceive, connect, combine and organize information about an issue or challenge.

Monstering

This is the process of making novel new combinations. This engaging problem solving technique is about combining, linking and merging two or more different ideas, images, parts, functions, notions, flavors or concepts together with a mad scientist’s gleeful sense of combinatory play. Apple’s blockbuster iPhone product is an ingeniously designed combination of a cell phone, iPod music player, web browser, calendar, calculator, clock, GPS, camera, photo album, note pad, voice recorder.

Channeling

In this unique problem solving technique, the group is divided into small groups. Each one is provided a well-known archetypal personality (i.e., a groundbreaking innovator, inventor, or performer (e.g. Steve Jobs, James Watt, Lady Gaga) who serves as the symbolic leader. The groups compete with one another to generate the most innovative ideas possible by channeling their ideation process through the distinctive personality traits of their renowned leaders.

Idea Reversal

Also known as counter-intuitive, or 180-degree thinking, this provocative problem solving technique is based on the premise that often the worst sounding ideas imaginable can contain the seeds of great ideas if effectively “turned around”. This highly enjoyable, reverse-logic technique helps liberates participants from seriousness and frees the imagination from the limiting confines of conventional thinking.

While the example is consumer related (Starbucks) the same techniques can be used on a B2B basis too.

At the introduction of high-end smart phone by Xiaomi , Lei Jun, CEO of Xiaomi, dressed and used gestures identical to Apple’s leader.

I got these pictures from a Vietnamese website, which sourced the pictures from MIC Gadget show.

Lei Jun dresses like Steve Jobs (jeans, black shirt and sneakers).

He looks a little shorter and forgot the glasses!

During his introduction, the CEO of Xiaomi also used the same “body language” to emphasize the product features.

Although flattery must be nice (not much experience myself!!), let us not forget the Steve Jobs was named  the second worst-dressed man in technology by GQ magazine, beaten only by Mark Zuckerberg  and proving that astronomical sums of money can’t buy style. (Again little personal experience of either!!)

It all made me laugh anyway.

Anyway the salient point is that I was listening to the radio and I half heard a commercial for fresh corn; now don’t ask me about the detail, I was trying to dodge pedestrians, but I do recall that the ad was about freshness, it was all emotional, there was a price that I can’t remember….. and it was a Wal Mart ad.

Now it is not news to say that Wal Mart have moved into fresh produce, but I got to thinking…..will Wal Mart ever stop increasing the range of categories that they offer? And rather than Roll Back or Everyday Low Pricing perhaps Wal Mart will adopt Harrods former motto and became “Omnia Omnibus Ubique.”

As Latin is not as popular as it was, I suspect Wal Mart would have to translate the slogan into something like “Everything for Everybody Everywhere”.  Let me remind you where this policy took Harrods; they sold an airplane in 1917; they also sold an alligator, as a gift to Noel Coward; and in the 1980s, the store sold a baby elephant as a gift for then U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

Maybe Wal Mart will not go that far, but there are many more areas where their strategy (low prices plus acceptable quality equals real value) might take them. They could certainly provide more services than they currently do, and who knows where digital initiatives like Vudu will take them.

It will be interesting to watch Wal Mart’s continued evolution into a 21st century Harrods, an evolution which really has only just begun; and it will be even more interesting to help others redefine their value propositions so that they can compete with Wal Mart’s “Omnia Omnibus Ubique”