Video Link: Watch John Austin, Ph.D. talk about how to deal with the current economic downturn and still make sure your company can “see around the corner”.
Anyone who has ever launched a business, managed a product, run a company, or even tried to set a budget has felt the pressure to predict the future. This pressure is reinforced by our ingrained human desire for predictability. Yet, we live in an uncertain world. The only certainty about the future is there will be disruptive change…changes that cannot not be easily predicted.
Effective strategic planning prepares a business for disruptive changes in its environment.
Strategic planning premised on identifying the one most likely future is time consuming and, in the end, highly dangerous. It can lead to tunnel vision. Managers start looking for evidence supporting their prediction and ignore the subtle cues suggesting their future vision is innaccurate.
Once executives accept their limitations as seers of the one true future, they can focus their attention on the real target: Developing a strategy to profit no matter what the future brings. Rather than developing a strategy for one possible (and often preferred) future, effective strategic planning results in portfolios of robust actions that can be matched to fit a range of possible futures.
Our adaptive strategic planning process is designed to deal with disruptive change and help exectutive teams remain ahead of their competition in uncertain times.
The adaptive strategic planning process accomplishes this by developing an organization’s capabilities to continually respond to new environmental changes. It is about anticipating and adapting rather than predicting and controlling.
1. We work to help a strategic planning team identify where their perspectives are constrained and better anticipate disruptive changes in their environment.
2. We offer a structure for understanding trends and uncertainties in the business environment without locking into the mentality of one true future.
3. We identify gaps in organizational capabilities that need to be filled regardless of the future.
4. We enable strategic planning teams to link their strategy with a guiding vision so their company can continue to control its direction even in the midst of disruptive change.
5. We help strategic planning teams generate portfolios of strategic options. Strategic options give a business flexibility to enact and react in a changing enviroment while pursuing their guiding vision.
6. Finally, we enable strategy implementation so a strategy is more than just a document on a shelf and actually drives action.
