Month: November 2023

Ensuring your plan possesses a genuine strategy is crucial, yet sometimes, strategic plans lack strategic essence. Here’s why this happens and how to prevent it.

Imagine joining a new management team and attempting to grasp the existing strategic plan. You ask for documentation due to the confusing explanations from your new colleagues. However, reviewing the outputs from the last planning project doesn’t provide the clarity you seek. Instead, it overwhelms with numerous words and diagrams, leaving you feeling lost. The strategy fails to emerge from the pages.

But don’t worry—it’s not you. The issue lies in the strategy’s formulation. Often, strategic planning results in nothing more than a wish-list or a laundry-list.

The wish-list resembles a child’s letter to Santa—dreams of a pony, a helicopter, and a 65-inch television. Similarly, the strategic plan includes all good things imaginable without any hard choices being made.

Conversely, the laundry-list mirrors disorganized ad-hoc tasks lacking clear reasoning. Even when categorized for readability, their origin and purpose remain obscure. They reveal a lack of real thought.

But let’s not be too critical. While every strategic plan includes goals and action items, these lists miss conveying the essence of the chosen strategy. Consequently, they fail to distinguish it from plans in similar organizations.

At the core of a poor strategic plan a crucial element is missing—the strategic hypothesis. It might not be officially named as such, but its essence is critical.

To craft this essential hypothetical element, understand that strategic hypotheses, though sounding abstract, are simple in concept. Recognize that testing a strategy’s validity only happens through implementation—until then, it’s an educated guess, a hypothesis.

Why this approach? Because true strategic planning begins with incomplete information, lacking valuable historical data to predict success. Additionally, the human element and flawed communication within leadership contribute to unpredictability. Moreover, the ever-changing external environment adds another layer of variability.

This unpredictability poses challenges, making long-term strategic planning daunting for some executives. They find leaving things to chance easier than forging a hypothesis that demands multiple steps, significant investments, and years of effort.

However, positive examples exist of companies incorporating game-changing strategic hypotheses. Take Steve Jobs and Apple in 2000, during the Dot-Com Bust. Despite adversity, they formulated a 10-year strategic hypothesis—shifting from selling high-end desktops to interconnected devices like the iPod, iPhone, and iPad. This innovation led Apple from near-bankruptcy to become the world’s most valued company.

Jamaica’s GraceKennedy, in the 1990s, facing currency challenges, devised a 25-year vision (GK2020) to enter financial services and overseas markets. This move saved it from disaster and yielded monumental results.

In all strategic hypotheses, intricate links exist between proposed actions and desired outcomes. Apple and GK couldn’t guarantee success with limited information, yet their bold moves changed their trajectories.

So, can your executive team craft a game-changing strategic hypothesis? Though not easy, doing so could make all the difference.

In every organisation, there are employees whose primary motivation is simply trading their time for a paycheck. Unfortunately, these individuals contribute to creating a negative and toxic work environment that is detrimental to the leadership team. Negativity takes over the corporate culture.

Is there a way to tap into greater motivation among your staff? As a C-Suite executive or board member, can you do more to provide your employees with a chance to discover meaning in their work?

One surprising revelation for many first-time managers is the prevalence of cynicism among their former, non-supervisory colleagues. In some cases, the majority of the workforce can be deeply cynical, and their negative outlook can be contagious.

Over time, this pervasive cynicism erodes a sense of purpose in the workplace, leaving only the newly hired employees with a glimmer of enthusiasm. Unfortunately, even these newcomers often lose their initial spark after a few months.

In response to this lack of meaning at work, employees may seek fulfilment in other areas of their lives, such as social media, gaming, religion, family, hobbies, vacations, side-hustles, or even consider resignation or migration. A handful may even end up feeling depressed.

However, it’s essential to view these responses as a positive sign. They reflect a fundamental human desire for a purposeful life, a concept echoed in Viktor Frankl’s book “Man’s Search for Meaning” and the movie “Life is Beautiful.”

Regrettably, many CEOs fail to acknowledge this deep-seated need and struggle to connect with their staff’s deeper aspirations. Here are some critical steps to address this challenge effectively.

1. Lead with Bold, Inspiring Goals

CEOs are often successful in inspiring their close C-Suite colleagues who naturally exhibit high self-motivation. However, there’s a tendency for a disconnect to occur with employees at lower levels, which can lead to a perception of a gap.

However, some CEOs have realised that they share the same desire for making a difference as their employees. When people at all levels feel frustrated due to thwarted aspirations, it leads to inaction. By contrast, rallying the organisation around Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAGs) is a powerful way to ignite engagement at every level. Without such ambitious goals, you risk settling for a business-as-usual approach.

However, not just any BHAG will do. Goals like “double profits at all costs” may meet the criteria but lack deep meaning to most. In fact, the world now demands holistic collections of BHAGs.

Case in point: the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These multi-pronged commitments address the interests of multiple stakeholders simultaneously.

This approach works even when individual goals are average. They only achieve BHAG status in unison, making them more attractive, but also more difficult.

2. Embrace Credible BHAGs

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Thankfully, these goal collections tend to be more sustainable as they take into account multiple perspectives. This boosts their credibility a little.

But, this is only the beginning. The SDGs are currently facing the type of problem that arises when goals are combined. They consist of 17 goals and 169 targets and were established in 2015. People doubt the feasibility of their overly ambitious vision for 2030.

It’s unsurprising that they are completely off-course. They resemble more of a wish-list rather than a serious commitment. Countries have converted the project into a perfunctory “check-the-box” exercise in response.

Yet, this did not happen in the past. In 2006, Collins and Porras introduced the term “BHAG” and people were inspired by the announcement of one audacious goal.

Regrettably, that is no longer the case. Today, the overall aspiration must be credible in order to have significance. This is the elevated standard you must achieve as an executive.

And now, we face another hurdle in our journey.

3. Integrate Strategy and BHAGs

In organizations that embrace BHAGs, it’s essential to ensure there’s a concrete strategic plan that accompanies these goals. The SDGs face a similar challenge. Employees and stakeholders now demand a clear, detailed pathway to achieve these significant goals.

In summary, take your collective BHAGs, make them both meaningful and credible, and use them as a catalyst to kick-start your strategic planning process. This approach will bring your ambitions down to a realistic level, even for the skeptics.

In today’s world, where millennials are actively seeking purpose in their work, failing to provide a sense of meaningful action can be a disservice. If you’re not prepared to embrace these new approaches and provide a sense of purpose, it might be time to consider a transformation or find a new path in leadership.

This article was inspired by a prior column in the Jamaica Gleaner.