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Your company is one which builds its strategic plan around an individual’s ideas. But even if the “Big Man” is a brilliant entrepreneur-founder, is it a good idea to include a host of other stakeholders in the process? If the current method isn’t obviously broken, why fix it?

Some argue: if a strategic plan is little more than words, who cares how they were written? This popular sentiment leads companies to assemble plans in a hurry, including as few people as possible. After all, “too many cooks spoil the broth”. And there’s always time to convince board members and staff that the soup tastes great…after the fact.

However, if you are interested in a more inclusive way, here are some methods. They promise a better product and a greater chance of success.

Missing Board Members

In some organizations, the board is excluded from strategic planning activities. Once the final product is completed, they are expected to offer cursory comments, if any.

This approach undermines advisors who have the time and wisdom to think about the big picture: the future of the organization. Untethered from the daily grind, boards are well-suited to consider PESTER forces: Political, Environmental, Social, Technological, Economy and Regulatory/Legal.

If they aren’t capable of this analysis, uninterested, or not permitted…then ask: “Why bother with a board?”

In both private and public sectors, this hard question is rarely asked. Consequently, some board members take a passive approach, failing to show up at meetings and retreats. Their abysmal performance goes unchecked, hidden under a veneer of collegial “blighs”. Friendship trumps stewardship, to the detriment of all concerned.

Instead, have a board which exhibits the highest standard. Or have none at all.

Checked-out Executives

Your senior managers are probably the best result-producers in your company. Why? After all, their track records helped them climb the corporate ladder.

However, these skills have little to do with strategic planning. As such, they feel uncomfortably ill-equipped to think for the long-term. Also, organization-wide cause-and-effect relationships are hard to grasp. Plus, there’s never enough data to make easy decisions and set targets.

They would gladly skip this year’s retreat and leave the whole awkward business to the founder/Big Boss. She can do the heavy lifting. All they need to do is provide a quick blessing once the dust has settled.

In simpler times, with a small organization, this may have worked. Unfortunately, today’s complex COVID-era challenges require more. The full team, with its wide range of skills and experiences, must bring all it can muster to the activity.

Given the fact that your company should be developing a game-changing strategy for 2023, it’s folly to disengage the best minds. Instead, help stakeholders to embrace their incompetence in this area and start learning.

Uninterested Staff

Jamaican executives are often dismayed at their staff’s reaction to the announcement of their grand strategy. First there is silence, followed by a seeming lack of curiosity. No questions are asked, and most employees seem happy to delegate 100% ownership (and blame) to the organization’s leaders.

The conclusion senior managers draw is that staff is disengaged.

That may not be the best interpretation. Consider that the typical non-executive spends most of his/her time on daily tactics. Unfortunately, when faced with questions about the strategic future of the company, they flounder.

The general remedy might be the same for board, executive and staff: engage them all at the start of the process. Conduct open sessions defining the challenges the organization faces. Use PESTER to describe the environment. Ask for stories about competitors, especially if they are indirect, or based outside the Caribbean.

Arrange interviews, focus groups and online surveys to ensure these three levels consider the future and the cost of inaction. At one level, you are asking for their input. But at another, you are sharing responsibility.

Now, your planning retreat becomes more than a mere meeting. It’s a venue to place bets about the future of your enterprise. While it’s not as random as a casino, you need everyone’s best thinking to come together to make the most of your industry’s uncertainty.

This task is so hard that many organizations skip the exercise altogether. They hope that the status quo should suffice. By contrast, leading companies embrace the challenge. They don’t shrink away, but see their courage as a competitive advantage.

Winston Churchill said: “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.” You may not have a country to defend against Nazis, but your stakeholders will need to do some heavy lifting. It’s the only way to bring everyone onto the same page.

As a manager, you may find it hard to engage in fruitful discussions about the future. You are able to speculate informally over lunch, but be unable to plan strategically in a formal session. You sense that this needs to change, but how? Where will this new skill-set come from?

Few things are more distressing in organizational life than a manager who was good at his old job, but still tries to perform it after being promoted. While he was elevated based on his technical ability, these are of little use now that employees report to him. They expect something new: leadership.

The same applies to the executive suite, and in particular the role of a CEO. More specifically, newly minted executives often don’t think strategically. The truth is, they gained their reputations based on reaching short-term results and fighting fires.

While every company needs middle-level managers who can demonstrate these skills, as leaders they are entrusted with something different: the company’s future.

If they are lucky, mentors take them under their wings, and deliberately stretch their capabilities with well-designed assignments and training. But this is rare. In general, a new executive’s lack of strategic planning skills isn’t revealed until the situation desperately needs them. By then, it’s too late. Instead, here are three competencies you can proactively develop.

1. Thinking *about* the Future

I have met many CEOs and MDs who don’t talk about specific future outcomes at all. In their minds, all they need to do is react to stuff that might happen.

However, the best leaders don’t sit back: they create the future. For example, Facebook has a 15-year plan for the Metaverse which is intended to shape the way the internet is used globally.

By so doing, they confront the natural inertia of the vast majority who prefer to stay in their comfort zones.

As an executive, your job is to coach top managers to think about the future as a malleable object. They can become visionary. But you may need to do some convincing. In other words, you must educate, challenge and confront. And demote the unwilling or unable.

The fact is that as a member of the leadership team, you should develop the best long-term planning skills, and encourage others to follow your path.

2. Thinking *from* the Future

While a good facilitator can drag any executive team through the creation of a specific vision, it’s not enough. Once it exists, the participants must take charge of the vision. Inhabiting it means thinking from the future, while they implement it in the present.

Some reduce this to a matter of project management, but it actually requires far more. Great leaders carry out special practices to help people think from the future. Examples include regular strategy updates using current information.

They also have a knack for bringing up the vision in everyday conversation. Each time, they create the specific future as the context behind every decision. By recalling its importance to stakeholders, they bring the future closer one step at a time.

Finally, they help staff see that Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAGs) must be translated into projects, then tasks. This connection is easily lost. Why? Daily emergencies hijack people’s attention, along with the distractions of social media/Netflix. To keep people on track, you should repeatedly bring the vision alive.

3. Speaking from the Future

Unfortunately, very few executives know how to inspire others on demand. Call it a recurring failure of organizational life: the few who are inspiring often leave to start their own companies. Those who remain learn to survive the corporate grind by keeping out of trouble, rather than leading.

If this fits your story, you may be annoyed. Now that you have been promoted, you are asked to inspire staff. But where would you have learned to do so?

If the workplace doesn’t offer them, seek out other opportunities. Volunteer in your service organization, church or alumni association. Allow the discomfort of vision-filled speaking to become the norm. Experience the thrill of filling others with the hope of accomplishing remarkable things by working together.

In these challenging times with a pandemic, recession, and war ever-present, the natural human tendency is to withdraw and see performance fall. Great leaders realize this and put themselves at risk. This is your avenue to accomplish the extraordinary.

Start by telling the truth. If, as a CEO or MD, you have never been trained in this dimension, some honesty will help. Embrace this fact, and propel yourself forward with experiments which take you outside your comfort zone. Use the results to learn what works and become someone who can connect the future with the present. Your people are waiting.

Francis Wade is the author of Perfect Time-Based Productivity, a keynote speaker and a management consultant. To search his prior columns on productivity, strategy, engagement and business processes, send email to columns@fwconsulting.com.