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Have you ever played a part in crafting a useless strategic plan? You thought it was a good product, but it ended up languishing on the shelf or in unread email. However, you believed in the process followed, but something was missing… maybe from the final step which condemned the entire plan to the scrap heap.

As you near the season for developing your company’s strategic plan, you already know that engaging stakeholders is important. Getting everyone on the same page is the only way to implement the plan effectively. However, you may not realize that the final group handshake at your retreat isn’t a mere formality or nicety. Instead, it creates an emotional bond no participant should escape.

Compare this to the fond memories of a wedding. Most recall the fun. A wonderful ceremony. The party after. Delicious food. Engaging people you met.

But there’s only a single short segment that was essential. The vows between the bride and groom may be different each time, but the public promises they make are the ingredients which generate a permanent difference. Without it, the activity is not a wedding.

In the same spirit, a strategic planning retreat cannot skip over the ultimate promise attendees must make to each other. Dr Richard Rumelt from the Caribbean Strategy Conference calls it the “swearing-in ceremony.” (The phrase is borrowed from basic military training.) What makes this final activity – essentially a handshake agreement – so important?
1—It’s a Reckoning

A great retreat is an exercise in “managed disagreement.” Executives from different functions bring together disparate points of view. Collectively, they forge a future none of them could create by themselves.

When the planning horizon is 10-30 years out, profound conflicts are even more pronounced. They can only be resolved via in-depth discussions, including a heavy dose of individual give and take.

But the meeting is wasted if, at the end, everyone is not on the same page. This test cannot be left to a gut feeling. Instead, someone must be brave enough to publicly ask each attendee to commit to moving forward together. In other words, to make a vow equivalent to a wedding’s “I Do”. Or similar to an oath of office. Without this clarity, prepare to declare the meeting a failure. 

2 – It’s Not Compete Consensus

While it would be nice to get total agreement on every single point of the strategic plan, that’s not the best practice. If you follow that path, expect the event to drag on indefinitely. 

Why? A lone person with strong convictions could dominate and wreck the proceedings. 

The fact is, this isn’t a debate. Or a marriage. Or a competition. It’s a business activity intended to move the company forward. With hard realities looming outside the meeting room, the organization needs a plan to fulfill its potential.

The best practice involves the use of a lesser form of agreement…”Disagree-and-Commit.” In this method, which is ideal for time-limited activities like planning retreats, participants don’t need to resolve all their reservations. Instead, they are encouraged to keep them, but simultaneously join the group in moving forward.

This technique is usually taught at the start of the retreat, but its influence is fully realized at the very end. Before everyone departs, there needs to be no daylight between participants and the strategic plan so that a united team can implement it as one.

3 – Defang Backstabbers

This approach is also intended to take power away from those who sit back, waiting to say “I Told You So” at the first signs of failure. But the truth is, if such people exist at the end, the process was defective. At some level, they were excluded. 

Prevent this from happening by checking to see whether “Disagree-and- Commit” bonds are being formed during the retreat. Use your intuition to focus on those who seem to be withdrawn or disengaged.

Also, seek to forge solutions that combine the best elements of separate points of view. By the end, each component of the plan should be identified with the team, rather than any individual.

The bottom line is that the paragraphs and diagrams in the strategic plan don’t matter as much as the human element.

When the team hasn’t stepped up as a unit to make a visible, authentic commitment to the plan, you have nothing but empty words. The true test comes when people are alone in front of their laptops. Do they execute the strategic plan when they are tired, distracted, or just plain comfortable with the status quo?

Such moments are the ultimate proof that your final handshake agreement was authentic. Your plan is ready to be executed.

Each year, managers in your company sit down to devise budgets for the next twelve months. As a participant in the process, you see that each department’s spending reflects certain priorities. Where do these come from? Are some correct in calling them “strategic”? Should they be reconciled in some way?

Managing costs has become a bigger priority than ever in these pandemic times. The best method of control? It’s nothing new: negotiate budgets with your department managers. Then, hold them to account.

There is no question that this process works. It sets expectations and regulates purchases. In fact, some companies use the terms “budget” and “revenue targets” interchangeably in a nod to its universal acceptance.

However, as negotiations proceed each year, inevitable questions arise. Each department appears to be operating from its own background assumptions. Where did they come from? And what strategy is the unit pursuing? Is it related to the overall corporate plan?

Perhaps you are like many managers who notice these discrepancies. They exist, but you want them to disappear. The answer? Pull together a single “strategic plan” which covers all the budgets at the same time. Towards that end, a mandatory retreat is announced.

While this reasoning may appear sound, it’s often deeply flawed. A budget should not be conflated with a corporate strategy for many reasons. Why? Here are just a few.

Reason #1 – Required Budget vs Optional Strategy

In terms of immediate threats to your business, a broken budget process is a huge risk. Why? Compared to the existence of a strategic plan, a busted budget can cause cash to run out.

Consequently, managers who disregard budgets are likely to face severe sanctions. By contrast, when you ignore the strategic plan, you are probably safe in the majority. After all, it only serves long-term interests.

This is just human nature. We pay more attention to our anxieties than long-term concerns. In this context, strategic planning becomes a nice-to-have business activity which adds little real value. When a retreat is not scheduled, nothing changes from one day to the next.

Reason #2 – Strategy as an Afterthought

Your company may be like many. It only thinks about strategic matters when the fear of competition or disruption arises. The trigger might be a case study of failures, such as Kodak or Blackberry. Or a competitor’s advertisement for a new feature you didn’t even know existed.

In these moments, it becomes obvious: strategy matters. In fact, the right strategy probably earned your company the success and stability it experiences today. Someone had a vision of where the company should go.

However, history often reverses itself. I have led many corporate retreats in which the strategic planning activity was scheduled after the budgets were completed. They were merely last-ditch attempts to reconcile different points of view.

Today, the danger in leaving strategy as an after-thought is that your company might be heading into extinction without knowing it.

If you are a top executive, you may not be detecting slow changes underway in your industry. By focusing on budgets before strategies, you fail to scan the horizon for changes before setting priorities. This mistake renders the entire budgetary exercise impotent – a shuffling of the chairs on the Titanic.

But there’s no need to wait for a scare. Instead, examine your current strategic plan. A timeframe of five years or fewer is probably just an update of prior documents. It’s Business-As-Usual, plus some small changes.

If incremental improvements are all that’s expected, get everyone excited about producing a disruptive strategic plan instead.

Reason #3 – Game-Changing Results Become Impossible

Unfortunately, while your company rides on decisions made long ago, the world has continued to change. Before long, competitors will notice your slow-moving ways, leading them to look for disruptive ideas and technologies.

As they climb the learning curve, they anticipate transformations which build on each other. A dramatically different future comes into focus.

Such was the case of Apple’s iPhone division, and much closer to home, Digicel. By the end, thousands lost their jobs as the incumbents’ leaders failed to set a new direction.

If you’re interested in a new paradigm, consider the advice of Dr. Richard Rumelt from the recent Caribbean Strategy Conference.

He recommended that companies decouple budgetary and strategic activities. How? Ensure that they don’t follow the same annual cycle. Break them apart.

At the conference, we also learned to dream big by asking your team to contemplate 15 and 30 year scenarios. What does your company want to happen in decades to come?

Approaching your strategic planning in these new ways can preserve the integrity of the process. It might even keep your company from destruction.

For years, HR Professionals have lobbied: they must have a seat at the strategic planning table. Now, many companies agree. However, HR’s impact in retreats has not matched those of other functions. What can your company do to ensure talent management isn’t an after-thought?

Today, most Human Resource units have evolved well past the old “Personnel Departments”. Almost all executives in your organization are in support.

But it’s not enough. In two decades of facilitating strategic planning retreats, I have noticed a trend. The least effective participants are often HR Professionals.

I don’t say this lightly. Nor would I apply my observation to every situation I have encountered. But there is definitely a recurring pattern of behavior.

For example, when the HR Director makes his/her presentation, colleagues regularly stop paying attention. To them, nothing earth-shattering will be shared. They relax, sometimes get bored and may even leave the room altogether for busywork.

Also, from start to finish, the HR manager is likely to be the most quiet person. Sometimes, he/she could come alive near the very end, but it’s too little too late.

Instead of missing the chance, how can you ensure HR steps up from the first minute?

1. Be Strategic Before the Retreat

In general, many executives bemoan the fact that HR is too reactive. While this is a criticism, it translates to a great opportunity for improvement. For example, HR can establish itself at the forefront of strategic questions between retreats, perhaps focusing on the potential of human capital.

The truth is, there is no such thing as a wildly successful strategy that doesn’t involve human creation and execution. It’s not luck. Ingenuity, data analytics, foresight, business modelling, backcasting, deep listening – these are just a few of the skills needed to produce a game-changing plan.

Also, most non-HR executives can’t assess the capacity of an entire workforce. But HR professionals naturally ask: “What specific future can this potential be used to accomplish?”

If you’re in HR, this is an inquiry to be led throughout the year, building an awareness of the organization’s human capability map.

While it’s obvious that talented thinking creates strategy, other executives struggle to articulate what this means operationally. As such, the company desperately needs HR to drive this conversation.

2. Be Data-Driven

Whereas a CFO is trained to think in terms of numbers, the same isn’t usually true of HR. As such, reviews of past financial results take up an inordinate amount of time. However, they are all about a history, telling stories about what has already happened.

By contrast, HR professionals can be all about the future. But you must use numbers to describe it.

Unfortunately, in the heat of the moment at a retreat, HR’s lack of data forces it into vague, qualitative measures which colleagues have a hard time grasping.

In a prior column in Nov 2021, I argued that CEOs and other executives are upset at this fact. They want HR to catch up to the analytics train, but it’s not for charity’s sake.

Unfortunately, only a tiny fraction of CEOs, Chairpersons and MDs have HR backgrounds. Even though most of their work involves people, these skills only become important late in their careers.

As such, they need HR analytics and dashboards, tools and summaries to appreciate what’s happening with their people. Sadly, most HR managers don’t give them what they want.

If you’re an HR Professional, consider becoming data-driven long before the retreat so that you can shine in the event. I have seen it done to great effect and the result was stunning.

In this context, a retreat is more like the grand finale – the finish line of a lengthy race.

3. Lead Analysis, Not Follow

The presence of data gives HR deep insights others miss. This would reverse the trend in which HR is the short discussion at the end of the retreat…the afterthought.

Instead, as an HR Professional, you can develop your ability to define different futures and advocate for them. With this information in hand, you alone can speak to gaps in staff capacity and the cost of filling them. In this context, HR is like the manager of a modern sports team, as depicted by the movie MoneyBall. It’s a baseball story, but a similar transformation has occurred in football and cricket.

If you had the detailed information top coaches have, every conversation about company strategy would start with such analytics. HR would be the chief interpreters of people’s capacity.

In these ways, HR moves from a back bench into the foreground, returning organizations to their original people power, altering the prior perception for good.