What is the crisis teaching us about corporate planning?
Seven lessons for the next planning exercise
You are undoubtedly – like many other leaders now – carefully observing and considering the impact of the current crisis on your organization. And you are also probably realizing that:
- the crisis is changing our world in a way that will make the return to old ways of thinking and operating not only difficult, but likely impossible;
- you have to lead your organization, not in bouncing back to the future you may have imagined before, but in bouncing forward to an altogether new future, one not yet charted;
- the window to make those changes may close sooner rather than later and you have to act now.
The crisis is a test and an opportunity for organizations. In a recent article, I outlined some essential steps to make the best out of the crisis, summarized below:
The surprise by which the current crisis has taken most organizations suggests that the way they have planned for the future has failed to produce the expected readiness for events such as pandemics. It is thus not surprising that many leaders identify the need to change their organization’s approach to the future as a priority. This starts with changing the way corporate planning is conducted.
What are the key lessons the crisis is teaching us about corporate planning?
The crisis provides valuable lessons about planning and reaching for better readiness for and resilience in the future. We compiled them into seven key teachings inspired by our observations:
Lesson 1: Strategic planning is not the simple update of already existing plans
It is not a secret that many organizations see strategic planning as an administrative task, if not a chore, and often choose to conduct their planning process as a more or less sophisticated update of already existing plans. Yes, these existing plans, the fruit of strategic thinking exercises, have to be studied and analyzed for their good calls – but most importantly for their blind spots, for the important trends overlooked in previous trends analyses and scenario developments. Moreover, beyond integrating new data, corporate planning has to focus on identifying and exploring novel events, emerging trends, strong and weak signals and then apply a diversity of lenses to reframe and make sense of new possible futures, with their risks and opportunities.
Lesson 2: Constantly scanning the environment to detect risks and opportunities is not a luxury – nor is it a choice
Contrarily to what was advanced by some, COVID-19 was not a black swan event, the type of events that are beyond our ability to predict or detect them in advance. The truth is that the pandemic threat has been well documented in the literature, and forward-looking organizations have accounted for it as a prospective risk in their strategic plans. The crisis reminds us that the context of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA), we live in gets more of the same, and in such a world, constantly scanning the environment is the most basic function we can perform to detect trends and drivers of change, and to understand our environment. Furthermore, to make sense of both present-day realities and the future, we need to apply diverse lenses and search for a variety of perspectives. We have to persistently challenge our assumptions and press play on our imagination to uncover risks anddiscover opportunities.
Lesson 3: More than ever, strategic planning has to engage and exhibit the collective intelligence of the entire organization
The crisis makes obvious another lesson in corporate planning: it is not a bureaucratic check the boxactivity performed by a few certified planners working in isolation. While organized by professional planners, providing structure and frameworks for the studies to perform and the discussions to come, strategic planning should engage the collective intelligence of the entire organization. The hugely complex reality we live and operate in requires multiple and diverse views. In every organization, there are multiple views and stories revealing our collective wisdom and aspirations. These stories do not only deserve to be heard; they have to find their way into the shared story of our next future, the one we are designing together. This is also the only effective way to make this story viable.
Lesson 4: Futures (Foresight) studies and systemic approaches are a must
It is not unusual – nor is it surprising – that major crises such as this pandemic lead to an increased interest in foresight and in longer-term thinking and projections about the future of our economies and societies. The crisis has made it clear that focusing on data (which by definition comes from the past and the present) alone cannot provide sound directions and solutions for the future. The crisis reinforces the importance of megatrend analysis, scenario development and exploration, and other futures studies methods as a must in strategic planning. This necessity – often driven by fears – finds relief in our imagination, our ability to project ourselves into the future and to envision better prospects for us – not only as individuals and organizations, but also as a human society. Futures perspectives offer the possibility to see the system holistically and to study its interdependencies and the interactions between all its elements, thus providing a much sounder foundation for strategic planning.
Lesson 5: Planning is not about reaching certainty; it is about experimenting with possible futures
The crisis teaches us that there is an urgency to examine our views of certainty and risk and to reassess our relation to organizational risk. This includes redefining and reconsidering risks as well as our organization’s tolerance and our responses to risks, not always in sync with the increasingly complex challenges offered by new realities. The crisis urges us to go beyond a one-time risk identification and assessment with some pro-forma mitigation “strategies”, and engage in continuous, enlarged in scopeand deepened study of latent threats and their potential impact as well as the impact of the envisioned responses. It also points to the need to do this in a creative way. Planning is not about reaching certainty about the future; it is about experimenting with plausible futures to achieve better readiness for a variety of odds. There is also another lesson to take away from this crisis: when developing scenarios for the future, carefully consider biases. Desired futures are not the only futures that could happen – and nor are dystopias. Creating scenarios for a variety of prospective futures is how we can best identify a wide array of considerations and be in a position to react to a large spectrum of possibilities in the future.
Lesson 6: Knowing is not enough: it must be translated into plausible actions
While many organizations conduct megatrend collection and analysis for their strategic planning, some – even meticulous organizations – fail to translate the knowledge they have gained into action plans that will adequately and reasonably prepare them for the future. This is how even the most watchful organizations failed to prepare for this pandemic crisis. Megatrend analysis cannot be a substitute for strategic planning: it is only one step of it. Beyond the scarce identification of megatrends, drivers of change, and emerging tendencies that could potentially influence the future, concrete action should be taken to develop forward-looking metrics and plan for tangible steps in the event of potential profound changes. The crisis has also reminded us that contingency planning is much more than a list of employees, along with their phone numbers and emails. It is also about identifying concrete actions and steps to dealing with real crises.
Lesson 7: It’s not (only) about the plan, it’s (all) about the planning… and building resilience
The crisis offers another essential reminder: the main objective of strategic planning is NOT to come up with a strategic plan product. The goal is to conduct a sound strategic planning process. And while I won’t go as far as Dwight D. Eisenhower, who affirmed that “plans are useless but planning is essential”, it is clear that the biggest value of corporate planning is not in the product (which is almost inevitably called to change) – but in the process of planning. In seeing differently the present, the past and the future, in engaging the collective organizational intelligence to detect trends, risks and opportunities, and in outlining concrete actions in response. As such, strategic planning is also an essential means to build and enhance an organization’s resilience, which is the best pledge for the future.
And you, what are you learning from the crisis and what will you change in your corporate planning?
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At Knowledge in Power Consulting we are proud to support organizations unlock their uniqueness, knowledge and creativity, navigate increasingly complex and volatile contexts, and discover new opportunities for a better future for themselves and for the communities they serve. Contact us today to discuss how we can work together and help your organization learn from the crisis and empower its success in the after-crisis.