CHAPTER 9 | WHAT DOES STRATEGIC PLANNING BUILT FOR SPEED LOOK LIKE?

There’s a bit of chatter in the trades recently from a research study that says that maybe strategic planning is too slow to be relevant.

That’s not a revelation. It’s been too slow for a decade.

In previous chapters we’ve established that they’re aren’t many people in an organization who enjoy forced collaboration or planning.

We’ve addressed the importance of planning to get leadership on the same page, because any rogue action costs a cascade of time and money.

And we’ve discussed traditional business strategy that defines the game and snapshots the state-of-the-state. This is in contrast to market-based planning that is designed to find a way to win.

Let’s combine the two approaches into new hybrid form of strategic planning: Yin-Yang Strategic Sprinting.

Yin-Yang, which is from Chinese creation theory, represents opposite forces that don’t repel, but actually work together and must exist in duality.

Whatever you call it, push/pull, short/long, sales/brand, Yin-Yang Strategic Sprinting puts the hidden tension in leadership – the URGENT pressures of the moment vs the IMPORTANT future vision – in plain sight.

No festering. No elephant in the room. Just two forces who must work together to ensure an organization's sustainability. Both equally important.

Why should a marketer lead this Yin-Yang business process?

Because URGENT is going to fall on sales/marketing, and IMPORTANT is going to fall on brand/marketing.

Machine learning and AI to accommodate URGENT and IMPORTANT provide the connective tissue of operations in service to both.

All organizations have economic realities.

Strategic planning exits to balance economic realities and prioritize resources (human and financial) accordingly. Otherwise you may just continue on doing what you’re doing until you’re not.

Metaphor: URGENT and IMPORTANT are labels on two rain barrels positioned on either side of an island. The irony is that rain is not something you control. Precipitation is an outside force of national and local economies, trends in culture, sector trends and competition.

Sometimes it rains hard, sometimes drought. All you can do is position the barrels in the right spots, so when it rains they both fill.

Are there rain catchers that capture moisture from the atmosphere? Yes, but you have to know about them and enable them.

Now think of basics in terms of the two buckets.

IS THERE:

A viable product? (URGENT)

Evolving “value” in the sector? (IMPORTANT)

Differentiation to meet the greatest potential for revenue? (IMPORTANT)

The widest net and prospect prioritization as the clouds shift? (URGENT)

It doesn’t need to be complicated.