Strategy is very different to planning!

In the book A New Way to Think, Roger L Martin provides thought provoking discussion around conventional strategic planning frameworks.

The book shares a number of insights into the potential traps of traditional strategic planning frameworks and the reasons why organisation’s conveniently hold on so dearly to some of those practices.

The book provides an important reminder that organisations can control their costs, however, they cannot control revenue.  It is the customer who is in control of the decision to spend their money and not the other way around.

The organisation that focuses on the right target market and that has a compelling value proposition are more likely to succeed and better control or increase their market share.

It’s not that strategic planning is not valuable, it’s the fact that the planning is at the mercy of customer decision making.  This raises very important questions about some of the strategies that we see and the quality of strategic plans being developed.

Strategic planning can provide more accurate forecasts but should serve strategy and not the other way around.