Is Strategic Planning Making a Comeback?

During 1999, we saw headlines talking about how strategic planning is making a “comeback”.  We perceive that to be correct, but not in the sense of the grandiose Michael Porter blockbuster moves, but more associated with the need to align organizations with meaningful and disciplined goals.  It seems that so much energy has been dedicated to bringing order to organization infrastructure, that enterprise resource planning  (ERP) implementation and information systems (IS) initiatives grabbed control of the corporate agenda.  Yet, the outcome of the effort has been of limited benefit to the overall “business game”.  As organizations get back to worrying about how they are going to make a buck, there is a need to balance between doing what is needed to operate the business and manage in a world which is highly influenced by information systems and telecommunications.

Software and telecommunications have revolutionized our hobbies, our day to day lives, our work and our economy.  The speed at which knowledge migrates is stunning. Business margins are becoming thinner as competition becomes faster and more aggressive.  The room for error is much diminished. Managing knowledge and information is critical to our ability to survive. The world is a different place from 10 years ago.

At Focused Management Information Inc., we work with a variety of organizations, all of which are at different levels of awareness of the inter-relationships between knowledge, information, software and communications. 

Information systems (IS) departments have increasing influence over management’s ability to maneuver. Burgeoning IS budgets define organization priorities to a great extent.   Within tight budgets and serious priority constraints, executives are challenged to provide sufficient weight (commitment and resources) to the development and deployment of new management techniques. Frequently, executives try to implement new techniques without sufficient corporate commitment to assign appropriate resources or to accept any real change in management philosophy.  In addition, new initiatives require managers to learn about new methods and to leave behind old techniques without adequate preparation.  Leaving operating managers with the difficult task of responding to a changed business environment, a dire need for new methods and management philosophy without really having the wherewithal to do so.

Managers will get the opportunity to regain some control of their destiny. The benefits of productivity improvement being based on incremental process changes are limited.  Certainly the logic of continuous improvement continues to be valid, however in the wired world, software and telecommunications appear to have a significant impact.  It is likely that the deployment of complex and inflexible computer systems will act as a deterrent to making badly needed strategic and operational changes…”because it is just too difficult to change”.  However, new, flexible systems are coming, as the Internet develops and dynamic network architecture (DNA) evolves.

Few organizations have the luxury of stable business conditions, even in the short to medium timeframe. Therefore, managers need to be very aware of the business issues and the dynamics of their changing business game. And the business game should be premised on facts and their interpretation. Good strategy is based on both external and internally oriented facts.  Furthermore, the implementation of strategy is highly dependant on the ability of increasingly responsible knowledge workers to be aware of circumstances and of how their performance of activities will influence the eventual outcome of the business game.  So indeed, strategy should be making a comeback, because without it, organizations might be constrained by their computer systems.

Planning the game play and doing the thinking is what differentiates the winners.