Traditional Strategic Planning Sucks part 1

Anyone notice that in this month's Journal of Association Leadership, there's a long article about traditional strategic planning - so traditional that, no offense to the authors, but I literally had to look at the cover to check I wasn't reading an old copy. I thought to myself, WTF is this?? Who still does this?

And then, I read the August issue of Associations Now, and sure enough, there's an article about how strategic planning stinks. Clearly I agree with that, only I think we haven't come up with a clear, usable, "sticky" method that EVERYONE can use, to replace the traditional ways of SWOT and the like. (I know there are a few methodologies out there, but I am sorry, I find any planning method with an associated acronym just impossible to remember, despite popular belief...)

There's an interesting comment I just noticed at the bottom of the link to the Associations Now article. The commenter says, "SP can work well if managed properly. It seems that no one understands that."

Of course traditional strategic planning CAN work, and has to some extent in the past, but the whole point is that things move much faster these days and associations are finding it hard to do all the "management" necessary to monitor The Plan. Surely there should be some strategic capacity within the organization as a whole that does not need top-down management, (and board retreats, and all that time-consuming stuff that is EXTERNAL to one's daily job). Some inherently flexible, open, transparent structure that involves everyone in an organization and is AN INTEGRAL PART OF THEIR EVERY DAY WORK.

This is absolutely possible!

I went to ASAE a couple of weeks ago to hear the author Stephen Ruffa talk about his book Going Lean: How the Best Companies Apply Lean Manufacturing Principles to Shatter Uncertainty, Drive Innovation, and Maximize Profits, in which he describes Lean dynamics, a way of working conceived by Toyota in the 70s and since taken up by a new breed of companies that thrive under crisis circumstances (Southwest Airlines, anyone?).

I want to finish reading the book before I write about this properly, but suffice to say that one theme this strategic way of working has at its core is the throwing out of compartmentalized tasks and silos, so that everyone in a company can see why their specific job is important to the big picture. They can see the cause-and-effect of their actions (or inactions) across everything. This one element alone can help an organization have the capacity to embrace change, because the whole system is dynamic and flexible.

I want to write about this more, but the principles are similar to those of agile planning for software that I have mentioned a couple of times! It's all out there, with companies and organizations leading the way. We just need to come up with a simple way to adapt it for the association and non-profit industry specifically, and show each other how it can work.