Francis Wade | Making the right assumptions

Your team has pulled together an inspiring strategic plan. It has both short-term and long-term components and has the power to upend your industry.

But in a matter of weeks, your aspirations suddenly fall apart. Why?

Out comes a surprise announcement from a competitor, technology company, or government regulator, which changes the entire landscape, turning your hard work into rubbish. The strategic plan must be scrapped, it seems.

Should you go back to the drawing board and start afresh? Or is there a shortcut you can take? Here are three points to consider as you plan your response.

The ephemeral nature of strategic plans: When people think of strategic planning, their first thought surrounds the steps for implementation laid out in some agreed-upon roadmap.

But underlying this plan, there are a number of decisions your team made. And beneath these choices are a multitude of fleeting assumptions.

In an executive retreat, these assumptions fly by in real time. That is, they emerge and disappear in heated discussions as the team labours to bring forth a new future. At some point, it becomes clear to all: there is just not enough data to prove every point of view.

As such, it’s a bit of a ‘guess fest’. Your C-suiters are forced to draw conclusions from a combination of anecdotes, one time occurrences, rumours, and research. It’s not completely scientific as eventually, even gut feelings come into play, pitching one area of expertise against another, and younger staff versus older heads. By the end, there’s just no way to prove that a final strategy is correct.

However, this doesn’t mean that each decision in the plan is based on thin air. In fact, the plan sits on a tapestry of assumptions that are being woven together at lightning speed as the conversation unfolds.

Unfortunately, in poorly designed off-sites, some voices are never heard, which dilutes the exchange and sets up possible failure. Hence the reason to ensure full participation and the temporary disappearance of your company’s hierarchy.

But before it starts, you also need to guarantee that all key functions are included in the event. Collectively, the assumptions your team gathers will be stronger.

Capturing a sea of assumptions: In many retreats, participants walk away mistakenly believing that their plan will endure. Why? They are never shown the fact that the assumptions they have made are constantly in flux.

Instead, emphasise that change is a constant. The only question is whether or not the most important assumptions will be undermined when disruptions occur.

As such, your team needs a way to track these underlying assumptions. Instead of leaving them invisible, they need to be captured in some way.

Unfortunately, most retreats don’t have a practical mechanism for doing so. Consequently, it’s left up to individual memory and personal initiative. Therefore, if an assumption changes, it’s up to someone to speak up and take action.

But after a retreat, people return to busy lives. Only rarely will they take the lead. As a result, your team is more likely to miss the early signs of an important new trend.

One way to prevent that is to highlight the fact that a sea of assumptions is not made up of random pockets of data. Instead, they are tied together in a strategic hypothesis in a strategy map. The map is drawn as a set of cause-and-effect links. This reference document, assembled in the retreat, shows some of the most important connections.

But it’s not the only technique to use.

Predicting hurricanes and tidal waves: Fortunately, there is an even more proactive technique: a ‘pre mortem’.

There are some who believe that one needs to stay positive in a planning retreat and only think happy thoughts about the future. This faulty mindset lacks rigour.

Instead, the team who does a pre-mortem looks ahead at the most likely points of failure in the strategic hypothesis. This includes flawed logic as well as suppositions, which may shift.

Of course, the exercise won’t foretell the exact timing of a catastrophe like a pandemic. But it may predict a new one every five years, based on modern evidence.

Asking your team to be a bit morbid, to brainstorm weak assumptions, can put all participants on alert. The fact is that the sea of assumptions cannot be relied on to remain calm. There will be hurricanes and tidal waves, and everyone needs to be ready to take evasive action.

This includes attendees who insist that they were right, and the new evidence is wrong. Don’t tackle them directly.

Instead, gather the entire planning team together and rely on them, as a unit, to re-examine their original reasoning. This approach can keep you on course to your ultimate destination.

Francis Wade is a management consultant and author of Perfect Time-Based Productivity. To search past columns on productivity, strategy and business processes, or give feedback, email: columns@fwconsulting.com