Francis Wade | Powerful pre-emptive strategic planning

You are a company leader who cares deeply about the mid to long-term future of your enterprise. To your annoyance, others seem not to care. They are happy chasing immediate issues on an ad hoc basis.

What can you do to bring a new level of urgency?

For many local organisations, strategic planning is seen as a luxury. It’s an activity to be postponed by executives until more stable times, when there’s more time, and plenty of cash in the bank.

For others, it’s a mere compliance exercise. In large companies and governments, you conduct your session, then submit the required paperwork to stay out of trouble.

In both cases, game-changing strategic planning takes a low priority. Sadly, COVID has made this practice of ‘strategy as luxury’ a bad habit among C-suite executives.

If you are trying to break free from this laissez-faire mind-set, try the following idea, define your organisation’s threat zones.

A ‘threat zone’ is a unique period lasting several months or years when a number of threats coincide. Each of them may have lain dormant for some time, but then, all of a sudden, they emerge in unison to create havoc.

I compare a threat zone to a June hurricane like Beryl, which arose quickly due to the following factors: warm ocean waters, low vertical wind shear, high humidity, formation within 5º latitude of the equator, a weather disturbance, and atmospheric instability.

Similar to a hurricane, a threat zone arises from relatively innocuous conditions. But the analogy ends there. Why? For organisations, a threat zone usually brings unique opportunities.

Case in point: Fujifilm and Kodak had similar revenues in 2000. However, only Fuji understood the particular threat zone emerging. The end result? Their strategic plan transformed the company, and today, they have 20 times more revenue than their former competitor.

Perhaps you may believe that your organisation is immune from threat zones. You think there’s no need to be concerned. But in my August 4, 2024 Gleaner column, I argued that even government agencies are defunded and disbanded when their planning lapses.

Instead, consider Andy Grove, former chairman of Intel. He wrote the book, Only the Paranoid Survive, to share how his company almost went bankrupt in the 1980s due to a threat zone.

Fortunately, a group of renegade middle managers anticipated the threat and secretly launched a microprocessor initiative, saving the firm. Notably, their actions contradicted Grove’s public pronouncements at the time.

How can your C-suite also develop the strategic foresight necessary to see threat zones that clearly?

In-depth analysis

Threat zones come in two forms: internal and external. Internal examples include challenges like product-market fit, succession planning, and employee engagement. Externally, companies face issues such as climate change, government regulations, and inflation. However, there is no one-size-fits-all list. Instead, only your leaders should determine which threat zones your organisation faces.

By contrast, outside consultants can offer limited guidance. But only your C-suite should decide in the end. Why? Essentially, your team must rapidly consider the following elements.

Weak trends, although they are hard to discern. Start exploring using the PESTER outline: political, environmental, social, technological, economic, and regulatory factors. Expand your search to examine competitors and other substitutes.

Investigate poor results which have persisted over several years. In particular, try to highlight issues which prior leadership teams have delayed for the future. Look for insights in these four areas at a minimum: financial, customer, operations and human resources.

Not only is this task unsuitable for outsiders, it should also not be attempted by an individual. Conversely, this challenging diagnosis is best performed by your entire cross-functional leadership team in a single collective effort.

But even if they do a fine job, there’s more.

It’s tempting to treat threat zones as if they are ordinary problems. But instead of trying to find a quick fix, use the tools of long-term strategic planning.

After the zones have been identified in terms of their impact and timing, focus on no more than five. They should each represent the greatest dangers or opportunities.

In the next step, craft a long-term vision for a specific year, for example, 2050. Utilise several paragraphs to ensure that all the threat zones are being addressed. Only then should you convert the vision into measurable targets.

As you backcast from these 2050 metrics to the current year, create projects which tackle each of the zones.

Voila! Now, you have created a pre-emptive strategic plan which is built to handle specific threat zones. They’ll spur your leaders to take immediate action and no longer jeopardise your company.

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