The Strategy Endgame - Robinson Enterprises

A Pragmatic Discourse on Strategic Planning


Rhonda Robinson, Principal & Corporate Strategist for Robinson Enterprises, LLC, has been researching, teaching about, participating in and consulting on business and corporate strategy for over 30 years. In her research work, Rhonda has discovered significant changes in how executives, managers and companies as a whole, view and make connections to long-term planning. Not surprisingly, research results indicate many executives feel they are wasting a lot of valuable time on strategic planning and are either fundamentally dissatisfied with the outcomes or strongly disinclined to engage in the process.

Rhonda has evaluated and identified the most compelling reasons behind this apparent dissatisfaction, and has summarized the most common constituent components driving the aversive mindset. “It’s a multidimensional paradox involving two predominating factors: a fundamental misperception of the dynamics behind the planning processes relative to the strategy endgame, coupled with a lack of knowledge about the role and requisite competencies of the strategist or consultant selected to facilitate the entire process.” In an effort to increase understanding of what strategic planning is all about, Rhonda writes about her “prospect” interviews with executives in a Q&A format; revealing the intrinsic nature and value of strategic planning and offering advice on how to quell aversions and improve satisfaction levels.

Executives are questioning:
§    What exactly is strategic planning and what is the compelling rationale behind engaging in the exercise?
§    Why would I spend valuable resource dollars on strategic planning in the midst of chaos? The current economic climate is already straining corporate purse strings and with personnel cutbacks and fewer resources, it’s a day-to-day crisis just surviving the press of business.
§    Why do some executives feel compelled to opt in and take their company through the strategic planning exercise, while others opt out?
§    If the endgame boils down to leveraging speculation, what changes are you recommending?
§    So you’re saying the real “strategic work” starts with “strategic thinking” about where an organization wants to be positioned in the marketplace, and you build on that from the inside out?
§    What specifically do you mean when you refer to fundamentally distinguishing dynamics?
§    What are the requisite competencies of a strategist or consultant who facilitates a strategic planning process, and what role do they play in executing a long-range strategy?

Following are excerpts of Robinson’s Prospect interviews:
(To download the entire interview document Click Here)

§    Prospect: What exactly is strategic planning and what is the compelling rationale behind engaging in the exercise?

Robinson: Strategic planning is about making choices to affect better outcomes. A well-designed strategy produces clear correlations between economic outcomes relative to your chosen brand position, and represents a clear departure from status quo in setting out a long-range plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal. Properly authored and orchestrated, a strategic plan provides a pathway to achieving optimized and measurably higher business performances that successfully differentiate clients in their market. When properly implemented and executed, a strategic plan affords favorable and suitable circumstances for an organization to take advantage of opportunities that can ultimately result in maximizing shareholder and stakeholder return on investment (ROI). It really boils down to knowing “how” to connect the dots and “when” to exploit opportunities. It’s an entrepreneurial mindset with a clear focus on winning that permeates the ranks, and it is rooted in “ownership thinking”―the flipside of hierarchal entrenchment in maintaining status quo.

In many instances, executives and managers are better able to assimilate and define what strategic planning is by first understanding what it is not. A strategic plan is not about developing a five-year budget predicated on resource allocations that are somehow tied to a nebulous market share projection goal. Developing a strategy starts with identifying changes that are born out of a desired brand position and rooted in a “living process” for dealing with ambiguity and uncertainty—an opportunities-driven mindset for leveraging speculation in the marketplace. Although budgeting does play a relational role in strategic planning, the relationship is demystified as simply this: Budgeting is an annual event and strategic planning is an evolutionary process. The point where the two intersect involves budgeting to the plan, not planning to the budget!

§    Prospect: Why would I spend valuable resource dollars on strategic planning in the midst of chaos? The current economic climate is already straining corporate purse strings and with personnel cutbacks and fewer resources, it’s a day-to-day crisis just surviving the press of business.

Robinson: Over the years I’ve developed a “Top Ten List” of the most prevalent challenges executives face on a daily basis. The number one item on the list is “being buried by the press of day-to-day business.” In essence, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy that propagates the “chicken & the egg” dynamic, and that dynamic will continue to perpetuate itself, until executives make conscious choices to stop the cycle. A strategic plan is a tool that provides you with opportunities to greatly reduce your vulnerability to the prevailing conditions you’ve described. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying that having a strategic plan makes you bulletproof to economic instability and environmental turbulence. What I’m hearing you say, though, is that you’re feeling trapped and without options on how to effectively manage the hand that’s been dealt. Having viable strategies provides avenues for continuous evaluation and nimble repositioning, so you’re better able to exploit innovative ideas and opportunities along the way. As you develop your opportunities, you’re afforded occasions to get a jump on your competitors, which makes you less likely to become trapped to begin with. Although circumstances might dictate everyone feels the pinch to some degree or another, the endgame is a matter of who is able to reach high ground and stake their claim first. It’s also prudent to clarify that a strategic plan is not designed to sit on the shelf and be used occasionally as a manual to bail you out of crises; but rather, it’s a tool designed to enable refitting the ship at sea with a well-trained crew that’s innovative, flexible and nimble, instead of having to continually pull into dry-dock to repair your vessel.

§    Prospect: What are the requisite competencies of a strategist or consultant who facilitates a strategic planning process, and what role do they play in executing a long-range strategy?

Robinson: I’ll offer an abbreviated overview of what I recommend you look for in a strategists or consultant: A Corporate Strategist is able to assist organizations in setting a direction, establishing a formal decision-making process, and defining the scope of the organization over the long-term; and through proper alignment of resources, facilitate the organization’s ability to achieve a competitive edge within challenging markets, in order to meet customer needs and fulfill stakeholder expectations. A skilled strategist facilitates “strategic thinking” processes that assist an organization in designing plausible views of the “strategic work” it might undertake in building possible futures for the business.

Business strategies involve strategic analysis and strategic choices that serve to create conditions favorable for exploiting new opportunities. Strategic implementation is about innovative ways to engineer and enhance a businesses ability to compete successfully in a particular market. Robinson Enterprises, for example, engages scenario-planning techniques and integrates performance matrix analyses that measure an organization’s product & service leadership, customer intimacy and operational excellence. These integrated techniques serve to summarize key issues arising from the businesses internal position and external environmental influences, and correlate the organization’s relative market positioning to its overall performance within the corporate culture.

In essence, a strategic consultant’s job is to work himself or herself out of a job! Too many times consultants create a situation where the organization becomes dependent on the consultant’s strategic abilities and skills, which winds-up crippling the organization’s ability to move ahead with tackling the work at hand independently. Instead of becoming a permanent fixture within an organization, a reputable consultant will assist the organization’s executives, leaders and members in developing the disciplines, tools and strategic thinking skills necessary to continue on with the organization’s strategic work of seeking out viable opportunities that will build and sustain top-line organizational growth, while being ever mindful of keeping reasonable pace and staying vigilant about keeping change alive.

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