Though I champion free speech, use of the phrase "strategic planning" merits punishment on the breaking wheel: The speaker's limbs should be tied to the spokes of a large wheel that revolves slowly while an operator smashes the speaker's limbs with an iron hammer. Once the bones are broken, the wheel is mounted on a tall pole so birds could pick at the flesh of the still-living transgressor.
The strategic planning process has savaged our economy, ruined countless organizations and caused misery for untold millions.
I have nothing against planning, only "strategic planning." Everyone should plan. If all would substitute the word "planning" for the phrase "strategic planning" unemployment would drop below 4%, the divorce rate would be halved and borderline personality disorder would be disappear.
"We need a plan," conveys urgency. "We need a strategic plan" evokes the dread of a tedious process involving a quagmire of committees, soporific meetings, and multiple rewrites to produce a voluminous plan that is out of date before it is finished.
The planning process projects action; we will do something Monday at 9 AM. The strategic planning process guarantees paralysis. It begins with drafting a Mission Statement and Vision and Values Statement and mind-numbing committee discussions of whether the Vision and Values Statement should flow from the mission statement or vice versa.
Then the strategic planners engage in strategic analysis that calibrates the organizations strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (an acronym for this is SWOT or WOTS analysis) regarding the organization.
From these activities the organization derives its strategic goals and objectives, amidst great confusion over what is a goal and what is an objective. The process centers on pointless, and often bitter arguments about whether "accumulate knowledge capital" should be a strategic goal or an objective. Just when you think there is nothing more to say on this subject, some committee member will interject, "Are we confusing objectives with aspirations? To me "accumulation of knowledge capital" sounds more like an aspiration than on objective. This open the floodgates as another member insists that "accumulate knowledge capital" is neither a goal, nor an objective, nor an aspiration. It is a value and therefore belongs in the Vision and Values Statement. Another disagrees. She thinks "accumulating knowledge capital" is one of the organizations core competencies. (Organizations seduced by strategic planning have only "core competencies." Their lack of peripheral competencies may be part of their problem.)
Then someone asks, "Are we talking about short term goals, intermediate goals, or long-term goals?'' Pandemonium ensues as adherents of each option blather about "time horizons." Finally everyone agree on a five year strategic plan, reasoning that if it was good enough for Stalin and Mao, it's good enough for them.
If you have never been through the strategic planning process you might find my description implausible. Surely, grown men and women, adults in responsible positions, would not quibble for months over whether "accumulate knowledge capital" is a goal, objective, value, aspiration or core competency. Believe me, they do--on a good day. On a bad day they attend brainstorming sessions where a facilitator greets every inane utterance with "That's a great idea, Fred" and memorializes it on a flip chart with a red magic marker.
Later Fred and his cohorts will distill their collective wisdom by placing blue dots by the greatest of all the great ideas offered that day. Such sessions continue until the region's strategic reserve of magic markers is consumed.
By the time a final strategic plan is produced more nimble competitors, unburdened by the strategic planning process, have exploited market opportunities. Realizing that new market conditions have made its strategic plan is obsolete, the weakened organization immediately decides to launch a new strategic planning process.
No organization has ever benefited from the strategic planning process. Not one. Strategic planning reduced revenues and market share for every corporation that tried it. Every non-profit organization became more non-profitable after strategic planning.
Then why do organizations persist in strategic planning? For the same reasons the faithful sacrificed goats to Ball and Marduk--to propitiate the Gods. Strategic Planning is a sacred ritual decreed by High Priest of Consultariat. Thus organizations perform this ritual annually even though they would be better served by sacrificing inexpensive goats to Baal and Marduk.
The Catholic Church last lasted nearly two millennia, principally by part by eschewing strategic planning. "We have enough dogma already," a Vatican spokesman explained. "We call strategic planning 'Satan's snare.' Anyone caught engaging in it is punished on the breaking wheel."
Given its incalculable devastation, I would exempt certain organizations from my strict prohibition of strategic planning: Republican Party organizations in former slave states, the New York Yankees and Justin Beiber.