Lowe’s increases its chances of success by creating master narratives across several different areas at once, such as robotics, mixed-reality tools, on-demand manufacturing, sustainability, and startup acceleration. 4. This is why planning must become completely oriented toward – and sourced from – the future, rather than from the past or the present. It’s Time to Fire Dilbert: Toward Dynamic Strategic Alignment, by Ron Gunn; about true organizational alignment Instead, use a time cone that measures certainty and charts actions. Nice, linear timelines offer a certain amount of assurance: that events can be preordained, chaos can be contained, and success can be plotted and guaranteed. How will the organization evolve to meet challenges on the horizon? To do this, I use a framework that measures certainty and charts actions, rather than simply marking the passage of time as quarters or years. That starts with developing foresight, typically a decade out. They can’t see the portfolio of possible futures, they can’t act on them, or both. “The present can be so noisy and business leaders are so close to it that it’s helpful to provide a fresh outside-in point of view,” says Johansen. It brings everyone up to a common level of knowledge. When members of Lowe’s Innovation Labs first began talking with the home improvement retailer’s senior executives about how disruptive technologies would affect the future, the presentations were well received but nothing stuck. Drug stores like CVS and Walgreens could be early buyers of mini-Gs; offering climate-controlled home delivery of prescriptions could eventually lead to using mini-Gs to collect blood or other diagnostic samples as the technology evolves. Indeed, when SAP conducts future planning workshops with clients, we find that they usually struggle to look beyond current models and assumptions and lack clear ideas about how to work toward radically different futures. Where do you want to have impact? Strategic Planning Resources. That comic spawned the LoweBot, which roamed the aisles of several Lowe’s stores during a pilot program in California and is being evaluated to determine next steps. What it will take to achieve success? Workshop 1 – Scenario Planning: A Strategic Approach to Preparing for the Future. The value is in letting yourself be provoked.”. But the present is too noisy,” says Bob Johansen, distinguished fellow at the Institute for the Future. The problem with traditional strategic planning is that the approach, which dates to the 1950s and has remained largely unchanged since then, is based on the company’s existing mission, resources, core competencies, and competitors. At its core, strategic planning is the process of defining the goals of your organization for the immediate future and the strategies by which these goals will be achieved and resourced. The writers come back with several potential story ideas in each area and work collaboratively with lab team members to refine it over time. I recently helped a large industrial manufacturing company with its strategic planning process. “And we’re always looking for that next suite of things that we should be working on.” Along the way, certain innovations, like the HoloRoom How-To, become developed enough to integrate into the larger business as part of the core strategy. Traditional strategic planning is dead. The future of the English planning system’s at stake. Enter Catriona Riddell - veteran of these pages , and one of the people we should all be listening to about strategic planning. While that process might feel like serious planning for the future, it results in a perpetual cycle of trying to catch up: to competitors, to new entrants, and to external sources of disruption. Neither are the one-, three-, or five-year strategic plans that have become a staple within most organizations, though they are useful for addressing short-term operational goals. Of course, the real world we all inhabit is a lot messier. For instance, most industries have moved from a quality improvement focus to one of process reengineering. “It’s really about painting a picture of a preferred future state that we can try to achieve while being flexible and capable of change as we learn things along the way.”, United States The result, ideally, is a flexible organization that is positioned to continually iterate and respond to external developments. Tactical decisions must fit into an organization’s strategy. The team’s leader at the time, Kyle Nel, is a behavioral scientist by training. That has become painfully clear as companies were caught flat footed by the COVID-19 crisis. The reason? Maps these questions into the Three Cone Model. “It’s all part of our strategy for staking a claim in the future.”. By now, you – like Beth – might feel pretty down on strategic planning. Considerations include technologies to develop, infrastructure to deploy, talent to hire, partnerships to forge, and acquisitions to make. Lots of organizations get stuck cycling between strategy and tactics. 5. They can also factor in the cultural history of the specific company with whom they’re working, says Arizona State University’s Johnson. For an example, let’s consider how a company that manufactures golf carts could use this approach when considering the future of transportation. Strategic planning is a fundamental component of organizational management and decision making in public, private, and nonprofit organizations. Strategy requires making choices about the future. The high-tech suit makes it easier to move heavy objects. By imagining multiple destinies and working back to the present, companies can prepare for anything. He helped develop a prototype for a three-month pilot with stock employees at a Christiansburg, Virginia store. “Planning for the future and all its unknowns is … I was concerned that any strategies we developed to confront future risk and find new opportunities would be only tactical in nature. What is possible? As you gain data and evidence and as you make progress on your actions, the beginning of the cone and your tactical category is always reset in the present day. “Not only did they immediately understand the value of the concept, they were convinced that if we didn’t build it, someone else would.”. Other comics followed and were greeted with similar enthusiasm – and investment, where possible. She is the author of The Signals Are Talking: Why Today’s Fringe Is Tomorrow’s Mainstream and The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity. Strategic planning of the future will no longer rely on gut feeling or conjecture, but rather will be backed by empirical data that supports the decision making process. It was a vision of a future in which Lowe’s might solve one of its long-standing struggles: the approximately US$70 billion left on the table when people are unable to start a home improvement project because they can’t envision what it will look like. Those that pull it off are rewarded. For any given uncertainty about the future — whether that’s risk, opportunity, or growth — we tend to think in the short- and long-term simultaneously. “This intensive, ongoing, agile strategizing is only possible because they’ve done their homework up front and they keep it updated.”, It’s impossible to predict what’s going to happen in the future, but companies can help to shape it, says Manna of Lowe’s. Think of the aging workforce, for instance. Neither are the one-, three-, or five-year strategic plans that have become a staple within most organizations, though they are useful for addressing short-term operational goals. The process involves gathering information about the factors and forces – technological, business, sociological, and industry or ecosystem trends – that are effecting change to envision a range of potential impacts. Importantly, the narrative is shared not only within the company but also out in the world. The Coming Crisis in Association Member Participation, by Ron Gunn; covers strategic planning implications for associations. The comic might have been fun and fanciful, but its intent was deadly serious. The strategic planning process can take some time, but it’s beneficial for everyone involved. Futures and foresight techniques can help you better anticipate and prepare for uncertain environments in the strategic planning process. Business leaders who take this approach understand that, despite the uncertainties of the future, there are drivers of change that can be identified and studied and actions that can be taken to better prepare for – and influence – how events unfold. Anyone would soon be able to post photos and videos to the web, and there was an entire mobile gaming ecosystem on the verge of being born. The new reigning ruler in strategy is focused on execution and flexibility, a responsive growth strategy. To understand strategic planning, we need to first define a strategic plan. It might go against your biological wiring, but give yourself and your team the opportunity to think about the short- and long-term simultaneously. Chief strategy officers and those responsible for choosing the direction of their organizations are often asked to facilitate “visioning” meetings. With so much uncertainty surrounding autonomous vehicles, 5G, robotics, global trade, and the oil markets, the company’s senior leaders needed a set of guiding objectives and strategies linking the company’s future to the present day. So nothing too serious. Business leaders who want to be better prepared for an uncertain and disruptive future will build future planning as a strategic capability into their organizations and create an organizational culture that embraces the approach. Futurists like Johansen had forecast a global pandemic as early as 2009. Deep uncertainty merits deep questions, and the answers aren’t necessarily tied to a fixed date in the future. “Once you saw not just Amazon Echo but also Google Home and other copycat speakers, it would increase your confidence that you were moving more towards a voice-first era rather than a gesture-first era,” Brown says. I start by defining the cone’s edge, using highly probable events for which there is already data or evidence. 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