I was recently asked to be an involved stakeholder in planning
our department’s strategic focus for the next year. This was one of several
strategic planning workgroups that take place and this was focused on
developing our “Focus 5” of the next year. These then flow into the company’s
focus which then feeds into the enterprise level. As a newly promoted manager
of a team focused on managing specialty drug costs for a health insurance
company, I immediately had a romanticized view of us sitting in a conference
room for hours, drinking way too much coffee, where we eventually develop a new
innovative idea which will change healthcare forever. Lo and behold, it was a
60 minute meeting with poor attendance where we discussed the slide deck
template for the next quarterly business review. There was no strategy
discussion. No conversation about internal and external forces. Worst of all,
no coffee.
Kaplan and Beinhocker discuss similar pain points by
comparing strategy sessions to a “primitive tribal ritual” (2003). While this
article was reassuring that the issues I saw were not unique and this is a common
issue many corporations face, I was nevertheless shocked at how much apathy and
ignorance there is towards strategic planning. The article stressed how
important the preparation and the softer aspects of the meeting – such as
attendee list – are in terms of actual making the planning sessions productive.
However, there is a balance between formality and structure versus more of a
brainstorming or whiteboard session.
The article mentions how real strategy sessions are informal
conversations in the hallway or on a flight. Thinking to my personal career, I was
at a happy hour recently with several coworkers and ended up having an intense
conversation with one of our medical directors about the strategic goal of our
clinical department. While I agree that the million dollar idea may not spur
out of this strategic planning sessions, these articles taught me that the goal
of strategic planning is bigger than that. The goal is about defining – and documenting
– the plan for the corporation. One of the most important aspects is also
having that communicated across all levels of the company for alignment and
creating a common goal.
There will always be the hallway conversations, the late
night phone calls, or the epiphany while sitting in traffic but strategic
planning is bigger than that.
I just hope we can learn from Jeff Bezos and ban PowerPoint
Sean Burke
