What Matters Most About Strategy

We see it again and again: In search of the perfect strategic plan a client spends months developing very detailed matrices of goals, strategies, tactics, budgets, and schedules, only to find that the environment has changed by the time they finish, rendering much of their work irrelevant. Anyone embarking on a strategic plan would do well to remember that it is the exercise of making strategy that is beneficial, less so the detailed planning work. In a quote often attributed to both Churchill and Eisenhower, "planning is invaluable; plans are worthless".Kaihan Krippendorf in his Outthinker blog notes that done wrong, strategic planning often makes an organization run like a centrally planned economy; that is, rigidly directed by some five or ten-year plan that is largely irrelevant by the second year. The planning approach lacks the agility essential to survival in our fast-changing world.What matters most in the strategy-making exercise is that everyone--board, administration, faculty, students and parents--emerge with a shared understanding of strategic intent. Armed with a clear and succinct statement of where the school is going, administrators can make appropriate management decisions; e.g., do things that move in the intended direction while not doing things that don't. It sounds simple, even simplistic, but our field experience suggests that schools thrive when those inside are free to make their own choices aligned with strategic intent, not following someone else's plan.Can you reduce your strategy to a single-page statement of strategic intent? Forget about the matrices, spreadsheets, and appendices. Intent is where strategy adds value.