Management over the last 50 years has been driven by strategic planning. Sometimes it has been done well. Often it is little better than a good chance to catch up with peers, have a few sherbets, and get away from the office for a few days.
After the session, the production of a new plan, and articulation of targets nobody really believes in, life gets back to normal.
Familiar?
The fundamental flaw is that we expect to be able to plan for a future we cannot predict.
This is in no way to ridicule the process of gathering information, generating ideas and views about the way forward, and the means to measure the success or otherwise of the efforts.
Those efforts are essential, they provide the intellectual fodder necessary to at least avoid some of the bigger potholes, and make informed and sensible decisions.
However, they miss the essential truth that planning for a future you cannot predict is bound to miss the mark.
The solution?
Instead of looking for the answers to questions thrown up by analysis of the data we can collect, look instead for questions that need an answer.
Setting out to answer a big question, go exploring the unknown, is way more powerful than figuring out how to change the status quo.
You do not have to be a Steve jobs or Elon Musk to see a big problem that needs solving, they are around us every day at a local level, we just have to see them.
A client of mine is busily solving the dual problems of poor acoustics and heat insulation of our windows and doors using European technology adapted to local environments. I watched a presentation last week by a local franchisee of ‘Bark Busters’. This is now an international business aimed at managing the behaviour of dogs, specifically dogs that bark. Perhaps neither are solutions to global problems like global warming, but both are big problems to those who are in contact with them.
Look for problems to solve, rather than extrapolating the present to a bigger version of itself.
