When Did Strategy Become a Workshop?
I have been pondering this question for some time. When DID strategy become a workshop?
It always comes into sharp focus during the transition from one financial year to another, and particularly because when I receive desperate phone calls and emails seeking someone to facilitate a strategy workshop on short notice.
Now I need to emphasise that workshops are great for getting people together to agree the way forward, challenge the status quo and get on the same page. But there is so much more to developing strategy than a one-day workshop.
There is also a big difference between strategic thinking, strategic planning and strategy development. However, they often get lumped together. And then of course, there are those who incorrectly use ‘business planning’ as a catch-all for any thinking or planning.
To understand the difference, we have to reach back to the work of Henry Mintzberg who concluded that strategic thinking focuses on synthesis and strategic planning is about analysis. And strategy development involves capturing insights and external data to inform and shape the vision or direction.
The key is always to ensure that the ‘planning’ responds to the vision. If you dive too quickly into planning, the creativity and innovation of the vision diminishes. This is, in part, why many organisations particularly those in the public sector, struggle to innovate. Likewise, strategic thinking without the grounding of planning becomes a stimulating yet abstract exercise that fails to deliver.
A few simple questions at the outset will assist to clarify your purpose and guide the approach:
Why are you doing this?
What is the outcome you are looking for?
If the answer is to respond to your organisation’s business-planning process, then sure get a few people together to capture that which you have most likely already planned.
If the answer is something bigger, undefined or perhaps even un-imagined then you will need a whole lot more than a workshop.
There is a place for the strategy workshop but it is just one component of an end-to-end approach designed to ensure the level of consideration, effort and focus fits the outcome you really need.