Strategic Planning or Planting

Growing a High Performing Organization

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast” – Peter Drucker

A McKinsey Quarterly survey of nearly 800 executives reported that only 45% of respondents were satisfied with the strategic-planning process. Only 23% indicated that major strategic decisions were made within its confines.

Strategic Planning is called the art of the general. The premise is to set up a sequence of moves that chaptalizes on your strengths and exploit your competitor’s weaknesses so that you win, and they lose in a competitive marketplace. Building a numbers-driven accountability culture is the goal. For decades this blood-on-the-field military language has been the conversation in organizational strategy development, but with limited success. 

Strategic Planting ™

If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll not get what you’ve always gotten- you’ll get less.

If you are frustrated with your business planning buy-in and outcomes, there is another way. I call it Strategic Planting™, the art of the gardener. Strategic Planting means focusing 100% energy and resources on culture building and ignoring outside competition, except to learn from their mistakes. Creating a life-giving culture with emotionally-engaged responsibility is the goal. When the CEO purposefully invest in a growing corporate environment where people know “for sure” that they have the freedom to take risks. When they are then also resourced to invent a new future of your industry, they gladly take responsibility. Performance improves intrinsically – instead of being manipulated to reach some accountable number. Doing Strategic Planting takes time and hard work, but it is a mind-shift worth considering.

Interested? Since all my consulting and coaching projects are handcrafted, often the first step is to schedule a conversation so we can get to know each other and explore how I might help you, so feel free to contact me.