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In the Spring of 2020, we completed our last strategy planning contract with an organization. Throughout the pandemic we not only refused strategy planning contracts, but we also dissuaded organizations from undertaking strategy planning. When some of our business depends on strategy planning…
How crazy was that?
That’s a good question but we have a good answer. The context of the COVID-19 pandemic was one of disruption…continuous, unrelenting disruption. Strategy planning, to be successful, requires general stability for a time horizon of a determinable period, typically three to five years. In those first two years of the pandemic, stability for more than a few months, weeks, or, sometimes, even days was not possible. None of us knew what was coming next, when it would happen, how and if we could deal with it, and what it would mean for our businesses and organizations. At that time the best and only strategy plan was to be extremely nimble and willing to change direction overnight if needed. For this reason, we felt the ethical thing to do was to encourage our clients to be resilient, do whatever was needed to get by, and put off strategy planning until the future became clearer.
That time is now.
We’re offering strategy planning again and we are beginning to help some clients with strategy planning projects. Still, it is different. There has been a shift in how organizations and businesses work, where they work, and what they are able to do with their clients. At the start of the pandemic, everyone was clamoring to “get back to normal.” Many people still hope for that. What they may not realize, though, is that “normal” doesn’t exist anymore. Organizations and businesses have all had to adapt to the disruption of the pandemic again, again, and again. With each adaptation they moved a little further from the way things used to be and a new normal slowly, often imperceptibly, emerged.
Today, strategy planning has to take into consideration the new normal and an organization or business must adjust to embrace and integrate the new normal. When we created Adaptive Strategy Planning™, we never imagined there would be a COVID-19 pandemic that would bring on continuous disruption for three years. With hindsight, we now realize that Adaptive Strategy Planning™ was made for a moment such as this.
Adaptive Strategy Planning™ is designed to help organizations and businesses engage in strategy planning that identifies, embraces, and integrates the new normal which has emerged for them over the past three years.
If your organization or business can project even modest stability for a time horizon of at last three years, give us a call to talk about how Adaptive Strategy Planning™ can be helpful now.
Are you ready to think about strategy planning again now? Are you ready to embrace your new normal? Give us a call to learn more about Adaptive Strategy Planning™ and download this description from our website.
It’s An Unrecorded Hit!
First, thank you to everyone who participated in our April 19th online seminar, Preparing for Controversy in the Fog of (Culture) War. But there is bad news and good news.
The bad news is that our recording of the event was incomplete and it has a few “issues.” This means we are going to re-record it before we post it. Unfortunately, the re-recorded version will not have the live questions from participants, but the core content will be there. We’ll let you know as soon as it is ready to be viewed on our website.
The good news is that the seminar was extremely well received. Over half the participants took the time to complete an online evaluation and 100% of those indicated they had a better understanding of how controversies emerge, know more about how controversy and conflict are different, more clearly understand the conflict stages, understand better the cycle of intractable conflict, understand better how to respond to controversy in a way that prevents conflict, and feel more confident in their ability manage controversy. Ninety percent indicated they knew more about how to forecast controversy.
Responses to open-ended evaluation questions provided great feedback on what was most helpful about the seminar and what participants would like to learn more about in the future.
In all, the turnout, participation, and evaluation responses tell us we should not be done with this topic. And we aren’t. It’s too important for our time of such deep ideological divisions. Stay tuned!
In the meantime, check out some of our Change Maker interviews on the Tenacious Change YouTube Channel.