Marketing as Strategy

Can strategic planning help me with urgent problems?

Yes and no. Yes, in that companies who do a good job of strategic planning have far fewer urgent issues to deal with at the top management level. No, because by the time a strategic problem becomes urgent, it's probably too late. All good strategic activity - if it has any value at all - revolves around creating advantages that are difficult to copy. Usually, this difficulty stems from the fact that such advantages take either a lot of time or a lot of money to create. When you face urgent strategic issues, you don't have a lot of time, and this means the only way out is to spend a lot of money. This is why we strongly encourage companies to pay attention to their strategic planning before issues become critical.

Can we do strategic planning in a one-day retreat?

You can do strategic planning in a one-day retreat, but it probably won't be that good. In our experience, planning needs to be done in three meetings - a "pre-meeting" to organize your team's thinking around the research data needed for good decision making, the central "planning meeting" and an "implementation meeting" where you put nuts and bolts details on the who, what and when of your strategy implementation. We notice that people who skip the first meeting have far weaker data for their planning as well as poor team buy-in on the process, while those who skip the last meeting have poor follow through on their implementation. If this sounds like your company, you should call one of the CSSP professionals to see how we can put some teeth back into your planning.

Is it OK to skip the planning process for a year?

A few of our clients do this. While we don't recommend this as a standard practice, there are situations where strategic planning every other year can make sense. This is usually true when your implementation activities all take more than 12 months, and where there is less dramatic change in your marketplace and competitive dynamics.

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