Strategic and Business Planning Mindsets May 18, 2010, by Peter Mirus in Coaching
Last week I conducted a “Strategic Planning & Business Planning” workshop, during which I had the honor of presenting to an interested and mentally acute group of attendees from for-profit, non-profit, and government enterprises.
The goal of the workshop was to draw out the necessary difference in roles between a strategic plan and a business plan, as well as how the two plans harmonize with each other.
Whenever I present on this subject, a good deal of interest is always placed on the difference in mindset between strategic and business planning.
Strategic planning gives freer rein to the heart and to the imagination. The challenge of strategic planning is to free your mind to envision what your organization would look like at the peak of its effectiveness.
Business planning, on the other hand, requires a somewhat more pragmatic mindset—the challenge here is to discipline your mind through the rigor of proving the sustainability of your strategy.
The reason the question of “mindset” is interesting is because it begs this question: what “heads” need to be involved when going through the process for either kind of plan? It seems as if each plan requires a different key individual to drive the process. And to a large extent, this may be true. Frequently, I have heard it expressed that it is very difficult for one person to change back and forth between the two mindsets on a regular basis, and certainly some people engage in one mode better than in another.
Over the course of my career, I have observed a number of beneficial business partnerships where the CEO (or similar) primarily took the lead in strategic planning and the COO (or similar) primarily took the lead in business planning. These relationships, where each role balances the other, can often work wonderfully.
Correspondingly, I have seen a number of relationships where the difference between the “dreamer” and the “businessman” seemed ideal at first, but proved to be divisive: the “dreamer” felt too constrained by applied business logic and “businessman” despaired of ever forcing the dreams into bottom-line context.
At Trinity, I have assembled a team of capable professionals who each add something unique to the strategic and business planning processes. The differences between us are important, and the different mindsets are necessary to achieve a good balance and “put the whole thing together”. We all work well with each other, with just enough firm difference of opinion to keep things interesting!
In all business pursuits, the quality and “role appropriateness” of the people involved is what will drive success—and strategic/business planning is no exception.
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