Strategic planning makes some fatal assumptions:
1. The future can be predicted.
2. We correctly perceive our current situation.
3. The people in the plan will act appropriately.
4. We will have time to act before we are overrun by events.
5. The problem(s) we are solving will last long enough for our solution(s) to still be relevant.
Sorry to burst everyone's bubble. But, the current economic condition is chaos. There is a bullet out there with your company's name on it. You will be dead before you hit the ground.
The best thing you can do is to transform your organization so it can be agile enough to innovate in every coming moment. Lean your current operations? Sorry, everybody else is doing that, too. No advantage there. Innovate with your products or services? Get started now. Innovate with your business model? Sorry, most board rooms won't let that happen. And, who has the courage to innovate their management model?
Most organizations do not have the culture, structure or lack thereof to transform. Fear needs to be driven out of the organization. Yet, often it is the basis of management. People will not take risks when they are punished for failure.
Go read Gary Hamel's The Future of Management and W. Edwards Deming's The New Economics.
If you are not already in a forward thinking company that will question its theory of management, business or product strategies, then your days of employment are numbered. There is a competitor out there that will, and they want your customers. The fact that you are inside a large beast just means it will take longer to die. On the other hand, it will provide a rich feast.
