Plan Like a General

Much has been written in recent years about the death of strategic planning, how the pace of change renders even a two year strategic vision dead in the water before it is half way done. This presents remarkable challenges to organisations which see the value in strategic vision, but are well aware of the pitfalls of looking too far into the future.

Mintzberg’s Emergent Strategy model provides an excellent starting point for planning and strategizing in a VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous) environment. In short Mintzberg’s model is based on strategy emerging from a combination of the strategic intent of the organisation (a vision if you will), but then responding to the changing (emerging) nature of the market and competitors. As opposed to Porter’s Five Forces Model, Mintzberg sees strategy as a fluid and flexible beast, rather than a forecast based on ‘facts’ at a particular point in time. No doubt, Porter’s model is still relevant for its structured understanding of the market and environment, but the typical artefacts of Porter’s process could be somewhat dated in a fluid, VUCA world.

Mintzberg’s strategic understanding is pre-eminent in today’s business environment, yet it tells us little about planning at the lower levels; how to actually achieve the agility and flexibility he advocates for a robust emergent strategy. In the words of Bill Conerly “Strategic planning is dead. The new king is execution and flexibility.”

What is needed is a flexible planning tool, robust enough to deal with the VUCA environment, connected to the higher strategic intent, but able to be used intuitively and quickly to respond to threats and opportunities as they emerge.

One type of organisation has such a planning method, and has used it effectively for decades. The Military.

Modern military planning at the lowest (tactical) and higher (Operational and Strategic) levels are based on a similar planning model and theory: the US Marines call it the Marine Corps Planning Process (MCPP), the British Army call it The Estimate (or 7 Questions), the US Army Calls it the Military Decision Making Process (MDMP). While the tactical and strategic planning processes do differ, they are fundamentally the same. An aggregation of these processes, might be called the Military Planning Processes (MPP).

The Disruption Group has developed a generic version of the MPP, designed from the features of a large number of similar models. The model has simplified the process significantly, and drawn on the various strengths of the methods used by a variety of military forces.

Some of the key features of the MPP are:

Connection to the higher intent. When framing the problem, the planning team does so in an environment constructed by the higher organisational intent and values. The whole planning process is based on achieving the higher strategic intent.

Breaking down the plan into several Key Events which must be achieved. A Key event is one which is identified by the planning team as being critical to the achievement of the desired endstate, or critical to countering an anticipated action in the market (or by a competitor). The disaggregation of the plan into Key Events allows for the easy design of multiple Courses of Action.

Wargaming multiple options to identify the best Course of Action. Structured wargaming of various courses of action ultimately determines a preferred course of action (often a combination of all the previous plans). It provides a simple yet robust way of improving a plan as part of the planning process.

Designing contingency plans as part of the preferred Course of Action. The MPP recognises that in a VUCA world no plan will survive ‘first contact’ with the real world. As such, contingencies (named branches and sequels) are identified an incorporated in the plan.

The role of the higher leader. By removing the higher leaders from the immediate planning process, the MPP enables better decision making and execution of the preferred plan. This equates to the separation of the planners and the decision makers. Rather than having the decision makers intimately involved in the detail of the plan, the MPP uses a decision making process based on ‘back briefs’ to the decision maker. This allows for the decision maker to make as an objective decision as possible.

Critical to the success of the MPP is the ability to scale planning as necessary. It can equally be scaled down for individual use for urgent planning in response to a crisis, or up scaled for use by integrated planning teams to develop plans for releasing a new product to market. Once the fundamentals are understood, the process becomes intuitive and is driven by the team or individual using it.

A VUCA environment is no reason not to engage in strategic planning; rather the robustness and flexibility of the strategic vision will largely drive the success of an organisation in a VUCA environment. Translating that vision into actionable, timely and relevant plans is the tough bit.

Even (or especially) when disruption seems to make planning futile it is vital to remember that “Failure to Plan is Planning to Fail”.

Tim Keeffe is a Principal Consultant with The Disruption Group. The next Plan Like a General workshop will be conducted in conjunction with the Australian Institute of Management in Brisbane on 17-18 March 2016.