Removing the Guesswork from Strategy

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

  Business Case   Portfolio Management   Strategy  

A colleague of mine who has a reputation for being a little cynical declares strategic planning as “an exercise designed to prove the stupidity of executives.” His argument is that the traditional annual-planning cycle is almost certain to fail because there are so many unknowns in the process. We are identifying strategic priorities for (usually) a 12-month reporting period that doesn’t start for another several months--and trying to accurately predict targets for those priorities 18 months or more out is going to be difficult at best.

He also argues that projects are approved to support those strategies with only the most rudimentary business casing and justification, resulting in “best guess” selection and almost inevitable substantive change during execution of those projects.

It is undoubtedly a cynical perspective, but I do have some sympathy for his position. Most organizations will go through significant change within a portfolio before delivering results, and while that change isn’t necessarily a bad thing (it’s better than delivering the wrong stuff), it does suggest that there are opportunities to improve the process.

The problem with trying to improve annual planning and project selection is that it is a well-established, enterprise-wide approach with a long cycle--you simply can’t change it overnight. …

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