Planning is not strategy

Strategy and planning are two different things - not helped by the fact that the phrase “strategic planning” exists.

Roger Martin discusses this in his Harvard Business Review video and outlines the following:

• A strategy is a series of actions designed to win in a set marketplace
• Planning can be for anything and not serve any goal

You can plan to do X,Y,Z by the end of the quarter and be disappointed as you have not achieved anything (other than having executed your plan). Planning meetings that have no strategy and alignment will ultimately end up with a set of activities that are not reinforcing one another.

Planning is easy because the customer is you - you are in complete control. Strategy involves winning in a marketplace so you need customers to buy - which is out of your control.

Planning inside your control is comfortable as you can determine what success is (e.g. having completed everything on the plan). Whether the plan is useful or not is usually an afterthought.