Strategic planning meetings can be a waste of time. Read this to make sure yours isn’t.

My team’s annual strategic planning meeting is next week. What should I do to prepare for this meeting?

My unpopular opinion this month is that strategic planning meetings are often a waste of time, and a distraction for smaller sized companies (revenues under $1 million).

I have attended too many pointless "strategic planning" meetings that end up turning into brainstorming sessions, and I hope you save yourself from hosting or attending these meetings. 

I'm not the first one to bash the idea of strategic planning. Henry Mintzberg* did over 30 years ago when he said:

“the term [strategic planning'] is an oxymoron. Strategy cannot be planned because planning is about analysis and strategy is about synthesis"

That is why, he asserts, the process has failed so often and so dramatically. Mintzberg (and I) instead recommend having an 'emergent strategy', which is a set of actions, or behavior, consistent over time, “a realized pattern [that] was not expressly intended in the original planning of strategy.”

The term “emergent strategy” implies that an organization is learning what works in practice. And this is exactly what a small business needs to do as it is gaining traction and figuring out how to scale it's offering.

A small organization with limited resources is better off spending a quarter of the meeting aligning on where they want to be in the next 1,2, and 3 years (be really specific).

The meeting should then flow straight into detailed planning for the next quarter. The team should identify only one goal/priority for the next quarter, and put a playbook together detailing execution to achieve that goal. Maybe it's a sales goal, or an operational one. Either way, it's a better use of your time to pick one thing and nail down the details, rather than leaving the meeting with lofty inspiring ideas but no plan on what to do next. Once you get close to quarter end, get the team back together. They should look back on what worked and what didn't work, and do the same thing for the next quarter.

*I used to read a lot of Henry Mintzberg's published articles in university (likely because he is a high profile thought leader, but also because he was a prof at my school) and so I have a lot of time for his ideas, and can assure you he is a reputable source for business info.