Successfully address uncertainty about the future by employing playful ideas, provocative questions, and passionate people in your strategic planning.

1. Strategic Planning for an Uncertain Future:
Playful, Provocative, Passionate
Penny McKinlay, Communications Consultant, Saskatoon
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2. How can you prepare a
relevant strategic plan
when you can’t predict
the future?

3. “Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position. But certainty is an
absurd one.” Voltaire
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4. A plan that is set in stone just won’t work.
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5. The business you are in today may not be the business you
are in tomorrow.

6. Netflix went from distributing movies to producing them.

7. Amazon went from selling books to selling storage space.

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Traditional strategic planning processes that focus on the
past, on the numbers, on the status quo are doomed to fail.

9. Strategic planning can also be intimidating.
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10. Stir things up by being:
Playful
Provocative
Passionate

11. Playful Ideas
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12. Take advantage of differences rather than accommodating or
ignoring them.

13. Focus on the minority:
OXO designed kitchen utensils to help people with arthritis;
that means they work better for everyone.

14. Change your strategy:
If your customers don’t come to you, go to them.

15. Provocative Questions
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16. i_Stock000008993070
“Bold questions force others to get out of their comfort zones
and stretch for solutions they normally would never search
for.”
“5 Power Skills for Discovering Radical Ideas,” Vijay Govindarajan and
Jatin Desa

17. Don’t accept the initial response. Dig deeper to uncover the
underlying cause of the problem.
Are traffic jams caused by not enough roads? Or is the
problem suburban sprawl and lack of public transit?

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Hold a pre-mortem instead of a post-mortem.
Step back from your initial excitement about a project and tap
into your experience and intuition to get a better picture of
how things will work out.

19. Ask tough questions:
• “What will be the impact of this strategy on internal and
external stakeholders?”
• “What are the top 2 or 3 things that must go right for this
strategy to work?”
• “What are the drawbacks?”
• “What might be its long-term effects?”

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Embrace constraint.
“Frugal thinking forces individuals to be highly creative just to
accomplish routine jobs. It is not about being cheap. With the
daily pressures of limited time, resources, and money, it is
crucial to help everyone find more creative ways to
innovate.”
“5 Power Skills for Discovering Radical Ideas,” Vijay Govindarajan and Jatin Desa

21. “Constraints make you more creative, or at least that’s how it
works for me. If you’ve got all kinds of options available to
you, then how do you know what to do or where to begin?
But if all I’ve got to work with is some wood and cement and
maybe a bicycle wheel, I’m ready to go.” Jock Brandis
http://room201.org/glimmer-book-review-part-3-of-4/

22. Passionate People
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23. “But we’ve
always
done it this
way.”
We kill people’s passion by treading roughshod on their
ideas.

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• “Could you help me understand how
you came to believe that?”
• “Could you clarify that point for me
with an illustration or example?”
• “How does what you’re saying overlap,
if at all, with what I’m suggesting?”
Try understanding the other person’s position rather than
defending your own:
The Opposable Mind, Roger L. Martin

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Ask teams to pitch their ideas as if they were on The
Dragon’s Den. The audience enjoys being the “dragon.” They
probe for more information and give in-depth consideration
to other people’s ideas.

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Ask people to tell a happy story about the future of their
organization. The focus is on developing a positive vision and
emphasizes solutions rather than analysing current
problems. It prioritizes the issues but also provides specifics.
“Moving from Strategic Planning to Storytelling,” Roger L. Martin

27. Employees believe the organization needs a new office. Their
happy story will describe classrooms with all the latest
technology, a lunch room, and an outdoor patio.

28. Developing Your Ideas
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29. Don’t stop at developing a list of great ideas.
Address what needs to be done in order to actually make
them happen.
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30. You can’t do it all.
Take a look at what you should
STOP
START
CONTINUE

31. Refine your idea by continuing to ask questions:
• “What specific capabilities will we need to develop in
order for this plan to succeed?”
• “If we pursue this strategy, what are we deciding not to
do?”

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“Resilience is the best strategy for those realistic enough to admit that
they can't predict the future with more accuracy than others. Resilience
isn't a bet on one outcome, instead, it's an investment across a range of
possible outcomes, a way to ensure that regardless of what actually
occurs (within the range), you'll do fine.” Seth Godin

33. Build organizational resilience by being:
Playful
Provocative
Passionate

34. “think about strategy as a way of dealing productively with
life’s inevitable uncertainty, by continuously making and
updating your bets about the future.”
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“Placing Strategic Bets in the Face of Uncertainty,” Roger Martin

35. Resource Materials
Four Tips for Better Strategic Planning, Ron Ashkenas
http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/10/four-tips-for-better-strategic-planning
5 Power Skills for Discovering Radical Ideas, Vijay Govindarajan and Jatin Desa
http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/10/five-power-skills-for-discovering-radical-ideas/
Gamestorming: A playbook for innovators, rulebreakers, and changemakers, David Gray, Sunni
Brown & James Macanufo
“The Psychology of Tough Decisions,” Debra Kaye
http://www.fastcompany.com/3012537/creative-conversations/do-you-use-intel-or-intuition-the-
psychology-of-tough-decisions?partner=newsletter
“Moving from Strategic Planning to Storytelling,” Roger L. Martin
http://blogs.hbr.org/martin/2010/06/strategies-as-happy-stories.html
“Placing Strategic Bets in the Face of Uncertainty,” Roger L. Martin
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/01/placing_strategic_bets_in_the.html
The Opposable Mind: Winning through Integrative Thinking, Roger L. Martin
“Innovation on the Fringes: How ecosystems use inclusion and difference,” Max St John
http://www.nixonmcinnes.co.uk/2013/02/12/innovation-on-the-fringes-how-ecosystems-use-inclusion-and-
difference/
“The First Strategic Question Every Business Must Ask,” Anthony K. Tjan
http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/02/the-first-strategic-question-every-business-must-ask/
“Accuracy, Resilience and Denial,” Seth Godin
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2014/01/accuracy-resilience-and-denial.html

36. Penny McKinlay, Communications Consultant
http://pennymckinlaycommunication.ca
mckinlaypenny@gmail.com
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