Strategy & Vision

Ever have a friend or family member explain their job to you and it didn't make much sense? Well, I have one of those jobs. My job is about strategy, and helping people define it.

Many people try to over think it, but strategy is simple. Figure out where you're starting from, where you want to be, and how you plan to get there over some period of time. It's a vision for the future, something that you can feel passionate about.

Many books have been written by "experts" and then read by "professionals" trying to figure this simple thing out. It's not that the concept of strategy is hard, it's that thinking about it is. Take yourself for example. Have you really thought about where you'd like to be personally or professionally five years from now? What do you see as different from today? What are you doing, how are you contributing in the future? Or does your future look very much like today with the same old routine?

Two things make strategy hard. First, we don't spend a lot of time thinking about the future anymore. Most people (including IT leaders) don't like to think about it. "It's too abstract" they say, or "there are too many urgent things to deal with right now" and they put it off. I think this is a sign of our times. We live in the moment only. We used to be a nation of dreamers who had a vision for the future. Everything comes so fast now that we've shortened our perspective. Kennedy's plan to land a man on the moon and return him safely? is a great example of what I'm talking about. In that speech, Kennedy said:

I believe we possess all the resources and talents necessary. But the facts of the matter are that we have never made the national decisions or marshaled the national resources required for such leadership. We have never specified long-range goals on an urgent time schedule, or managed our resources and our time so as to insure their fulfillment. . . . .

I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish

The second thing that makes strategy difficult is accountability. When you develop a strategy you put a stake in the ground, communicate a goal, go on record. It makes you vulnerable to criticism if you fall short. As a rule, we're not big fans of this kind of score keeping.

But I say we should hold ourselves and our leaders to a higher standard. Not setting a vision for the future should be viewed and much worse that setting a target and falling some short. We should demand this from every aspiring leader. We should demand it of ourselves.

When was the last time you heard anyone talk about some goal that is more than a year or two in the future? How 'bout you and I? When did we last think about longer term goals?

So join me. Let's think about the future and make some plans.