Plan or Hope?
Plan, or hope?
Your systems have a plan. Your structure has a plan. Does your revenue? Six questions to find out.
The board signed off. There’s a goal, strategies under it and actions under those. It looks like a plan.
Now look at what’s in it. Budget. Headcount. Actions. Owners. Dates. Every line is something you control. Most of it is what worked before, and what you did before isn’t built for tomorrow.
What decides revenue isn’t on the list. Customers change what they buy and why. Competitors move. Segments blur.
In this climate, they rewrite your plan every week.
A plan that only works if conditions hold isn’t a plan. It’s a hope.
Six questions. Answer yes or no.
Can you name the two or three bets your plan is making on customers and the market?
Are your strategies more than the revenue number broken into pieces?
Would your managers name the same strategies you would?
If a key assumption breaks next quarter, does your plan say what changes?
Is there a line in your plan for what the shift opens up, not just what it threatens?
Mid-quarter, could you tell whether it’s working, before the number comes in?
Mostly yes: you have a plan.
Keep testing its bets. Mostly no: you have a hope. You’re not alone, and it’s fixable.
A proud, capable team. A plan with no room for anything outside the building.
of the leadership team described planning as “essentially a budget battle.”
of executives said the same.
mentioned the market, or a competitor who could disrupt them.
This was a large hospitality organization, brilliant at execution. The pattern isn’t unique to hospitality. We’ve seen it across pharma, medical devices, technology and enterprise services.
What the thinkers say
Roger Martin
Planning feels comfortable because it covers what you control. Strategy is uncomfortable because it’s a bet on customers, and you don’t control them.
Richard Rumelt
Mistaking goals for strategy is one of the most common causes of bad strategy. Good strategy starts with a diagnosis of what changed.
Henry Mintzberg
Only 10% to 30% of intended strategy gets carried out. The rest emerges as the world moves.
McKinsey
Companies that moved resources the most returned 10.8% a year to shareholders, against 2.5% for those that moved them least.
What a plan does that a hope can’t
- It names its bets on customers and the market, so you know what has to be true.
- It watches for the signal that a bet is breaking, and changes course before the quarter closes.
- It has room for what the shift opens up. In this climate, the opportunity moves as fast as the risk.
- It starts with the science and strategy: the revenue goal, the strategies that move it, the actions that prove it. Then the customer engagement approach.
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