I wrote a book on consulting. I am writing another book on leading change. This quote by Dwight D. Eisenhower is in both books.

“In planning for battle, I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable”

This quote is attributed to Eisenhower in Richard Nixon’s book Six Crises. It is also mentioned by General David Sarnoff’s published papers. (Sarnoff was a Brigadier General on Eisenhower’s communications staff during World War II and the CEO of RCA before and after the war.)

“In planning for battle, I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable”

“This makes no sense,” my primary editor, my wife, said to me in frustration. “First, he says plans are useless then he says they’re essential; which is it.”

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this reaction. When I facilitated leadership teams at strategy off-sites, some leaders said “Huh?” Then, as now, I tried to explain.

“What Eisenhower is saying is that the plan itself isn’t what’s important. No battle ever went according to a plan. What’s important is the process of planning, the thought that goes into anticipating the enemies movements, and advantages and disadvantages. That thinking allows the general to act and react during the battle not slavishly follow a plan.”

This explanation didn’t work with those leaders either. I put it down to the strange way I think and therefore communicate. I take in information intuitively, filling in blanks, and making connections that aren’t apparent to seventy-five percent of the population. So I talk in a shorthand that assumes others make the same connections I do. I get the “Huh?” reaction a lot.

I tried the other similar Eisenhower quote:

“No battle was ever won following a plan, but no battle was ever won without one.”

Worse and more of it. “Which is it?”

To me, this concept is critical for business strategy. It ain’t about the report or the deck from the strategy consultant,. “It’s the thought that counts.”

Why is it that strategy consultants find that clients fail to implement the pristine strategies they design? It’s because the client didn’t do the thinking; the consultant did.

To be fair this complaint is old. These days many expert strategy consultants involve the client in data and framework analysis and conclusion formulation. Process consultants facilitate leadership teams in gathering the data, analyzing it, and formulating strategies. However, I’m sure somewhere there is still a client who makes the cringeworthy comment:

“Change? We don’t want to change; we just want a new strategy.”

Among business majors, MBAs, consultants, and some client managers, the word strategy has a golden aura, delivered in a flash of inspiration from some mystical place – the collective unconscious?- or wherever really smart people get their ideas.

A strategy is a plan. That’s it – just a plan. Sure, it’s “a plan to achieve an objective in the face of competition.” Still just a plan.

I’m told that the word strategy comes from the Greek word strategos, meaning generalship. We might ask why pick the language of war? Business leaders often use war words, conquest, slaughter, defeat, decimation. I don’t really get that. I mean, we are just talking about whether customers shell out shekels for your product or the other guy’s. But what do I know.

I know that a strategy is just a plan.

Cue the Eisenhower quote:

“In planning for battle, I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable”

Remember:

“It’s the thought that counts.”

Here is an outline of what I think the thought is:

Understand (collect data and analyze)

• Understand the customer,
  • Who -demographics, psychographics, buying history, share of wallet
  • What they need, want, wish for
  • Where – location, preferred channels
  • When – buying seasons,
  • Why – purchase criteria
• Understand the competition
  • Who – Major players and minor, alternative products
  • What – offers, business models, advantages and disadvantages
  • When – do competitors’ seasons vary?
  • Why- customers buy from them (and not you)
• Understand other forces (suppliers, community standards, regulation, etc.) that shape consumption and competition
• Understand ourselves
  • What are we good at, business model (how we get revenue, operate, make profit)
  • What are we traditionally not good at -why- can we innovate-improve or integrate ourselves out of this problem.

Look for trends rather than point in time conclusions. What is different? What trends that may not be recognized? What new technologies that may change the game? What new groups of customers, new needs, anything that presents opportunities? Is there something in the standard marketplace that you can change, improve, find another way of doing, stop doing because it adds no value?

Plan (There is really nothing mystical about a plan)

• What are you going to do and why? (specific actions)
  • In product or service design ( How can you differentiate hardware or physical stuff, software – or use instruction, service – personalized connection to the customer).
  • In marketing (Price, place, promotion)
  • In operations (Make vs. Buy, Quantity, Quality, Timeliness)
• How are you going to do that? (Detailed inputs, activities, outputs and metrics for each and contingency plans for when things get off track.)
• Who is going to do what? (Actual people who will be held accountable for each action.)
• When? (A lack of specificity or over-optimism in deadlines is one reason for strategy implementation failure.)

Yes, it is complicated and there are many unknowns and unknowables, but still doable.

Who plans?

Executives formulate strategy and operations managers execute it. Yeah, right. Or worse strategy consultants formulate strategy, present the deck to the C-suite executives and operations managers executes it.

What’s wrong with this picture?

People have been separating the planning function from implementation since Frederick Winslow Taylor wrote Scientific Management in 1911, despite numerous social science experiments that prove how inefficient this practice is. Understanding gets lost in the hand-off. Operators don’t get the “why” of the new strategy or they fixate on one output metric (quantity) and short circuit another (quality) with disastrous results.

But you can’t invite the whole company into the strategy offsite. No, but you can invite a cross-section of the firm and arrange for level and functional communications sessions using those who were there.

And remember

“Strategy is a gift: It’s the thought that counts.”

But. . .

It’s integrated action based upon that thought that gets results.