Long term strategic planning is dead.

It has been dead for sometime. But no one has written obituaries for it.

It is buried deep in the sea, not to be taken up any time soon. No one cares for 5 year and 10-year plans anymore. With reducing attention spans, it’s today, tomorrow, and day after that the world is bothered about. Even employees are confused when it comes to annual strategic plans.

The pandemic proved one thing right. You cannot really predict stuff. Things will always for a toss. Even Nostradamus could not have predicted the ‘rona. Then how can a group of wise individuals sitting in their homes, and peering through their laptop screens create a plan, which they claim as THE PERFECT PLAN, even for a year. That is why I say that the age of long-term strategic planning is dead.

Spending time preparing quarter on quarter plans will not be relevant anymore. If you are still preparing quarterly plans, please stop now. You are wasting your time.

But wait, what about our vision? What about our plans to conquer the world? What about our dreams?

Strategic planning is useless, unless there is a strategic vision — John Naisbitt

That is why organisations, and I mean successful organisations, are focusing on very long term goals and using these to guide their short term plans.

For example, take SpaceX which wants to send people to moon and bring them back and in the very long term, they want to be leaders of the space industry. Their short term plans are guided by this single vision. All their launches and initiatives are a step towards this goal.

Or Google, which aims to organise all the information in the world. All their products and services are meant to take this forward. Chrome, which was taken forward by the current CEO Sundar Pichai, was a short term goal when viewed in context of the larger goal. Anything that does not fit in this picture, but is worthwhile, is taken forward as a separate company.

If you are an organisation trying to stay relevant and be successful, understand one thing - The age of annual strategic planning meets are over. Think far ahead and take steps forward in terms of a quarter or even a month. Your organization, employees, and your customers will thank you.