Bloomport U

Strategy and Crisis: VUCA has arrived

Strategy and planning are two of my passions so I often look out for interesting articles on the subjects.  I read the article “Strategic planning: three tips for 2009” from the McKinsey Quarterly earlier this month and it did not really give me anything new. 

There were three main points to the article, 1. Be realistic in your planning – VUCA has arrived so prepare for different scenarios 2. Intensify your monitoring – decompose aggregate reports into smaller components to monitor in greater detail and 3. Look beyond the crisis – the fundamental trends are not changing so don’t mess with your longest-term strategies.  Ok, so that to me was not earth-shattering but it was the follow up article showing the results of 594 executives polled about their strategy approach as compared to last year that was most interesting.   

The bulk said they would be more careful with cash and selection (which makes sense) but 63% of respondents’ suggested that they are expecting to build strategies that are more dynamic and focused on the shorter term.  Interesting.  What does that mean to the aircraft-carrier that takes three miles (4.8km) to turn around?  Perhaps it means simplify and be more agile, do your annual planning each quarter, plan your projects (and question your choices) more often and build processes that are so thin you can do the what-if-we-bought-AIG-scenarios.  Does this mean that in a VUCA world, even strategy needs to be flexible?