Traditional planning assumes that you can control or at least predict the key factors that will determine your success. But reality is far more complex. Many of the most important factors affecting your outcomes are completely beyond your control: weather patterns disrupt supply chains, regulatory c...
Strategic planning faces a fundamental tension: the need for thorough analysis versus the need for timely action. Spend too little time analysing, and you risk making decisions based on incomplete information. Spend too much time analysing, and you risk analysis paralysis - getting so lost in planni...
Most organisations understand the importance of having a backup plan. When things go wrong, you need an alternative approach ready to deploy. This logic seems sound, and many organisations invest significant effort in developing Plan B. Yet time and again, organisations with backup plans still find...
In many organisations, discussions about the future descend into chaos. Different team members have different visions, use different terminology, and make different assumptions - all while thinking they're talking about the same thing. This communication breakdown isn't just frustrating; it's costly...
One of the most frustrating experiences in business is seeing a problem coming, developing a contingency plan to address it, and then watching that plan get rejected by finance teams who can't justify spending money on "what if" scenarios. This budget battle plays out in organisations everywhere: va...
For decades, business planning has been built on a fundamental assumption: if we can predict the future accurately enough, we can plan for it effectively. This belief has driven organisations to invest heavily in forecasting, trend analysis, and predictive models. Yet despite these investments, pred...
In every organisation, there are people who see problems coming. They notice the warning signs, sense the shifts, and voice their concerns—only to be dismissed as pessimists, naysayers, or worrywarts. Yet time and again, these "pessimists" turn out to be right. The question isn't whether they're see...
How often have you found yourself saying, "I should have known"? That moment of realisation when hindsight reveals that the warning signs were there all along—you just didn't have the right tools or framework to recognise them, let alone act on them. This phrase, uttered in boardrooms, project meeti...
There's a cruel irony in strategic planning: the more detailed and comprehensive your plan, the more vulnerable it becomes to failure. This isn't because detailed planning is inherently flawed—it's because most planning processes assume a predictable future that simply doesn't exist. When reality di...