Leadership: visioning a preferred future
“The best laid plans of mice and men” The skepticism of Robert Burns about planning is justified because events seldom unfold the way we predicted them. Yet many businesses continue to engage in traditional long range planning.
I learned from that experience. Long range planning is at best a waste of time and at worst dangerous. Visioning by contrast, has become essential to the process of creating plans that work. Planning is like being a naval Admiral. It is serious and control oriented—demanding commitment and performance. Visioning by contrast, feels more like being a pirate. It’s about innovation, imagination, and the generation of energy.
The odds of success increase when your process uses both visioning and planning. Visioning engages the wonder, creativity, and flexibility of the child (your pirate) that still resides within you—albeit buried under layer upon layer of “shoulds and how tos”. Planning by contrast, applies the analytical skills of a disciplined mind.
Because visioning steers towards an inspiring possibility it fosters the will to win and a desire to belong. Planning introduces discipline, establishes commitment to reaching specific steps along the way, and introduces consequence.
A corporate exorcism may be required to eliminate the industrial-age ghost of long range planning. www.CreateTransferableWealth.com