Many businesses are born from a dream, an idea, a talent, or a desire to create something. Then, from that initial spark, a certain regularity begins to take shape : the routines of sales, production, invoicing, hiring, and day-to-day operations.

These routines can serve an organization well for a time, but they often become outdated or misaligned with a changing world.

A new competitor emerges. Employees leave. A major client chooses another supplier.

Entrepreneurship, like managing an organization, is never entirely smooth sailing.

We can simply react to the world around us, but sometimes it is better to help shape it.

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Agreeing on Where We Are Going

Whether the goal is growth or stability, greater employee engagement, or a stronger ability to fulfill a mission in service of the public, the changing economic and social environment forces organizations to make important decisions that go far beyond the brand of coffee machine in the kitchen or the colour of the carpet.

Strategy is the art of thinking about tomorrow in order to mobilize people and align resources. Because a company, a non-profit organization, or a government department is more than a random collection of friendly people. It is a network of relationships, influence, and competing forces working toward more or less the same goal.

The first question, then, is usuallysimple : Where are we going?

Answering it requires two things.

The first is knowing ourselves. Diagnosing our strengths and weaknesses. Examining our capabilities and aspirations. Determining our appetite for risk.

The second is understanding our environment. Who are our competitors? What are they doing? What are similar organizations doing elsewhere in the world? What weak signals have we ignored over the past few months or years?

Strategy means putting everything we can know on the table, then deciding what truly matters.

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It Is Never Easy

This raises a number of difficult questions. Is our original vision still the same? How have growth, success and failure, money, and the arrival and departure of colleagues, leaders, and competitors changed who we are and the culture of our organization?

And then there are other questions. How old are our leaders? Do they expect to remain for another 15 years? Do they still have the same energy they had at the beginning? The same appetite for risk?

People do not usually bet “everything they have” in quite the same way at 25 as they do at 55. What they have to lose is not the same. Nor do they act with the same degree of recklessness. Overtime, experience can sharpen our judgement, but it can also harden beliefs and habits.

Strategic planning is an extraordinary opportunity to take stock of how far we have come, but more importantly, to chart the path forward.

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Tempus Fugit

As the saying goes, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second-best time is today.

Any organization with even a moderate level of complexity and reasonably ambitious goals must take on this work while continuing to manage its day-to-day operations.

Strategy often begins with the recognition that transformation, innovation, development, and growth do not happen by accident. Although they may occasionally emerge as an unexpected result of everyday activities, they are far more likely to require intentionality. Time must be set aside. Budgets must be allocated. People or teams must be given responsibility for moving the work forward.

All of this can be anticipated. Planned. Organized. Imagined and developed.

Strategic planning is the art of turning a dream into something achievable, with the right people, the right resources, and the right timing.

Why develop a strategic plan? Because an organization that does not choose its own direction will often end up following someone else’s. Because growth, adaptation, and long-term success are not matters of chance, but the result of deliberate choices. And because succeeding tomorrow requires taking the time to think today.

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