Strategic Planning’s Unfinished Business

Strategic Planning’s Unfinished Business

Most strategic planning efforts in the AE industry focus on growth. That’s appropriate. Firms invest significant time and money in planning because they want to grow revenue, expand into new markets, strengthen service offerings, recruit talent, improve profitability, or position themselves for ownership transition. Growth is usually the reason everyone is gathered in the first place.

At some point during the planning process, however, somebody inevitably raises an important point:

“We also need to decide what we’re not going to do.” The room nods in agreement and the conversation moves on.

Nobody disagrees with the idea. In fact, most leadership teams recognize that deciding what not to do may be just as important as deciding what to pursue. The problem is that the strategic planning session itself is rarely the right place to tackle those issues.

Imagine a planning session with 15-20 people in the room, including business unit leaders, market leaders, office leaders, and ownership representatives. The group is trying to think about the future of the firm, identify opportunities, and build alignment around a common direction.

That is a poor setting for deciding whether an office should be consolidated, whether a service line should be scaled back, whether a market sector is no longer worth pursuing, or whether a long-standing investment has failed to deliver what was expected. The information required to make those decisions is usually incomplete, the people affected by the decisions are often sitting in the room, and once one of those discussions begins, it can consume the entire meeting. As a result, most firms postpone the conversation—but never get back to addressing it. And that’s because most firms are better at starting things than stopping them. 

Over time, nearly every successful AE firm accumulates commitments.

• A service line is launched because an important client requests it.
• An office is opened to support a geographic expansion effort.
• A market sector is established because leadership sees opportunity.
• An internal initiative is created to solve a specific problem.
• An acquisition brings new capabilities into the organization.

Each decision makes sense at the time, and most are made with good intentions and sound reasoning. Years later, however, leadership often discovers that some of those commitments never fully achieved what was expected.

• The service line never reached critical mass.
• The office remains dependent on work from another location.
• The market sector generates occasional projects but never develops into a meaningful business.

The initiative continues because nobody wants to be the person who officially ends it, and meanwhile, new priorities continue to be added.

The result is an organization carrying more commitments than it can effectively support. Resources become spread thinner, leadership attention becomes fragmented, and decision-making becomes more difficult. Growth initiatives compete with legacy activities for the same time, money, and talent.

Many firms spend years trying to solve these symptoms without addressing the underlying cause…Read More