Strategic Planning is Sound

I've been seeing a lot of articles and offerings lately telling people that what's needed is "an alternative to strategic planning" -- and it saddens me. Rather than carving out "alternatives," what if we focused on simply doing strategic planning more effectively. After all, by calling it something else, we're opening the door for greater confusion (and more apples to nuts comparisons among requests as well as responses).

By discounting the value of conversations about mission and purpose, we lose sight of the core concepts that are intended to connect diverse sets of people around shared objectives. By diminishing the nuances between sectors and types of organizations, we undermine the very cultural complexities that make the sector and the organization distinctive. By dismissing "strategic planning," we lose a framework of systems and processes that can make things more effectiveness.

I've also been around long enough to know what goes around, comes around... I watch enough reality television to understand that one day it's in and the next day it's out. Yet, too many people are being led astray and down unproductive pathways by those who change the language and fundamentally diminish the effect.