Maddie was the first to fire a shot in response to the double strategic planning articles that ASAE and the Center just published. The Journal of Association Leadership published "The Development of Consensus Guidelines for Strategic Planning in Associations"–some kind of definitive statement on exactly what strategic planning is and how to do it. Then in Associations Now there is an article by James Hollan that starts off with "In a word, strategic planning stinks"–it does a very good job of articulating why strategic planning just doesn’t work.

So I guess we’ll debate whether or not strategic planning is dead.

Again.

I am guessing you can sense my lack of enthusiasm. Don’t get me wrong, though. This is, of course, a topic that I am extremely enthusiastic about. Just look at what I’ve written both on this blog and previously on the Association Renewal blog, not to mention the article Jeff and I wrote three years ago(!) making similar arguments to Hollan’s.

But I realized last year during the strategic planning "smackdown" that Greg Melia organized at the annual meeting that the debate may be futile. Rather, it may simply be the wrong debate. I am still struggling with what the debate should be, but strategic planning strikes me as an answer without a question. We keep fighting about whether the answer is right or not, but what really is the question?

So far, the question has been: how do you do strategic planning? And the answer is either (a) by doing strategic planning (my, how circular!) or (b) by using some new and improved approach. I suppose you could argue the question is "How does your organization act strategically" or something like that. But it still feels circular to me.

I agree with David’s comments to Maddie’s blog post. Strategy is good. Planning is good. I’ve also written about that. And despite my lack of enthusiasm, I think we should continue the dead/alive debate. I know there are more people out there who will articulate the fatal flaws in strategic planning (Jeff!). And I promise to write some more about these two articles, particularly the Journal article.

But more than all of that I want to change the conversation, and I’m frustrated that I don’t know exactly how to do that yet. I think the current debate is well meaning, but it is distracting us from what we need to do. In fact, I think we are not as helpless as we feel. Most people are better at doing the work of strategy than we are led to believe. By creating these complicated planning processes, it has distracted us from elements of our own capacity to lead that have now atrophied. But the potential is there. I want to create a conversation that reawakens the strength we already have.

Any thoughts on how to do that?