The problem is that most organizations have
separate procedures and organizational units
for strategic planning and for resource allocation
and budgeting. To formulate their strategic
plans, senior executives go off-site annually and
engage for several days in active discussions facilitated
by senior planning and development
managers or external consultants. The outcome
of this exercise is a strategic plan articulating
where the company expects (or hopes or prays)
to be in three, five, and ten years. Typically,
such plans then sit on executives’ bookshelves
for the next 12 months.
Meanwhile, a separate resource-allocation
and budgeting process run by the finance staff
sets financial targets for revenues, expenses,
profits, and investments for the next fiscal year.
The budget it produces consists almost entirely
of financial numbers that generally bear little
relation to the targets in the strategic plan.
Which document do corporate managers discuss
in their monthly and quarterly meetings
during the following year? Usually only the
budget, because the periodic reviews focus on a
comparison of actual and budgeted results for
every line item. When is the strategic plan next
discussed? Probably during the next annual offsite
meeting, when the senior managers draw
up a new set of three-, five-, and ten-year plans.