You can find again and again executives, who avoid a prescient strategy with quick actions. Or others, who consider the development of a plan as a formula that reliably predicts the future. Or even those, who hide behind incalculability, in order to evade from long-term planning. With the decision to waive basic ideas, how the future should look like, they oversee the thing about the well.
Without forecast you move with full risk and without reference point at the edge. Interestingly only a few people seem to make themselves aware of the following aspects.
- Steps in complete darkness
Without the formulation of vision, mission, influence factors, the strategic direction and goals as well as the determination of the core competencies, processes and deliverables you act blindly, as if you would be on the way in a moonless night and in complete darkness. And with this, unexpected events and unconsidered influences do create road blocks that can only be overcome with a lot of effort. Nothing changes, if you are lying in the well. It is still dark. - At two hundred in the fog
The illusion being faster on the way casually is not much different than believing that you advance faster, if you rush at two hundred in the fog. Isn’t it clear, that it is neither a matter of avoiding obstacles nor keeping the track? The lack of orientation even does not guarantee that you move forward instead of circling. Eventually edges emerge, from where you can fall into the well. As soon as you are in the well, fog does not matter anymore. - Even in the well it goes deeper
Surprisingly the fallen people in the well have the illusion, that they can make themselves comfortable in the deep. Even in the well it goes deeper. The tightness provides no security, since it still goes further down. For this reason you have to make all possible efforts to get out of the tightness and to get back on the way of strategy.
As soon as you are in the well, the effort for the development of a strategy seems to be negligible, since now a multiple is necessary, in order to make progress. The reduced room for action and the unclear way out do not only harm the already achieved results. On the one hand you are thrown back and on the other hand you still have to develop a future. This blocks the way into the future with additional difficulties. After the case is before the case. It is only a matter of avoiding this immense extra-effort.
Bottom line: Those many arguments that speak against the development of a strategy are incommensurate with the damage that results from a lack of forecast. Particularly surprising, wells appear from nowhere. Maybe the thing with the well motivates pragmatics to create a strategy – even if it is only done to avoid the fall.
