Adaptability: the corporate art of improv

There are two ways to tackle an increasingly uncertain future:

One way is to plan as much as you can. Lock yourself away with your best and brightest strategists, analysts, and economists until you have a document so comprehensive it could crush a coffee table.

There are a few problems with this approach:

• It takes so long to plan that the world will have already moved on by the time your strategy is published.
• The world is changing so quickly now it’s impossible to predict the future to any practical degree – however much time you spend on it.
• The more time you spend on creating the strategy, the more obliged you feel to implement it – irrespective of whether it’s still relevant.

The other way is to plan as little as you have to. Keep to the basics of aiming for your vision, driven by your purpose, and guided by your values. Plan a little, do a lot, make little mistakes, keep calm, re-plan, and carry on. This agility requires nothing more than a framework strategy, and a willingness to quickly accept failure in order to keep adjusting the trajectory to achieve the vision.

Too many organisations continue to face the new world in the old way – taking too long to plan, and too long to change the plan. The only benefit of this is that irreversible failure will come as a complete surprise.