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Thursday 28 July 2022

A Plan Is Not a Strategy

 



Not my usual area of interest, but I like the clarity of this distinction and it is something most people must have encountered during their working lives.

4 comments:

James Higham said...

Or put another way - a set of objectives is not how to go about achieving them.

Sam Vega said...

Throughout, I was thinking of a manifesto. They are normally just plans - a set of boxes to tick. The "theory" behind it should be ideology - Conservatism, Socialism, Christian Democracy, Corporatism, etc. - but it seems like these days there is very little. One set of tick-boxes is very like another. The parties are playing in order to participate, rather than playing to win. Look how disconnected the idea of Net Zero is from the rest of the Conservative manifesto.

And the issue of responding to challenges is interesting. A strategy should have an idea of what should happen according to an integrated theory when the unexpected or setbacks occur. Was our response to Covid part of a strategy? It looked like headless chickens to me, with a good outcome because of sheer hard work and some talented individuals.

Tammly said...

Yes I certainly encountered this at work a good deal. There were even many individuals who considered that having a plan and objectives was quite sufficient and no need for an actual strategy as to how to get there, as if the wish was furtherance to the deed. Politicians seem particularly prone to this way of thinking. They report to the media that an action has been carried out to deal with some problem, but they have really only mentioned it, not driven it through.

A K Haart said...

James - yes, first comes the strategy the objectives are supposed to be part of.

Sam - our response to Covid looked like headless chickens to me too. A strategy would have involved some kind of cost/benefit estimate but seemed to lack that all the way through. With hindsight, planners seem to have been in charge all the way through too.

Tammly - I encountered it too. I suppose one political problem with strategy is that adapting it can be presented as failure or a u-turn so politicians naturally avoid it.