Comments on: strategic planning is stupid

By: thebloke

thebloke — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 02:21:11 +0000

Good post! Reminds me of resonating to a comment made by Ricardo Semler (the fearless leader of the Brazilian phenomenon called Semler SA, and author of among other books, Maverick!) at a lunch one day when he said something about a business plan being an “extrapolition of wishful thinking.”

By: Tom Gilson

Tom Gilson — Thu, 11 Aug 2005 17:57:29 +0000

I’m a ministry strategic planner, so you can guess where I head with this–but you might guess wrong. I’ve found that planning is extremely helpful and valid as long as we don’t view it as making tomorrow’s decisions today, but as making today’s decisions in light of our view of today and our vision for tomorrow. When tomorrow comes, we’ll have to make those decisions fresh, in view of the current “today.”

By: Think Christian » Blog Archive » Is strategic planning good, godly or stoopid?

Thu, 11 Aug 2005 02:44:05 +0000

[...] rch leadership consider it to be sacred, it was a good wake up call. See what you think: Strategic Planning Is Stupid

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By: Matthew McNutt

Matthew McNutt — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 02:32:28 +0000

You could be busy reading for months with all the book titles we’re all throwing at you! : )

By: greg king

greg king — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 03:04:18 +0000

“Vision” is not a strategic plan!

By: Mark Dowds

Mark Dowds — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 02:04:10 +0000

Every night we sleep and our mind runs in dozens of directions. It scans our predictions of the coming world and in a short sub-conscious moment we live the next day through more scenarios than we could consider in a waking moment. Without this mechanism we would have no capacity to cope. This process “pre-scans” what may happen and pre-selects what we want to discover in the waking hours ahead. The truth is that none of the scenarios come true. That is, not in their complete reality but rather they come to reality in glimpses that feel like premonitions that give us the capacity to choose as if we had previously lived the current moment.

Strategic planning can be very helpful but statistically it is more that highly unlikely that the plan will come true. The benefit of scenario planning is to consider multiple ways that our lives, churches, or businesses could possibly face. The benefit of strategic planning can be to wrestle down what is important to us as individuals or as teams.

The downside of strategic planning is that it becomes the master and we become subservient to it. This robs us of our organic nature and desire to have and unpredictable life more than a predesitined existence.

From another angle no plant or living organism needs or uses a strategic plan. I suppose that poses a paradox of how much we need to feel in control to feel alive.

Mark Dowds

Reading list:

A Simpler Way by Margaret Wheatley
On Dialogue by David bohm

By: Todd

Todd — Sat, 30 Jul 2005 17:49:52 +0000

great post. in addition to all you said about it being too fixed an outcome, for me, one of the problems with stregic planning is that it is pretty much impossible to be organic. its usually (as you described in your examples) one guy, or a team of guys sitting in a room making decisions for an entire community. this tends to cause problems because it is the work of 5 people instead of the work of the community…

joe myers acutally has some great thoughts on all this. he’s become pretty well read in the area of architecture and organic order…i wish he would redo his website and make it a little more useful!

By: bob c

bob c — Sat, 30 Jul 2005 16:16:07 +0000

I so agree with the thrust of this posting, Marko – maybe the kilt is actually making you smarter. It reminds me of a koan/joke that I love:

What does God do when she hears our plans ?
She laughs.

I was struck, not by the Calvinism thread (hey I’m a mutt with very little of that breed in me), but by your use of the term stupid. My handy dandy dictionary defines stupid as:

Slow to learn or understand; obtuse.
Tending to make poor decisions or careless mistakes.
Marked by a lack of intelligence or care; foolish or careless: a stupid mistake.
Dazed, stunned, or stupefied.
Pointless; worthless

One click beyond this sense of stupidity is the idea that this is actually irresponsible of a church leader, lay or ordained. These planning cycles are so often a distraction, an easy way to ignore thhe sense that we are inadequate to bear responsibility for where the Spirit of God moves in our communities, be they housed in shiny, happy churches or in any holy places like bowling lanes or coffee bars or barber shops.

I wonder if, instead of stupid or irresponsibible, if the right word to call this obsession with planning is actually insane. In popular culture, something “insane” is something extremely foolish, while persons may be deemed “insane” if their behaviour strongly deviates from accepted social norms. The term is typically negative, but departure from established norms may also be seen as a positive quality; in this case, being “insane” is being daringly unconventional or individualistic. This use of insane is illustrated by the following quote from Henry David Thoreau’s A Plea for Captain John Brown:

Many, no doubt, are well disposed, but sluggish by constitution and by habit, and they cannot conceive of a man who is actuated by higher motives than they are. Accordingly they pronounce this man insane, for they know that they could never act as he does, as long as they are themselves.

Einstein’s definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. That capture at least 99.98% of all strategic planning I’ve evr been a part of – and at least 99.99% of all church planning I’ve evr been a part of.

By: Matthew McNutt

Matthew McNutt — Sat, 30 Jul 2005 14:53:32 +0000

Another good book is “Escape from Church, Inc.” by E. Glenn Wagner. I became so frustrated with the corporate mentality at my last church that I actually gave it to all the elders and the senior pastor – which didn’t go over to well with the pastor. On the other hand, I think there have been times when youth workers have labeled people as using a CEO mentality to explain away their own lack of work. Holding someone accountable to their use of time and responsibilities is biblical; requiring them to sit in an office all day when all their office work is done so they’ll look professinal is too much business and not enough shepherding. Having a direction, purpose and goals is healthy … spending all your time focusing on them, or viewing them as some sort of divine inspiration is dangerous. Having no plan or direction is also dangerous – it’s a recipe for winging it and imbalance. Sheesh … this post is becoming a bunch of random thoughts and reactions. I fear at times that I was so badly burned by a corporate mentality at my previous church that now I swing too far the other way in my thinking at times.

By: Sivin

Sivin — Sat, 30 Jul 2005 02:34:10 +0000

I hear your call from Malaysia. I will try to respond later after a whole weekend of ministry :-)that was planned but as always I would be surprised by unplanned elements.

BTW, Prof. Scot has some interesting stuff on his journey with Calvinism … http://jesuscreed.blogspot.com/

I saw this book at Borders that day
Why am I not a Calvinist
and I think it would be great to read the companion book
Why am I not Arminian