Business Strategies
Opportunistic Planning

Most larger organizations conduct an annual planning process to define their path to future success for each brand and business unit.  These plans are critical to ensure resources get allocated to the most important areas, and chart progress toward the plan targets.

But the one truism of planning is that at least parts of it will be wrong.  The only question is which way and by how much.  Interim planning that updates targets can help address the realities, and refocus resources as needed to get back on track.  Yet those adjustments are often simply trying to get back to the original plan.  Such a focus on adhering to the original plans may miss the opportunities that arise unexpectedly that require a deviation from the original plan.

To ensure those potential opportunities are discovered, part of planning should include setting up the organization to constantly scan the environment for these opportunities, and providing the flexibility to quickly shift plans and resources to take advantage of them.  The pandemic hopefully taught many organizations that they can pivot more quickly than they realized, at least when they have to.  Why not make planning for the unknown and strategy shifting part of your normal plan, empowering those closest to the business to make changes that take advantage of unforeseen opportunities?