Pathfinding What’s Needed In Business

‘Worthwhile results, depend on worthwhile plans.” That truism has guided American business enterprises for generations. It’s still valid today, but the type of plan required has changed considerably.

Q. Every couple of years I try to hammer out a new plan for my business. Problem is, every six months or so things have changed so dramatically that my great plan isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. A while back you wrote that “pathfinding” was better than planning. How so?

A. Plans are still essential to performance, but a new type of planning process is required in this era of rapid change and fierce competition.

In the old days, the boss could stipulate a bunch of objectives, rally the troops and give everybody marching orders. Now, a business plan must combine both tactics and strategy, and be cooperatively crafted to accommodate several time dimensions.

Today’s plans must be more inclusive, ambitious and fluid. And they must be formulated by the people expected to implement them. Plans must be amenable to creative change as problems and opportunities emerge.

I call this type of preparation and implementation Pathfinding. A pathfinder has objectives and intentions, but is always open to on-the-spot modifications.

The old planning paradigm consisted of goals (usually handed down from above), narrowly-defined activities designed to achieve those ends, and a timeframe in which this was all to be accomplished. Once one plan had expired - usually after 12 months of muddled aspiration and frustration - a new one was created.

I know of many companies that boast of linear feet of shelf space devoted to the “annual plans” of yesteryear. These books are testaments to “push planning,” the struggle through which resources are directed toward a desired objective and “pushed” relentlessly until they reach it, or until the plan is “modified.” Change is despised. Great time, expense and energy are spent “staying the course.”

In this era, plans must be continuously “in process.” Simultaneous formulation and implementation is essential, with team efforts every two to five years to redefine objectives.

In this paradigm, pathfinders are “pulled” to their objectives, mastering the unexpected events that are serendipitously encountered along the way. Change is embraced and exploited. This new, dynamic approach to forging the future is different from traditional planning in many ways.

It requires enlightened participation of all of an organization’s constituents formulating goals and designing interim actions that will lead to the selected ends. Each participant must be well-informed and have access to other participants and to critical market and financial information.

It requires no less than two or more than five central goals that are inclusive, visionary, ambitious, and unfettered.

It must be based on, and take full advantage of, the unique competencies of the enterprise as defined by constituents.

It has to allow for on-the-spot exploitation of opportunity and confrontation of threats. The leaders and followers of the enterprise must feel empowered to criticize current activity and suggest new approaches. Everyone must feel free to act immediately and decisively when situations warrant, without the fear of retribution or second-guessing.

Its thrust of accomplishment must take into account that every focused, group activity has both “fences” and “gates.”

It demands a company culture that tolerates one or more - often completely different - organizational structures in which groups function as teams.

It requires entrepreneurial leaders who are innovative and can emulate the drive, creativity, industriousness and sense of mission that marked the original founders of the enterprise.

It must promote and accommodate ultra-swift action.

It needs intuitive operatives who can recognize and take advantage of luck.

It must allow for, but not be driven by, protocols that guide short-term implementation.

It must be both formulated and executed by individuals who have a true sense of personal ownership in the enterprise.

Pathfinding promotes the kind of “creative destruction” and “constructive innovation” that modern enterprises need to stay relevant and competitive.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Paul Willax The Spokesman-Review