Just because it’s operational doesn’t mean it can’t be strategic

‘Strategic Planning’ sounds highfalutin and names like that create their own problems.

For a start, it suggests that strategic is a timeframe. But do you do plan annually? And does strategic mean two years or five, or even thirty?

Naming the timeframes strategic, operational or even tactical just confuses.

Just call it planning and specify the horizon. This is the ‘Plan for the next 3 years’. Then you can even hold the planning process every month and not confuse anyone.

‘Strategic Planning’ also implies that no other planning is strategic.

Which is just silly. Because a strategy is a plan. So any plan covering any horizon holds a strategy.

And planning is planning.

Your operational plan — for whatever horizon you consider operational — is a strategy. And you can even strategise to select the set of tactical responses you want to use in response to contingencies. So just start planning and come up with your best strategies.

Leave the highfalutin names for others.