Hunger for hope.

• Author: Hall, Robert
• Position: Marketing Solutions

Planning season is officially open. For too many organizations planning is actually optional, but budgets are required. Too often there is really little envisioned for next year that is materially different from last year. The process is really about accounting for business as usual. Cut a little cost here, add a little revenue there, but really very little changes. It assumes that the most important resources to be managed and controlled are the money resources. So if you don't add to staff-related resources, in most functions you are pretty much there. You're in control of yore costs.

Yet a budget-driven planning process misses perhaps one of the most important issues facing business: Where does opportunity and hope for next year reside? I find over and again that for many there has been a loss of hope. Particularly for mature organizations that have been at it for a while, it seems that the controls of the budget process--tracking, reporting, explaining deviations to plan all year long--have caused the circles to get smaller and smaller. As the focus has moved increasingly away from planning and toward controlling, the organizational processes have, quietly but inintentionally, starved out those new ideas and possibilities that are the seed for opportunity and hope.

The vision precedes the reality

Planning should combine two very disparate realms. The first is the realm of dreams, visions and possibilities--things that excite and energize customers, employees, management and ultimately shareholders. They represent opportunities for breakthrough.

The second is the realm of organizing, accounting and control. A pall of organizational maturity is bringing greater discipline and control to the naivete and chaos of earlier stages.

The problem is that some organizations have accidentally stifled the vision and possibility inherent in the business. As the budget process has grown in scope and rigor, hope and vision are starving to death. In an environment where each quarter-end represents life and death, it is easy to see how control of quarterly financial performance dominates.

What does a process for resurrecting vision in an organization look like? Well, like effective budgeting and everything else, it should be a year-round process. It starts with allocating time in discussions with customers, employees and the other stakeholders about possibilities that excite. Seldom in these discussions will you hear a coherent vision of breakthrough...