Daily Inspiration: “Have you realized that in a world of big fast change your small slow plans are already out of date?”

“Have you realized that in a world of big fast change your small slow plans are already out of date?” – Futurist Jim Carroll

We need to plan faster with bigger goals in mind – but we’ve been distracted.

After all, we’ve been in triage mode with our organization in dealing with the pandemic, supply chain challenges, a volatile economy, and workforce issues. At a personal level, we’ve all been hammered by the constant barrage of the impact of the virus, flu, and respiratory issues all around us, combined with economic uncertainty and other challenges.

That’s why trend #10 of my “23 Trends for 2023” has to do with the idea of ‘revisiting strategic agility’ – which is to say, the ability to plan faster with bigger goals in mind!

What is it? Simply put, it’s our ability to make decisions faster with bigger goals in mind while having a lot of flexibility in how we might achieve those goals. From both a personal and business perspective, I believe we will finally have more time to spend on these issues in the year to come.

What is agility? It’s the ability to shift plans, mindsets, and actions rapidly according to fast-moving circumstances. From a business perspective:

Leadership agility—or the agility to shift and pivot mindsets—is the master competency needed for sustained success in our fast-paced and complex business environment. In practice, leadership agility is what gives leaders the ability to lead effectively when rapid change and uncertainty are the norm and when success requires consideration of multiple views and priorities.
Building Leadership Agility in Today’s Complex World, 13 December 2021
Fulton County Daily Report

Are organizations successful at agility when it comes to the planning process? Not at all! According to Deloitte’s 2020 Chief Strategy Officer Survey on how often organizations refresh their core strategy:

• 45% refresh their strategy annually or less frequently
• 23% do it every two years
• 22% every three years

In essence, most organizations are structured for slow planning in a world that has become crushingly fast! That won’t work going forward.

I don’t expect much has changed since the time of that survey in 2020. After all, many organizations have been too busy being reactive in managing the ongoing challenges around to be focused on how to actively develop new strategies for going forward! And yet in a world of increasingly fast change – and the implementation of big, bold ideas in industries – we need to be able to shift our plans faster. In other words, we need big, fast plans but are operating on small short-term goals.

That’s why this ‘toot’ – that’s what we call short posts in the fast-growing alternative to Twitter – caught my attention.

Meant as a joke, maybe its’ precisely the type of thing we need!