Bill McClain

Strategic Planning in this Age of Disruption: See the Future for Your Small Business Bill McClain

Why is strategic planning in this "age of disruption" different from strategic planning in the 1960s and 70s? Because the mindset of incremental growth and extrapolation-planning is no longer applicable in this age of Uber, Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Airbnb, and CRISPR. And, while the old tools of SWOT analysis and Voice of the Customer (VOC) still have value, even when modified the application of those tools still falls far short if the mindset has not been transformed.

How can we get out of that old mindset? From years of practicing traditional strategic planning, and now years of practicing an enhanced version, we have developed a method called, "Envision The Future"(TM). The goal of this new 4-step workshop is to break the chains that keep us tethered to extrapolation-planning. "Envision The Future" creates a vision of the future by moving from "purpose" to a deep dive into the breadth and depth of future everyday details. The heart of this method is understanding that we must look beyond the arriving technologies, and look at the implications of these changes, what are called the "ripple effects".
For example, a ripple effect of driverless cars will be far fewer traffic fatalities. Ripple effects of fewer fatalities will be fewer medical needs and fewer lawsuits. When we follow these threads of ripple effects to their natural endpoints, the last ripple effect is always an ethical and governance issue. Then we must look at the hundreds of ripple effects of each of the dozens of disruptive changes. Look beyond the technologies and you will see the true significance of all of these arriving disruptive changes.

This book is shorter than others on the subject because it is not as convoluted and granular as today's consultants would have you believe (to justify their fees). This book is designed for the small and mid-sized organizations, not the large publicly traded corporations because in this age of disruption the smaller companies are the most vulnerable. And most importantly, this book has been written now, not decades ago before the disruptive technologies and disruptive business models started arriving.

There are several takeaways from this book:

* A complete description of "Envision the Future", a 4-step workshop.
* A workbook to use in your own "Envision the Future" workshop.
* Guidance on how to plan without extrapolating.
* Learn how to look past the disruptive technologies to their ripple effects and the issues beyond.
* See how to put Industry 4.0 into the perspective of our past (and future) disruptive periods.
* Understand how to employ "augmented" strategic planning tools for our current age of disruption.
* Discover how to avoid the 7 deadly traps of traditional strategic planning.
* Learn how to avoid the 7 causes of planning failure.
* Realize how to envision the future.

The 4-step method to envision the future will be like gold in your hands. It will help you realize the potential and opportunities that are opening up all around us. Enjoy the book. When you try the method, please share your ripple effects discoveries with us and we will include them in our growing "Ripple Effects Mapping Project", designed to be a global vision of the future.