’Tis strategic planning season

By Nyari Muguti

It’s Quarter 4, that time of the year when organisations shift into high gear , preparing for  their strategic planning offsites and workshops.

Across offices, the energy is unmistakable. PowerPoint decks are refined late into the night, spreadsheets and dashboards are tweaked to near perfection and meeting rooms buzzing with people rehearsing their presentations.

There is an unspoken pressure on the organising team to deliver to perfection and ‘WOW’ the bosses.

Whether it is engaging a star facilitator, having a top-notch venue with a delectable menu, even down to the temperature of the conference room everything must impress.

Sleepless nights are spent collating data, analysing results and debating which metrics to highlight.

Teams go back and forth with colleagues to ensure no stone is left unturned.

The outcome?

A glossy strategy deck designed to inspire and impress. Yet beneath the polish lies a familiar question for some: isn’t this exactly what we did last year?

If so, surely this goes some way in explaining why many organisations end up with the same results or worse year on year despite all these efforts.

When the organisation has performed well, there is a buzz of excitement.

Leaders enter the room buoyed by good results and optimism. Conversely, subpar performance, the atmosphere is heavy, with people bracing for difficult conversations or subtle finger-pointing.

 The cycle of hope and disappointment continues, a strategic seesaw that rarely delivers sustained high performance.

Surely there must be a better way.

The purpose behind the process

Amid the frenzy of logistics, slide decks, and reports, leaders must pause and remember the WHY of strategic planning. Beyond the rituals of Q4, the process is fundamentally about choice; deciding where to play, how to play, and for how long. Strategic planning determines where the organisation places its biggest financial bets and how teams will align around one shared purpose.

Sun Tzu, in The art of war, advised: “Plan for what is difficult while it is easy; do what is great while it is still small.” This timeless insight reminds us that true strategy is not a performance review dressed up with buzzword, but foresight in action.

The rear-view mirror

Every great strategic planning process begins with reflection and rear-view. You cannot plot the future without understanding the past.

Yet during this process, too many organisations fall into analysis paralysis, drowning in data endlessly whilst mistaking information for insight and playing a blame game where teams have fallen short.

From experience, no more than a third of the total planning time ought to be spent reviewing the previous year’s performance. Reflection has its place, which is to extract and understand both good and bad lessons, then swiftly move on to define the future.

Dwelling on either end of the spectrum has its dangers where excessive celebration breeds complacency and wallowing in failure breeds fear and inertia.

What matters most is reinforcing “True North”, that clear, shared picture of the desired future.

However, courageous conversations must happen during the review process.

Where every department faces a line of rigorous questioning from their peers and leaders, irrespective of whether targets were met or not.

The process aims to create a platform of shared learning, promotion of mutual accountability and break down of siloes.

 It also highlights dependencies between functions and that none can truly succeed in isolation. Done well, this process levels the playing field and creates a foundation for more honest collaboration in the new strategy cycle.

The forward plan

Looking ahead is where the team’s imagination can run wild without restraint. It is the most exciting part of the whole process and the one everyone has been waiting for with bated breath. Yet many strategy sessions still get stuck in the confines of focusing on the next financial year or the standard three-to-five-year plan. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that per se.

But what if we were brave enough to think and dream beyond this horizon?

Years ago, I attended a course called Ignite Your Business delivered by Brendan Palmer at Sabre Business World.

In the first session, he asked participants to write down their goals starting from 100 years out, then 90 years, 80 years, and so on until the present day.

Of course, to us young executives the exercise seemed absurd at first none of us would be alive to see the 100-year mark! However his message was profound: If you don’t know where you ultimately want to go, how will you know when you get there? How will you know what to do to get there?

That insight has shaped my approach to strategic planning ever since.

 Long-range thinking even in volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) environments forces a different kind of conversation.

 It pushes leaders to step outside today’s constraints and consider what it would truly take for the organisation to exist, thrive, and matter 100 years from now.

In markets like Zimbabwe’s, where the near-term realities can be unpredictable, it is tempting to focus only on the immediate; the next quarter, the next exchange rate shift, the next regulatory adjustment.

But precisely because of that volatility, leaders need to stretch their time horizon. The discipline of long-range thinking helps organisations future-proof themselves, building resilience rather than just reaction.

The power of 100-year thinking

When organisations adopt a century-long lens, several transformative questions emerge:

• Purpose:Will our mission still matter 100 years from now?
• Relevance:How will our customers, communities, and industries evolve and how must we evolve with them?
• Innovation:What capabilities do we need to start building now to stay relevant in a radically different future?
• Sustainability:Are we managing our people, finances, and environment in ways that ensure longevity?
• Legacy:What will future generations say about the role we played in shaping society?

These questions lift the conversation above annual targets. They shift the focus from performance to permanence, from surviving the year to building legacy.

100-year planning sounds idealistic especially when operating in environments dominated by short-term pressures but the act of asking such questions forces clarity of purpose. It opens new perspectives, reveals blind spots, and challenges assumptions.

It is not about predicting the next century; it’s about cultivating the kind of thinking that could survive it.

Building the muscle of strategic agility

Sustainable organisations are not those with the shiniest strategy but those with strategic agility; the ability to read early warning signals, make the tough calls and pivot fast whilst staying true to the mission.

Such agility is borne by embedding reflection and foresight into the organisation’s DNA, its culture.

A culture where people are encouraged to think critically, experiment boldly and collaborate widely.

Where failure is treated as learning, and success is shared.

To thrive for a century, organisations must balance discipline to execute with imagination, performance with purpose, and today’s needs with tomorrow’s possibilities.

Strategic planning should be more than an annual event but rather an ongoing conversation that connects the organisation’s past, present and future in a continuous loop of learning and adaptation.

 It is not about the flipcharts and perfect slides but the quality of the thinking and conversations behind it, that talks beyond the next financial year but into the next century.

Ms. Nyari Muguti is a seasoned Strategic Transformation Consultant with over 20 years of experience, operating across the UK and the SADC region. She brings a wealth of expertise in facilitating strategy development and supporting organisations to transform as they implement their strategies.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/nyari-muguti-24998017/