Strategy

Just don't ask Brett Farve! 

When Brett Farve retired, Sports Illustrated asked him what he was going to do and he proudly replied, “Nothing. And I’m going to stick to that until I do something else.” How can such a smart guy fail to understand the first basic rule of retirement?

If you don’t have purpose, you will run out of fuel. Looking forward to nothing is empty and depressing, as Brett realized in short order. It is also dangerous.

Let’s stop picking on Mr. Farve. Thousands of successful Americans are retiring each year before they are ready. At least they were before their portfolios sank this year. It has absolutely nothing to do with age. They may be fed up or fried, they may want their stock options before the company tanks, someone may push them out to make room for a younger version, or they may simply think they are the right age to retire.

Okay, I get it. Companies don’t want to be sued, so they invest in Human Resource officers to ensure a level playing field, or at least compliance with a sea of enthusiastic and well-intended “guidelines”.

In an effort to foster diversity and not offend anyone, many American companies are finding that they stand for absolutely nothing, on a never-ending search for high ground in a flood of litigiousness.

We’ve got to dream big and collectively role up our sleeves.

What happened to Mission, Vision, and Values? What happened to patriotism? God and Country? And having each other’s back? Where are the lions? Bringing a team together with passion, focused on a single, honorable mission becomes more difficult with every sunrise. Good Lord, it may not even be legal anymore.

Creating and executing strategy in a rapidly changing world becomes more challenging every day. There is much to be done and just as much to be undone. Resources are getting scarce, and personal balance is threatened.

Consider this:

Getting from here to there can be a simple, five-step process. Creating a plan for personal growth, leadership development, succession planning, or organizational change is fundamentally the same.

The most critical time many businesses have faced in the last 30 years is upon us. Strategic planning for 2010-12 should be getting serious attention, but many C-level executives neglect the urgency due to past execution failures.

Here are 10 common pitfalls to avoid:

1. Sending the plan down from the mountain. A well-known CEO created a strategic plan with his CFO and a consultant, then handed copies to functional department heads. A year later, he wondered why change was not successfully implemented. He should have included managers of all relevant functional areas in the process. He bypassed high-performing individuals and managers at other levels. He passed over some of his best people, excluding those who could help sell the plan to the organization.