In strategic planning, the quality of the plan depends on the quality of the information collected and analyzed to guide the plan. The Baldrige Criteria ask how you collect and analyze information about your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats; early indications of major shifts in technology, markets, products, customer preferences, competition, or the regulatory environment; long-term organizational sustainability; and your ability to execute your strategic plan.

The goal is to build a sustainable organization that can survive change in whatever form it takes. Andrew Winston has created a tool to help navigate the forces that may affect your organization’s survival. He calls it the Sustainability Forces Wheel.

In “A New Tool for Understanding Sustainability Drivers” (HBR, July 13, 2010), Winston describes the three rings that make up his wheel and his idea to “spin” the wheel to line up different forces on each ring, which could then spur discussion among leaders about what that combination might mean for their organization. For example, he looks at the issues that currently line up at 9:00: “Consumers increasingly want to know what’s in products and where they come from; technology is enabling more data on a product’s origins; and there’s no denying the rising concerns about chemicals and toxics in our bodies and our children’s bodies. If your company operates in the consumer products world, how are you handling this trifecta of concerns?”

From a Baldrige standpoint, your strategic planning process should include a systematic approach to identifying the factors that are likely to impact your short-term and long-range plans. Only then can you confidently develop plans that will help build a sustainable organization.

To read more about strategic planning, click on these articles:

• The Most Important Question in Strategy
• Revolutionary Thinking
• Planning for 2035
• Be Prepared
• Identifying Potential Blind Spots

It’s not the best way to chart a course.

Roger Martin is Dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. He has facilitatestrategic planning sessions. In “My Eureka Moment with Strategy” (HBR, May 3, 2010), he tells the story of a planning session with ten mining company executives that “quickly descended into adversarial position-taking and I could tell it was going nowhere.”

He stopped the descent by asking the executives a different question. Instead of one person making his case and everyone else telling him why he was wrong, Martin asked the executives “to specify what would have to be true for the option on the table to be a fantastic choice.” Instead of competitors, they became collaborators. Each had expertise to contribute to the cause. They discussed five options and what had to be true for each to make it the best choice, and they agreed at the end of one day to analyze those items they had reservations about and meet again to decide on the best course of action.

“This subtle shift gives people a way to back away from their beliefs and allow exploration by which they give themselves the opportunity to learn something new,” Martin writes. “That in turn enables more options to survive longer and get explored more thoroughly.”

We’ve all been part of meetings where an idea is presented and someone says it will never work and that idea is done, and whoever killed it claims top spot on your hit list, which means his next idea is toast. As a result, a lot of good ideas are never given a chance to become great ideas. And organizations need their strategies to be guided by great ideas.

What would have to be true for this option to be a fantastic choice?

Martin calls it the most important question in strategy.

To read more about strategic planning, click on these articles:

• Revolutionary Thinking
• Identifying Potential Blind Spots
• Find Your Blue Ocean
• Where to Play and How to Win
• What Are Your Critical Success Factors?
• Planning for the Longer-Term

Having systematic processes in place to answer these questions may help you spot a disruptive change in time to counteract it but none of the questions really explores your processes for developing your own disruptive change. A recent post by Umair Haque on HBR provides an interesting perspective on this subject, using Apple as an example, by explaining “How to Challenge Your Industry Dogma”:

• Challenge products. Offer an alternative that gets people to rethink what such a product can be used for, as Apple has done with the iPad.
• Challenge strategy: Find an area that your competitors are ignoring and become the best at it, as Apple has done with the design of electronic gadgets.
• Challenge distribution. Look for innovative new ways to distribute your products or services, as Apple did with iTunes.
• Challenge business models. Companies protected how their products are used until Apple introduced a new business model: The App Store gives software developers a huge market for their new products, making Apple’s products more valuable as a result.
• Challenge sales and service. At the Apple Store, “the act of exchange became personal, passionate, and interesting.”
• Challenge production. Apple hasn’t figured this one out yet. How do you develop an empowered and engaged workforce to produce high-quality products in the shortest possible time and at the lowest cost? A good place to start is with a Baldrige assessment.

To read more about disruptive thinking, click on these articles:

• Anticipating Disruptive Change
• Be Prepared
• Where to Play and How to Win
• Making Your Organization Adaptable
• Making Innovation Part of Your Culture
• The Next Generation Collaborative Enterprise
• Innovation in the U.S.: The Bigger Picture

Where is that energy going to come from? Who will control the sources? How much will it cost? How will it affect your organization? How will it affect consumer needs, governments, healthcare, and education? Since the increase will be steady for the next 25 years, the impact will be felt along the way and not just in 2035. Your strategic planning process should consider that impact.

Of course, any increase in energy usage means an increase in carbon dioxide emissions, which is a key cause of global warming. The EIA predicts such emissions will jump by 43%.

How will global warming affect your organization? How will it affect your customers, employees, and suppliers? Your strategic planning process should consider this, too.

The EIA’s report is based on the assumption that current policies are unchanged. That seems to be a safe bet, at least until we’re faced with an end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it scenario. Based on its recent history, the U.S. government will drag its heels until other countries are using more energy than we are and spewing out more pollution that we are and then it will suddenly want to address the issues. That probably won’t take 25 years but you should still make sure your organization is as prepared as possible for energy shortages and global warming.

You can read a synopsis of the EIA report here.

To read more about how to develop an effective strategic plan, click on these articles:

• Be Prepared
• Identifying Potential Blind Spots
• Developing Agility on 3 Fronts
• Making Your Organization Adaptable
• Anticipating Disruptive Change

Her four strategies are:

• Backup. Even in a recession, it’s a good idea to build some overlap and redundancy into your organization to make it easier to respond to disruptions. “Great companies stress efficiency but build in slack and cross-train their people,” she writes.

• Communication. If you’ve developed systems to spread information virally, such as through social networks, you can keep the communication lines open and fast when disruption occurs.

• Collaboration. “Human relationships, commitment, and resiliency help companies recover quickly,” writes Kanter. She points to the efforts of Continental Airlines employees during the power outage that closed airports in the Northeast in 2003 and the creative solutions they came up with to keep their planes flying while other airlines were grounded.

• Values and Principles. I’ve talked about this a lot on Baldrige.com because it’s a common characteristic of Baldrige organizations. Guided by a shared vision and clear values and standards, “people know the right thing to do without being told and without waiting for permission.” An empowered workforce can act much quicker during a disruption than employees who have to wait for instructions and permission from above.

While there are some disruptions you cannot anticipate—and I would think air travel stopped by a volcanic plume qualifies—Kanter’s four strategies apply to whatever obstacles may appear. You need a plan. You need open and diverse systems of communication. You need to promote innovation and creativity throughout the workforce. And you need give them the guidance and the responsibility to meet customer needs no matter the circumstances.

To read more about being prepared, click on these articles:

• Identifying Potential Blind Spots
• Developing Agility on 3 Fronts
• Making Your Organization Adaptable
• Anticipating Disruptive Change

What factors would you consider in your decision? The availability and educational level of potential workers might be an issue. Quality of life could be important. Access to global markets, major transportation systems, research universities, large customer groups, or diverse employee candidates may be valuable.

Another factor is cost. For those narrow-minded organizations that think cost is all that matters—or that cheaper trumps everything—Boyd Co. Inc. has a list for you. According to Boyd, the most expensive U.S. cities to put 325 employees into a 70,000 square-foot headquarters are New York, San Francisco, Stamford (CT), San Jose, and Newark. The cheapest are Sioux Falls, Little Rock, Virginia Beach, Oklahoma City, and Columbus, South Carolina. The difference between New York, the most expensive at $30.7 million a year, and Sioux Falls, the cheapest at $21.1 million, is significant. And yet more companies choose New York than Sioux Falls because, as noted, cost is just one factor in the equation.

By the way, Minneapolis ranked fifteenth on the list of 50 cities at $26.2 million. Sure, you have to pay about $5 million more than you would in Sioux Falls, but you’ll save $4.5 million over New York while enjoying a metropolitan area with several universities, professional sports, theater and art, an entrepreneurial spirit, and headquarters for several global leaders including 3M, General Mills, Target, Cargill, Medtronic, and Best Buy.

As with most decisions an organization faces, cost is a critical factor in choosing where to put your headquarters, especially in hard economic times. But it’s not the only factor, and it’s usually not the most important one.

If you do this, you’re in good shape because you know the road that lies before you, the twists and turns, the hills to climb and the straightaways. You can proceed confidently toward your destination—unless a boulder blindsides you.

That boulder rolled out of a blind spot. It’s impossible to anticipate, but organizations can do a better job of recognizing when they are in boulder territory. In “Six Ways to Prevent Corporate Tunnel Vision,” Adrian Ott lists six questions you can ask to uncover hidden risks and opportunities. (Fast Company, April 5, 2010)

Can a competitor with a new business model explode the economics of your industry? The incumbent business model can feel like the way things are done until a better model blows it up.

Do you evaluate the same competitors now as you did three years ago? Companies are expanding into new markets—and those markets may include yours.

Can your category be simplified? Companies like Southwest and Costco have succeeded b simplifying what they offer.

How well do you evaluate the broader customer context independent of your products? Evaluate your customers from a 360 degree view including sequential tasks and simultaneous activity.

Do you regularly seek the next wave of technology or methods to serve customers, even when they will make your current products obsolete? Think  Blockbuster and Netflix.

Do you have the same channel partner portfolio mix as three years ago? In this case, think Facebook, Google, and Paypal.

Ott concludes with a final question: Is your current team capable of providing a perspective beyond current industry paradigms? If not, consider expanding the team that does strategic planning to include people who might have insights into these six questions.

To read more about strategic planning, click on these articles:

• Developing Agility on 3 Fronts
• Find Your Blue Ocean
• Where to Play and How to Win
• Making Your Organization Adaptable
• Anticipating Disruptive Change