Tomorrow’s successful corporation will be a collection of skills and capabilities ever ready to pounce on brief market anomalies. Any useful strategic plan, or planning process, must focus upon the development and honing of these skills (which translates into readiness to seek and exploit opportunities), rather than emphasize static approaches to market development. That is, the strategy should focus primarily on such things as the time and energy to be devoted to creating revolutionary quality improvement or getting linked up fast with almost all of our customers.

The “new” strategic plan, and planning process, must necessarily be “bottom-up.” Assessing the ability (and necessary skills) to execute-to be responsive, flexible, attentive to customers-starts on the front line. Obviously, as the process moves forward, it will involve debate among senior officers, and compromise. But it should never lose touch with or sight of the front line, where execution takes place.

The plan, whose development involves everyone, should be shared with everyone after completion. At that point, there is a serious case to be made for destroying it—if not in practice, at least in spirit. Its value is as an assemblage of thoughts, not constraints. The process of developing it is close to 100 percent of its value—or perhaps more than 100 percent of its value. Slavishly following the plan despite changing conditions (now the norm), because of the time and political capital spent in assembling it, is counterproductive.

Finally, the content and format of the plan and the planning process should be modified substantially every year. Most plans and planning processes readily become bureaucratic (within two years), whereas the sole purpose is to be thought-provoking. Only changes in process which demand wholly new questions-from near the front line especially-will ensure vitality and usefulness.