10 Moments Begging for Fun Strategic Planning

Google fun strategic planning, and Brainzooming shows up with both our core article on the topic and a mega-compilation with a ton of ideas on how you can approach strategy in a better, fun, and very different way.

The association between Brainzooming and fun strategic planning is no accident.

I’m focused on making strategy planning enjoyable and engaging because of all my early career examples where the experience was anything but that. As an analyst, manager, and then VP at a Fortune 500 company, I endured far too many tortured strategic planning processes and meetings. Experiencing the pain of horrendous strategic planning approaches launched a career-long quest to make it fun to develop strategic plans.

10 Moments Begging for Fun Strategic Planning

Looking back, what pivotal moments spurred the pull toward fun strategic planning?

Here are ten of those moments, along with antidotes Brainzooming uses to correct these moments where fun strategic planning is so desperately needed.

Filling strategic planning meetings with people who have the right titles but were so far removed from the front lines that they had no meaningful ideas to grow the business. Antidote: Productively engage diverse people with different perspectives in strategic planning.
Lazy facilitators asking executives to share their titles and number of years at the company without realizing this icebreaker shuts down participation from less-tenured employees with fresh thinking. Antidote: Employ ice breaker activities that lead to better knowing everyone or help further the strategy work that's ahead.
Having a rocket scientist (yes, an actual rocket scientist) make up the rules for a strategic planning approach that might have built a great rocket, but not a great strategy plan. Antidote: Make smart changes to simply, streamline, and enliven your strategic planning initiative.
Witnessing countless consultants hand our marketing team complex strategy templates that people had no clue about how to complete with smart, strategic answers. Antidote: Focus on asking productive questions to engage business leaders in strategy, and let the strategists complete any strategy templates.
Walking into needlessly bland hotel rooms with senior executives who didn't want any help to develop their strategic plans and were not bashful about saying so. Antidote: Work with any facility as early as possible to re-imagine a space so that it really contributes to maximizing collaboration.
The high-priced, junior consultant who reveled in dreaming up fourteen (Yes, 14. Four-Teeeeeeen) individual steps to move from one small phase of the plan to the next small phase of the plan. Antidote: Engage the right talent, whether inside or external to your organization, to facilitate strategic planning.
Growing tired of cookie cutter marketing managers wasting time in meetings reciting their cookie cutter SWOT analyses when they really needed to tackle new, significant threats, not recycling bland strategies that would never improve the business in meaningful ways. Antidote: Explore varied perspectives to lead people to think about strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in new ways.
Sitting through day-long strategy meetings with only water and coffee for food & beverage choices (when I needed a Diet Dr. Pepper and a snack, like crazy). Antidote: If you're looking at an outside venue for strategy planning, make sure that they offer fun food options. For internal meetings, making that happen is on you!
Seeing knowledgeable business people feel as if they had no room to contribute to strategic planning because they were never asked about real, day-to-day opportunities and challenges. Antidote: Make it clear that strategic planning is about what's most important for the organization to succeed, and that could be a day-to-day issue that needs attention.
Going through months of planning meetings where it seemed that there was no known way to arrive at a winning strategy short of weeks consumed by daily team meetings filled with meandering conversations. Antidote: Take advantage of strategic conversations throughout the year to adapt your strategy and get a head start on your next strategic planning.