Nearly everyone agrees that strategic planning is important. But there’s one huge problem: no one seems to take the time to do it.

Leadership and Strategic Planning

Leaders, in particular, know that they need to do strategic planning.

In a recent Harvard Business Review article, the author, our friend and colleague Dorie Clark, says:

Almost every leader wants to make more time for strategic thinking. In one survey of 10,000 senior leaders, 97% of them said that being strategic was the leadership behavior most important to their organization’s success.

And yet in another study, a full 96% of the leaders surveyed said they lacked the time for strategic thinking.

As a result of this perceived lack of time, then, strategic planning just doesn’t get done.

Strategic Planning Is The Key To Sanity & Productivity

What most entrepreneurs, business professionals and execs do is wake up every single morning and check their email inboxes. They then proceed to use their inbox as their agenda for the day. Checking emails and responding to emails. In full reactivity mode.

They end up exhausted and depleted.

Their inboxes are still full. And yet they haven’t paid attention to their most important goals.

A strategic plan – actually any plan at all – would change the game.

A plan is both a roadmap; and a filter. A roadmap to guide you through your days and weeks; and a filter to shut out the distractions and the noise.

With a strategic plan, you can be much more mindful and intentional.

Strategic Planning Is The Gateway To Deep Work

Most of us have become shallow in the way we think and act.

We skitter along the surface of things. We allow ourselves to live in a world of distraction.

We’ve become addicted to the stimulation and outside input, checking and re-checking our smartphones and our tablets and our emails; responding incessantly to the phone calls and messages and notifications and alerts. Overwhelmed and inundated by the expectations and the deadlines and the demands, endeavoring to pay attention to everything and succeeding only at a continuous partial attention.

We’ve become addicted, as Jim Collins, author of that wonderful business book, Good to Great, says,… we’ve become addicted to the undisciplined pursuit of more.

We’ve lost the capacity to focus, the capacity to do deep work.

Without the capacity to do deep work, we are replaceable.

The gift of our humanity, though, is our ability to ponder, reflect, refine.

Our ability to create.

Our ability to do deep work.

Our ability to focus.

Focus will be the currency of the new economy.

Those who can focus will thrive.

Those who can’t will become obsolete.

Taking the time to plan allows us to go deep.

Time Management and Strategic Planning

Everyone wants to manage time.

But time can’t be managed. Time just is. No matter how hard you work, you’ll never wrestle time to the ground.

Everyone wants more time.

But there isn’t any more of it. You have all of the time that there is. You have all of the time promised to presidents, and kings.

Time can’t be managed. What you do with it is up to you. It’s a choice.

Choose to do strategic planning. Set aside the time.  And your likelihood of success will increase significantly.

Use A 90 Day Plan

The 90 day planning process is one of the most powerful tools we know for creating exponential growth in business. While the process is not a complicated one, it does require that you step out of your business and get crystal clear on what you want to create in the next quarter (and beyond). And that can be the big stumbling block for so many entrepreneurs and business professionals. It’s a challenge even for us.

Sure it’s great to have 1 year plans and 3 year plans. But 90 day plans are a much more manageable process. In a 90 day plan, you map out four things: 1. Your revenue target; that is, how much money you want to make; 2. Your marketing plan to hit the revenue target; 3. The specific projects that will support your marketing and revenue generation; and 4. The systems you need to support the plan.

Doing a 90 day plan each calendar quarter creates a sound rhythm for the year.

You Don’t Need To Do Strategic Planning

You can just lurch.

But a plan is better.

You can increase your impact and your income.

You can go deep.

You can create something truly magnificent.

Have a plan. Follow the plan.

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Would you like a (free) 90 day planning template for the next quarter? Click HERE.

Expertise is not just about booking the hours; it’s about doing deliberate practice.

Whether it’s launching a podcast, preparing a new keynote, writing a weekly blog, doing a webinar, or learning the elements of a sales conversation, deliberate practice is the key to confidence and success. (For Tyrolean traverses too.)

The magic in our lives is always just beyond our comfort zones. Deliberate practice is the doorway to discovering that magic.

Business can be a lonely game.

But it doesn’t need to be that way.

If you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to to go far, if you really want to make an impact in the world, go together.

It’s better together.

Former U.S. Vice president Dan Quayle famously mangled a well known organization’s quote by saying, “What a terrible thing to have lost one’s mind. Or not to have a mind at all. How true that is.”

Have you lost your mind?

On most days, the answer for me is yes. How true that is!

I get caught up in the vortex of busy. And in that place, I’m either ruminating about things that have happened; or worrying about things that might happen.

I’m rarely here; now; in this moment.

You?

Mindfulness calls us back to the present; to this moment. This one and only moment. This precious moment. The only one that’s real.

Mindfulness brings peace. And joy.

Be. Here. Now.

Will you give it a try?