So we worked up a new process to begin in the fall of 2001. It was a radical change for all involved. Previously, a president would come into a review meeting with a lengthy PowerPoint presentation, which captured all the material that he or she wanted to share. The president would go through the deck, slide by slide, revealing the material to the mass audience in real time. We changed the meeting completely. It went from a formal presentation (by the business to management) to a dialogue focused on a very few critical strategic issues identified in advance. Whatever strategic issues the president wanted to discuss were delivered in writing in advance of the strategy review meeting. The senior team would review the submission and select the issues it wished to discuss (or propose alternative points of discussion).

... it’s helpful to think about strategic planning in terms of two separate and distinct activities (and teams): strategic thinking and execution planning.

Jim Collins refers to this team as “the council.” Grab a copy of Collins’ Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… And Others Don’t and read the three most important pages ever written in business — Pages 114 to 116 — where he describes the 11 guidelines for structuring such a council.

Most likely you have more time than you think to develop your strategic agenda. While people expect fresh perspective from a new leader, a new style, and probably a new energy level, most do not expect a wholesale new direction, at least early on.

There’s a lot to be said for effective listening and for not sharing plans prematurely. Not only does it tamp down the amount of potential distraction within the organization, it also nips public scrutiny and second-guessing in the bud. The last thing a new leader needs, especially in a crisis situation, is to have the media and industry pundits questioning, analyzing, and deconstructing your plans even more than they already will be doing. Big pronouncements, especially early in your tenure, make big impressions that can come back to haunt you. “If you’re going to make big calls, you better be right,” counsels Steve Bennett. “Because if you come in early and you make big calls and you’re wrong, the whole organization is going to lose a lot of confidence in you.”

Vision for vision’s sake is counterproductive. Determining a course for the organization is a process that usually requires more time than most people foresee. It should be iterative, building off your strategic agenda, sharpening and clarifying the path based in experimentation and feedback.

In many large organizations, the challenge is often diagnosed as internal. That is, the organization’s competitive problems may be much lighter than the obstacles imposed by its own outdated routines, bureaucracy, pools of entrenched interests, lack of cooperation across units, and plain-old bad management. Thus, the guiding policy lies in the realm of reorganization and renewal. And the set of coherent actions are changes in people, power, and procedures. In other cases the challenge may be building or deepening competitive advantage by pushing the frontiers of organizational capability.