Supreme Excellence... Why and How to Assess Strategic Planning Systems

David I. Goldenberg, Ph.D.
Chairman [Ret.]
Systematic Forecasting, Inc.

To be discussed: The merits and uses of four distinct and objective ways to reliably classify strategic planning systems as generally valid or workable; a special case; and generally invalid or unworkable.

Sun-tzu’s Ping Fa or The Art of War, circa 514 BC, offered the first known description of that process. Dr. George Steiner of Lockheed proposed a 25-point process in the early 1960s. I commercialized a computerized approach based on economic principles at the urging of Dr. George Sawyer in the late 1970s after examining the nine strategic planning systems popular at that time. Over a dozen additional strategic planning systems were assessed with that methodology in the next 25 years; the results were interesting, even startling. The National Association of Corporate Directors asked me to devise a simpler method for corporate directors; they published that nine-step process as "A Director's Guide to Strategic Planning: The Paramount v. Time Inc. Legacy" in the May 1995 issue of Director’s Monthly.

Such a taxonomy has several uses besides its primary and immediate benefit of identifying strategic planning systems that will help rather than hurt a firm or leave it vulnerable to attack and also will enable the Board of Directors to invoke the good-business practice rule as a shield. A secondary but more diffused advantage comes from applying the taxonomy as a training / teaching tool. But, in my opinion, its subtlest and most potent use lies in its competitive intelligence application of quickly spotlighting fatal flaws in a rival’s strategic planning system. Those weaknesses can be readily attacked with little chance of either advance warning or a successful counter.

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