Dave Logan
Co-Founder/Senior Partner of CultureSync, and Professor at the Marshall School of Business at University of Southern California

Challenging the Efficacy of Long-Term Strategic Planning

An interview with Pamela Stambaugh:

Dave Logan, Ph.D., is co-founder and senior partner of CultureSync, a management consulting firm specializing in cultural change, strategy, and negotiation. He is also professor at the Marshall School of Business at USC.

He and his partners John King and Halee Fischer-Wright co-authored Tribal Leadership, Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization, which is still picking up momentum two years later and keeping Dave on the road.

Without skipping a beat and within the same year, Dave co-authored The Three Laws of Performance, Rewriting the Future of Your Organization and Your Life with Steve Zaffron, which was an instant best-seller.

Dave will open the Association for Strategic Planning conference. He is an excellent voice to commence our strategic theme, "Positioning for Long-Term Success in a Short-Term World." Dave indicated in our interview that his presentation will provide a bit of a bridge between the short-term and the long-term nature of strategic planning.

He said, "While most strategic plans make sense, and could get an A in graduate school, they are just as often disconnected from people's passions. The plan comes across as something I have to do as opposed to an opportunity, or something fun. Most strategic planning also lacks a sense of urgency. Strategic planning, by nature, is a process. You have to know where you are headed, but you also need to engage people NOW.

"Engaging people quickly might even get the plan accomplished faster, and in a way that people will find opportunities during execution that people didn't see during planning process itself."

For those whose job focuses on the short term, is there a bridge a greater level of energy and sense of urgency to the strategic planning process? Most plans aren't ever implemented, so the topic of immediate engagement is becoming more important as the cycle time of business continues to accelerate. Unless we can engage people, there may not be time to do it over.

Dave will be answering the question, "What can I do now and today to get closer to the objectives?"

Pamela Stambaugh, President, Accountability Pays, is an executive coach and strategic management facilitator in San Diego, California.

Books Co-Authored by Dave Logan

The Three Laws of Performance: Rewriting the Future of Your Organization and Your Life By Dave Logan, Steve Zaffron Jossey-Bass, 2009 Buy at Amazon or Barnes & Noble

Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization By Dave Logan, John King, Halee Fischer-Wright HarperBusiness, 2008 Buy at Amazon or Barnes & Noble