We’ve been working hard at HESA Towers the last couple of weeks on strategic plans (currently at Queen’s and Memorial).  One of my colleagues, Michael Savage, has been working on some comparative work on strategic plans, some of which we’ll tell you about tomorrow.  But I wanted to talk about something we’ve noticed in the way Canadian strategic plans are put together.  And that is the difference between “bucket” plans and “pillar” plans.

Generally, strategic plans all contain three things.  There is the “big picture stuff”: that is, vision, mission, and values.  There is usually a list of shorter-term objectives, things that need to get done or objectives that need to be met over the period of the plan: call it “the checklist.”  But there’s a meso-level between these two things: usually a set of 3-5 themes in which related checklist elements get grouped together.  And we’ve noticed that how grouping happens is maybe the most interesting part of the exercise.  It comes down to whether these themes are treated as buckets or as pillars.

Before I explain the difference, let’s take a step back and think about what a strategic plan really is.  It’s partly a navigational tool – it tells you where an organization needs to go.  But it’s also a theory of change and of leverage: if we do X, Y and Z, we will get to our destination more quickly.  In order to generate that theory of change/leverage, you need to know two things: first of all, what you are good at (“strengths”, mainly, but also “weaknesses”) and what the biggest obstacles between you and your goal are (“threats”, mainly, with a few “opportunities” thrown in). 

When you see a written institutional strategic plan, there is a lot of blather about strengths.  This is fine; after all, these are usually promotional documents as much as they are management tools.  What you tend not to see is the stuff about obstacles.  Because, hey, those are a downer.  The question is whether the people doing the strategic planning have really thought about the obstacles and whether they have internalized the obstacles. 

If you are genuinely considering how to overcome specific obstacles, the themes in your plan will be complementary and work towards overcoming the identified obstacles.  They are pillars working together to hold up a roof (where the roof is the vision/mission statements).  In effect, the themes are determined by working backwards from the big picture stuff, considering the obvious obstacles.

But if you read enough strategic plans, you start to realize that most of them – in fact, 70-80% of Canadian strategic plans by our very rough count – are not written this way.  Instead of working backwards from the end-goal, the themes start from the checklist and move forward.  That is, people come up with a whole bunch of great (or possibly not-so-great) ideas about what needs to be done to clean up the place, and these then get tossed into a few “buckets” which group together similar-sounding initiatives.  This is planning, and it is being written in the form of a strategic plan, but it really isn’t all that strategic. 

Which is just fine.  If an organization is pretty much where it needs to be, there is a lot to be said for not mucking around with a good thing and sticking to the check-list/“buckets” approach.  If, as an organization, you are change-fatigued and just want to keep your head down for a couple of years, a “buckets” approach works just swell. 

On the other hand, if you do want substantial change, or the institution faces urgent challenges, then anything other than a “pillars” approach is a waste of time.  Strategy is not “doing a random bunch of stuff we have always wanted to do.”  It is about judiciousness.  It is about understanding which actions will bring the greatest benefit, in terms of overcoming obstacles/reaching goals, and focusing on them.  It is about understanding how multiple actions/tactics can build upon one another to increase the combined impact of all.

The problem really comes when you decide on a bucket strategy when a pillar strategy is called for.  Or if you think you’re building a pillar strategy but are actually using buckets.  This way danger lies – and danger that can hurt an organization for several years, by steering it down the wrong track, wasting both time and money, either by being too bold, or not bold enough.

So, when you sit down to think about your next organizational strategy, ask yourself whether you need buckets or pillars.  Check with folks in your organization about what degree of change might be needed, and how big the obstacles to some ideal state are.  Your planning – and your whole organization – will be the better for it.