Raynor: Businesses Need to Embrace Uncertainty, Integrate Existence of Social Media into Strategic Planning

PR Squared’s Todd Deffren Defren (sorry, Todd!) has a great interview with Michael Raynor author of The Strategy Paradox.

The basic thesis of the book, from what I gather without having read it (yet!) is that many business people believe that they future is mostly foreseeable. Yet, something unexpected always comes up. Sometimes, the unexpected sinks a company. So businesses need to create flexible future plans that can accommodate unexpected changes in technology, markets, best practices, etc.

I particularly liked Raynor’s answer to Deffren’s question about transparency and social media as it relates to unforeseen change and strategic planning:

What role has the transparency of social media played in helping companies better predict the relevant future more accurately to business climate changes?

Social Media causes more uncertainty; it actually can hinder a company’s ability to predict and plan. There are far more avenues for gathering information but, too much data can be bad.

Importantly, Social Media not only provides more data but also becomes a component in and of itself – for example, the WSJ recently recounted the media war that played out when a wanna-be whistleblower within the company raised a stink about a large-scale IT project. Because examples like these will likely happen more often, it creates a new source of uncertainty and change - at a rate that no large company could accelerate to meet (especially if they are doing things that are big and complex)!

Scenario-based planning allows you to tackle what could go wrong without being accurate about what will go wrong. Social Media needs to be considered for both its benefits and dangers.

The mythology of strategy is that it is all about vision, commitment, dogged determination – these are virtues if you survive, but if you fail they could just as easily be reconsidered as wrong-headed obstinacy. Social Media has a way of highlighting our qualities, for good or ill.

Link to WSJ article mine.

Basically, my takeaway here is that businesses need to stay on their toes and cover their bases when it comes to social media. Even if you’re not engaging directly with social media, its existence increases the likelihood of an unforeseen problem in need of a solution. If social media doesn’t play a role in your strategic planning, you are acting as though you can predict a future in which rapidly changing technologies do not affect your business.

And that would be a bad delusion to hold onto.