When I was a kid, my Dad would pile my three siblings and me into the car and take us on what he called a Mystery Ride.
Looking back now as a parent myself, I’m sure these Mystery Rides were really just an elaborate ruse to give my mother kid-free time for a Sunday afternoon nap. But regardless of the reason, we loved to hear the words: “Get in the car, kids. We’re going on a Mystery Ride!”
As my Dad wove down back-country roads and meandered through the rural countryside, he talked about the things we were seeing, testing our memory and knowledge and giving us clues about our mystery destination.
I don’t remember many of the places we ended up, but I do remember many of the things I saw along the way – covered bridges, Native American burial grounds, large dairy farms and Civil War monuments. And I remember the stories and history that my dad shared as we drove along. In fact, I’ve carried those stories with me and they have sparked a love of history, an appreciation of customs and traditions and a sense of adventure. The journey, not the destination, was the most memorable part of the experience.
The process of developing an organizational strategy is very similar to going on a Mystery Ride – or, at least, it should be.
Because while it’s great to end up with a plan that clearly articulates the strategy for your organization (and I would argue that no organization can be successful without that written document that presents a path forward in clear, measurable steps), many organizations miss the value of the journey in their desire to “get there.”
Why is the process (the journey) so important in strategic planning?
Organizations need time and space to think deeply about tough, complex challenges and engaging in a Mystery Ride enables everyone to:
Taking the ride through these steps encourages learning, discussion and decision making at each twist and turn. But this can only happen when you and your team let go of preconceived ideas about the destination and, instead, allow the destination to emerge from what you discover.
Which leads to me to another extremely valuable result of this process: the Mystery Ride facilitates the ability to make decisions and set direction during times of uncertainty.
We’ve all had a plan that (for any number of reasons) didn’t work out the way we’d hoped. What we do as an organization in these circumstances is, quite literally, the difference between failure and success.
