On Strategic Planning

“All organizations are perfectly designed to get the results they get.”

This quote—attributed to Arthur Jones, an organizational design expert—has always hit me hard when I’m setting ambitious goals or developing a new strategic plan for the team. We often spend too much time asking “what are our new goals?” and not enough time asking “what needs to change about how we work to achieve these new goals?”

The sooner we accept that our organizations are currently designed to continue reproducing the status quo, the sooner we’re able to make structural changes to the organizational dynamics that lead to different outcomes.