Just the Facts, Ma'am

When Sergeant Joe Friday of the Los Angeles Police Department responded to a new case, all he wanted were the facts. He needed to know what really happened, not what the witness thought happened. Once he knew what was real he had his starting point for working the case.

As you begin your strategic planning you need to know the facts. They tell you the rules of the game. Trying to play football on a basketball court doesn't really help you. Identifying the facts about your company, your market, and your whole operating environment gives you an idea of what paths are open to you and what tools are available for your use. If you're trying to figure out how to get from "here" to "there," you first need to know where "here" is. The facts help you identify the point where you're beginning.

What do we mean by "facts?" Well, these are the things that are true about your operating environment. They involve what is happening now, not what might happen in the future. They are things you know, not things you assume. They are an observation of reality, not a description of your ideal world, so you need to include inconvenient and unpleasant truths as well as those you think are helpful.

These might include such things as:

- laws
- available resources during a particular period
- existing technologies
- current size and skills of your workforce
- existing inventory
- contractual agreements
- current organizational structure

These are the things you take as a given...for now, anyway. Some of them might be changed -- inventory, for instance, or the size and skills of your employees -- and those changes, if you want to make them, will need to be addressed in your plan. Others, such as laws or contracts, are things you may be stuck with, depending upon the time frame of your plan...if you're looking beyond the length of your contracts then changing them in the future may be an option but if you're looking at a shorter term, you have to work with what you have now. The unchangeable facts will, in many cases, form the outer boundaries of your set of available options...you can look inside that set for courses of action, but looking beyond them is a waste of time and effort.

Your more experienced employees play a critical role here because they know your history and the limits under which they operate. A potential problem with them is that they may be so used to working under certain conditions that what they call a "fact," thinking it to be an immutable force of nature, may instead be something changeable that has simply been around so long that they can't imagine life without it. Newer employees are useful for challenging those statements of "fact" that in reality may be perceived limitations that can be easily ignored.

The more creative your workforce, the more facts you will uncover if you turn them loose upon the problem. This is a good thing, not because it creates more limitations, but because it better defines the limitations that are there whether you see them or not. Facts exist -- wishing they didn't doesn't make it so. The better you understand your operating environment the more you'll be able to shape that environment to best suit your needs and create the most profitable opportunities through your planning efforts.

Knowing your facts helps you best refine your mission and start thinking of ways to accomplish it. Just as Sergeant Friday needed his facts to get the ball rolling, so do you. The difference is, he managed to get his work done in 30 minutes (with time for commercials) whereas you'll have a little more work to do.