In an era of uncertainty, determining what impacts an organization’s direction is as important as identifying those factors, understanding the risks, and knowing which ones truly matter. Achieving such clarity is possible through strategic foresight, a structured approach used to anticipate opportunities and challenges to prepare for future changes. This approach is even more crucial in the government sector, where authorities are responsible for public resources, well-being, and long-term stability.
Singapore serves as an exemplary case study in this realm. The country ranked fifth in the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Global Innovation Index 2023 and has been recognized for its ability to translate “innovation investments into innovation outputs.” Similarly, the Singapore Country Report 2024 for the BTI Transformation Index, where Singapore ranks 21st out of 137, provides further examples of how the country maintains strategic priorities and implements policies effectively in several areas.
Singapore’s adaptability is also reflected in its ranking in The KPI Institute’s Government Service Index 2023. Singapore ranked first in Future Readiness, which, in the context of government services, refers to the capacity and preparedness of government agencies and institutions to adapt, innovate, and effectively meet society’s evolving needs and challenges in the future.
Future readiness also emphasizes forward-thinking and proactive approaches to governance. Several perspectives were assessed in this dimension of the index, wherein Singapore took the top spots in Strategic Prioritization (first), Innovation (second), R&D Expenditure (second), Regulation of Emerging Technologies (second), Investment in Green Energy and Infrastructure (fifth), and Hightech and Medium-high-tech Manufacturing (first).
Singapore’s decades-long history of planning, as noted on the Centre for Strategic Futures’ (CSF) website, started with an experiment in the Ministry of Defence in the late 1980s. It was further refined in 1995 when the Scenario Planning Office was set up in the Prime Minister’s Office. In 2003, it was renamed the Strategic Policy Office (SPO) “to reflect the strengthened links between foresight work and strategy formulation.”
In 2009, the CSF was established within the Strategic Policy Office to focus on whole-of-government strategic planning and prioritization. Its vision is “to build a strategically agile public service ready to manage a complex and fast-changing environment.” This suggests a focus on adapting governmental structures and processes and emphasizes the importance of flexibility within the public sector to address future complexities and changes. Its mission is focused on three main areas: “building capacities, mindsets, expertise, and tools for strategic anticipation and risk management; developing insights into future trends, discontinuities, and strategic surprises; and communicating the insights to decision-makers for informed policy planning.”
Strategic Foresight Tools
To develop insights into future trends, the CSF applies sophisticated strategic foresight tools recognized as Scenario Planning Plus (SP+). SP+ serves six purposes: defining focus, environmental scanning, sense-making, developing possible futures, designing strategies, and monitoring. The process goes as follows: the nature of the problem is established first, and then problems are divided into five domains—simple, complicated, complex, chaotic, and disorder—using tools such as complexity theorist Dave Snowden’s Cynefin Framework Problem Definition.
Subsequently, with Driving Forces Analysis and Prioritisation [sic] tools, potential trigger events are examined based on how they can influence existing trends and then subsequently ranked according to their potential impact on stakeholders. Afterward, Scenario Planning is used to generate narratives and models to comprehend conceivable future conditions. This method makes use of stories to depict possible future scenarios, questioning assumptions and stimulating deliberation on long-term strategies.
One of the responsibilities of the CSF is to distribute the SP+ toolkit throughout the Singaporean Government. To achieve this, the center conducts a series of workshops called “FutureCraft.” Experts are invited to join said workshops, which focus on introducing key skills and tools relevant to government foresight work. Through its publications, the CSF disseminates information that aims to address real-world challenges and offer different approaches to envisioning the future, such as the Driving Forces Cards 2040.
By embracing strategic planning as a core approach, the Singaporean government fosters resilience, adaptability, and competitiveness, thus paving a sustainable path for the country’s future. Governments across the globe can learn from Singapore’s example of creating strategic foresight units to become better equipped to make informed strategic choices, anticipate potential complex socioeconomic obstacles, and gain a competitive edge.
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in Performance Magazine Issue No. 30, 2024 – Government Edition.
As a senior lecturer and principal research scientist for the MIT Sloan School of Management, Dr. George Westerman is a veritable authority in bridging executive leadership and digital innovation. So when he talks about how generative AI (GenAI) affects business strategy, we would all do well to listen.
In this lecture, Dr. Westerman demystifies GenAI from a management perspective. He also invokes his eponymous philosophy: Westerman’s Law or The First Law of Digital Innovation, which states, “Technology changes quickly, but organizations change much more slowly.”
With how quickly GenAI is evolving, integrating it into your business strategy is equal parts challenging and risky. Watch Dr. Westerman navigate this dilemma.
Planning and strategy are often confused with one another. They are even combined in the term “strategic planning.” But a strategy is something very different than a plan. When the distinctions are blurred, problems arise—as evidenced by the consistently high failure rates in strategy.
The confusion about what strategy is stems largely from the widespread and inaccurate use of the word itself. People tend to use “strategy” to distinguish a concept from something ordinary, like in “strategic HR” and “strategic marketing.” They also use it in their day-to-day language to reflect their ideas about how to achieve some goal. For example, “My strategy to lose weight is to eat 10% less than usual every day.”
In business, or organizations more generally, strategy means something else. It must be because otherwise, every plan, approach, and process can be called a strategy, which brings us nowhere. This is how a strategy and a plan are different (see Figure 1).
Figure 1. The Differences Between Strategy and Planning
A strategy is a logic that describes how an organization creates and captures value. It is the starting point from which goals can be derived.
A plan is a process that describes the steps an organization intends to take in order to achieve its goals and thereby realize its strategy.
Since plans and planning are widely known, it is important to zoom in on the strategy part of this comparison. A strategy lays out the logic according to which an organization creates and captures value. As described in my recent book, “The One-Hour Strategy,” this covers six elements that comprise the 6M Framework:
Magic: The products and services the entity offers and what they do for customers
Market: The customers whose needs the business serves and the alternatives it competes against
Means: The assets and capabilities that a company and its partners can bring to the table
Money: The way and amount of revenue generated versus existing costs and risks
Meaning: The things that the company finds most important and to which it most aspires
Momentum: The factors outside one’s control that help or hinder them in what they do
This is not just a list. There is a logic reflected in the image. The heart of a strategy is the company’s Magic (the value it creates). It is a link between the Means (how one does this) and the Market (where and for whom one does it).
It is also the link between Money (how value is captured) and Meaning (the why). And around that, there is Momentum (the environment), which either works for a company or against it.
Finally, as reflected by the other arrows, a good strategy is an integrated set of choices that all align so that all 6 Ms fit together as one coherent whole.
Seen as such, there is no need to confuse a strategy and a plan. The two are simply very different.
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About the Guest Expert:Jeroen Kraaijenbrink is an accomplished strategy educator, mentor, author, and consultant with over two decades of academic and industry experience. He has a PhD in industrial management and has helped improve the strategic planning and implementation of numerous organizations across a variety of industries.
Editor’s Note: This was originally published in Performance Magazine Issue No. 29, 2024 – Strategy Management Edition.
Benchmarking, commonly known as learning from best practices, is an effective organizational performance tool that can boost a company’s performance, by enabling a learning experience that relies upon understanding best-in-class practices and implementing them within one’s own organizational structure.
This assessment process is conducted for the sake of improving your firm’s performance to fill the performance gaps between you and your best-in-class competitors or even exceeding their performance level in the long run.
However, as effective as it may seem, benchmarking is a time-consuming and resource-intensive activity that requires a well-defined methodology, an action plan to identify best-in-class competitors, and an implementation strategy. Without these components, the positive effects of a benchmarking study on performance might be reduced.
The What, Why, and Who of Benchmarking
Benchmarking allows companies to focus on their strengths and weaknesses by comparing them to those of their main competitors within their respective industries or even other industries, enabling them to strengthen their position in the market.
When searching for competitors, the focus must be on understanding their best practices. This involves conducting a comparison of performance data, data that is obtained by analyzing our competitors’ similar processes and internal activities and identifying the practices that led to superior performance. Once identified, those practices must be adapted and implemented within the boundaries of your own organization.
Hence, when conducted correctly, the benefits associated with benchmarking can include:
Measuring and comparing your organizational processes against those of another competitor or industry
Discovering performance gaps
Incorporating leading firms’ processes into your own process flow to increase performance and reduce gaps
Future-oriented goal setting and improved resource prioritization
Accelerating continuous process improvements (CPI)
Identifying better opportunities for growth
Learning from industry standards
To show that benchmarking is more than just comparing numbers, let’s consider the following example: in the electric utility sector, an electricity distributor has an average interruption time for residential customers of 105 minutes. Is this value good, acceptable, or bad? It is not easy to find an appropriate answer unless the duration is compared to an objective standard, such as the industry standard of interruption time for electricity distributors in the area.
However, it also depends on the company’s strategy. An interruption time of 105 minutes may be considered a satisfactory value for the company, but someone else might see it as an alarming call for improvement.
The example above relies on the idea that performance represented through the usage of mere numbers can’t provide any meaning when analyzed without a reference—a benchmark, so to speak—as a comparison point.
When conducting a benchmarking analysis, no matter the industry of interest, there are usually three questions that must be answered before initiating the study:
What is to be benchmarked? (e.g. processes, strategies)
Against what or who will your organization be benchmarked? (e.g. KPIs, competitors)
What will benchmarking do to my organization? (e.g. improve performance, analyze performance)
In general, nowadays, performance measurement has become a standard practice for any organization that uses KPIs.
The next step that needs to be taken to improve performance is the implementation of a benchmarking study, wherein your company can compare its own performance with the sector’s point of reference (a benchmark) or simply assess the company’s compliance with respect to industry standards. Doing so helps you learn from others’ best practices and apply them within your own organization.
The Bottom Line
Is benchmarking worth a company’s investment and time? Simply put, yes. It is a potentially powerful tool to promote continuous performance improvement and performance comparison among industry players.
Nevertheless, you must remember that quite a lot of attention and time must be dedicated to defining the initiatives that must be taken and the methodology that will be used, otherwise, the results may be ambiguous.
Given the complexity of designing a benchmarking study and all the related challenges associated with it, The KPI Institute’s training program, Certified Benchmarking Professional, is designed to fill the gaps you might currently have or provide completely new knowledge about the various aspects of how to conduct a benchmarking study.
For more knowledge, feel free to download any of our webinars focused on benchmarking or take a look at our solutions, which span from audit services to framework optimization.
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Editor’s Note: This article has been updated as of March 21, 2025.
In their 1985 paper “Of Strategies, Deliberate and Emergent,” Henry Mintzberg and James A. Waters describe strategic planning as a continuum. There is deliberate strategic planning on one end and emergent strategic planning on the opposite.
Deliberate strategic planning represents a structured, systematic approach to strategy development that emphasizes a planned, intentional, and coherent process whereby organizations set clear objectives and design strategies to achieve them. This approach presupposes a stable environment where goals and actions align closely.
On the other hand, an emergent strategy is more adaptive, arising from patterns of action rather than premeditated plans. While emergent strategies thrive on flexibility and responsiveness, deliberate strategies emphasize clarity, predictability, and alignment with long-term objectives.
Despite the growing popularity of emergent strategic planning, the deliberate approach remains vital for corporations aiming for sustainable success. One of its core strengths lies in the distinct roles it ascribes to top management and middle managers. In the deliberate process, top management acts as architects of the strategy, setting overarching goals and ensuring alignment with the organization’s vision, while middle managers focus on operationalizing these strategies and managing their implementation.
As outlined by J. Scott Armstrong in his paper on the importance of value planning in making strategic decisions, deliberate strategic planning unfolds in four distinct phases, with each phase contributing to securing stakeholder commitment. Before diving into these phases, it is important to recognize that historical data serves as one of the cornerstones of the process. Organizations rely on their data repository to provide past performance metrics and external trends.
Top management can utilize historical data to identify patterns, trends, and benchmarks, which they can then use to design actionable plans. Meanwhile, middle managers can use this data to refine tactical operations, ensuring that daily activities align with strategic objectives. Having a robust data architecture not only allows a company to more accurately analyze what has happened but also to forecast future trends, mitigate risks, and design strategies grounded in evidence rather than conjecture. With this foundation, organizations can proceed through the deliberate strategic planning phases with clear direction.
Defining Long-Term Objectives: The first phase involves defining the company’s long-term goals or ultimate objectives. These goals must align with the aspirations and priorities of various stakeholders, such as employees, investors, and customers. Tools like stakeholder analysis can identify key interests and concerns, while SWOT analysis evaluates the organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Furthermore, in later stages of this planning process, the use of SMART criteria—specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound—ensures the clear statement and actionability of goals. By integrating these tools, companies create a foundation for a cohesive strategic vision that resonates across all stakeholder groups.
Generating Strategies: The second phase centers on generating strategies and alternative approaches to achieving these long-term goals. Companies must consider comprehensive strategies that incorporate slack resources—such as additional time, finances, or facilities—to account for uncertainty and enhance the plan’s flexibility. Generating alternative strategies is a crucial practice that bolsters adaptability. Techniques such as brainstorming sessions, unstructured group meetings, and scenario planning encourage creativity and provide contingency options. This phase ensures that the organization has a repertoire of well-thought-out strategies ready to deploy, even in dynamic or unpredictable environments.
Evaluating Strategies: After developing strategies and alternatives, the third phase evaluates their feasibility in relation to the first phase’s objectives. This evaluation process ensures that the proposed strategies are realistic, effective, and aligned with the company’s mission. Methods such as checklists, the Delphi technique, and the Devil’s Advocate approach provide structured ways to scrutinize strategies. For instance, a checklist can ensure that all critical factors, such as resource availability and market conditions, are considered. The Delphi technique harnesses internal expert consensus, whereas the Devil’s Advocate method identifies potential flaws or risks. This rigorous evaluation phase narrows down the list of strategies to those most likely to succeed.
Strategy Monitoring and Implementation: The final phase involves systematically monitoring the results of implemented strategies. Companies should establish a feedback system with clearly defined intervals—such as quarterly or semi-annual reviews—to assess performance and make necessary adjustments. This system must account for changes in external factors, such as economic, technological, geopolitical, and social shifts, as well as internal factors like evolving strengths, weaknesses, and competitive actions. Key performance indicators (KPIs) serve as a critical tool for monitoring progress, enabling organizations to measure outcomes against predefined benchmarks. Integrating KPIs into the company’s performance management system and linking them to the organizational incentive system ensures accountability and motivates stakeholders to align their efforts with strategic goals.
Securing Stakeholder Commitment
A deliberate plan significantly enhances a company’s ability to secure stakeholder commitments throughout the process. A well-structured plan not only communicates the company’s long-term objectives but also fosters a sense of ownership among stakeholders. For instance, engaging stakeholders in the development of alternative strategies allows them to voice their concerns and align their interests with the organization’s goals.
Similarly, an accurate feedback and monitoring system ensures transparency, showing stakeholders how their contributions influence outcomes and incentivizing them to remain invested in the strategy’s success. This is especially crucial in large corporations where the different parts of the organization must work in alignment with the organization’s objective.
Strategic Foundation
Deliberate strategic planning remains an indispensable tool for organizations, offering clarity, structure, and alignment in an increasingly complex business environment. While emergent strategies provide flexibility and responsiveness, deliberate strategies establish a solid foundation that guides decision-making and ensures consistency.
Technology such as big data further enhances this process by equipping organizations with more comprehensive and timely datasets to generate actionable insights, maintain advantages, and refine strategies with greater precision. Furthermore, many companies could benefit from leveraging both approaches, enabling top management to define clear objectives while empowering all levels of management to adapt and innovate. This integrated approach ensures that organizations remain resilient, adaptable, and primed for success in the face of evolving challenges.
