Yogi Berra once said, “the future ain’t what it used to be”.

In a year of strategic uncertainty, our workplace culture has become an espresso crazed, frantic free-for-all, void of real planning. It is a remarkable irony that short-term thinking on the part of companies such as Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs and General Motors brought about this economic malaise, which has only beset even more short-term thinking.

Conservatism has become pervasive, as many entrepreneurs have retreated to tactical approaches to managing their businesses. It is as if we are victim to a form of collective myopia, reacting to the news and adjusting budgets to make it to another day.

Survival may not be a very practical objective. If a company survives but alienates customers, vendors and employees along the way, there won’t be much of a business left with which to emerge from the trough. One can only cut costs for so long. It is time for businesses to start planning for the recovery:

Use planning as the catalyst for innovation.

Examples of innovation that occurred during recessionary times are well documented, from the birth of Microsoft to the development of the iPod. Strategic planning is not an optional exercise to be conducted only when business is robust. If you are committed to growth, retaining your best customers and acquiring new ones, the ability to establish long range targets, expand into new businesses, and improve internal processes should be explored on a continuous basis. The executives at Amazon, one of the world’s most dynamic companies, meet every week for three hours to discuss strategic issues.

Continuously improve your value proposition.

Such organizations are leaders in strategic thinking; making decisions based within a framework that supports something larger than the decision itself. In Amazon’s case, the decision to invest heavily in Kindle had enormous ramifications across the enterprise, as an attempt to take over a new industry in such a disruptive fashion requires significant resources.

For many companies, the opportunity to align behind a set of game changing events that can promote a new market position is opportune regardless of financial conditions. A value proposition is not a fixed state of being, but a fluid set of variables that change with the market and evolving customer needs.

Only manage a handful of initiatives.

At a time when resources are limited, organizations can only manage a few initiatives at a time. Select no more than 5 and focus the executive team’s attention on flawless execution.

 Build your team.

Organizations often utilize strategic planning as an opportunity to engage new contributors. Participation in a strategic meeting is often viewed as a reward for up and coming leaders and a coaching opportunity for those who don’t make the grade. Dwight Eisenhower said “plans are worthless, but planning is everything” meaning that it is not the documentation that is important, it is the learning that occurs in such meetings that can reposition organizations, reframe roles, and elevate performance. It is important to break down any team dysfunction at the onset if you want to have a productive planning meeting.

Tip the sacred cows.

Many an entrepreneur has lost their business because they were too stubborn to see the writing on the wall. It is human nature to hold on to our core beliefs. Psychologists refer to a phenomenon known as “confirmation bias” which is our instinct to seek out information that will confirm our existing beliefs instead of those that will contradict it.  Yet the greatest thinkers in history, such as Einstein, Newton and Galileo, spent most of their lives consumed with finding evidence that would disprove their own theories. Successful entrepreneurs surround themselves with people who are willing to challenge the assumptions about every product, service or process.

Be Proactive.

Many organizations intertwine strategic planning and business planning for the following calendar year.  It takes 90 days or more to unwind a business plan so the more proactive you are in your planning, the sooner you can begin to execute.

In an age where marketers compete for our limited attention span, few offers truly stand out. The disrupters are the outliers. Why is innovation so hard to come by?

The answer may be found in what philosophers refer to as “confirmation bias” or our tendency to seek out information that validates our opinions versus those that provide a counterargument. We defend our biases ruthlessly from any contradictory view. In politics, our views have become so polarized that many liberals will not even consider conservative points of view, and vice versa.

An illustration can be found in a metaphor provided by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in The Black Swan, his witty deluge into “The Impact of the Highly Improbable”:

“Consider a turkey that is fed every day. Every single feeding will firm up the bird’s belief that it is the general rule of life to be fed every day by friendly members of the human race, looking out for its best interests. On the afternoon of the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, something unexpected will happen to the turkey. It will incur a revision of belief.”

Taleb points out that our body produces Dopamine which is proven to regulate the chemistry of the brain in such a way as to create patterns in our thinking which minimize randomness. We are predisposed to think of things in terms of recurring events, and it is alien for us to think of things that do not fit into a logical pattern. In other words, it is not just that we are resistant to change. It actually requires more energy for us to process new ideas. Thus innovation requires more effort than the status quo.

It also requires the willingness to fail. As Proctor and Gamble’s A.G. Lafley said, “You learn more from failure…but the key is to fail early, fail cheaply, and don’t make the same mistake twice.” The question that organizations should ask is not have we failed, but have we failed enough?

The endless coverage of the Swine Flu is tiring, but perhaps business people should be paying more attention.  You think the NCAA basketball tournament affects productivity?  Wait until half of your workers are bed-ridden and don’t show up for work.

A limited quantity of H1N1 flu vaccinations will be available in about a month (feared by health officials to be too late to slow down a potential outbreak in October).  The U.S. government and the American Medical Association are advocating that workers get flu shots immediately, and not wait until “Swine Flu “shots are available. Influenza puts a quarter of a million people in the hospital every year, so organizations (who incidentally take on 75% of the health care cost burden) may need to think more proactively about protecting their workforce.

In this case, there really are few alternatives to prevention/education.  Perhaps, we need to educate our employees about washing hands more thoroughly (you may actually have to follow the old rule of singing “Happy Birthday” in your head to calibrate the time needed to remove the germs from your hands).  Most importantly, if an employee is sneezing and coughing and appears ill, send him or her home!

As we have found a comfort zone with $3.00 a gallon gasoline, one might wonder, are $40 per barrel oil prices sustainable?  We are ripe for further volatility in energy prices and huge price swings at the pump.  Consider the converging factors that drive the price of gasoline:

Energy prices are particularly critical because volatility can inflate many layers within the value chain and prices go up faster than they come down. All it will take is a regional conflict, hurricane or other unforeseen event to create a spasm in this market.  U.S. companies who operate fleets or are otherwise dependant on stable transportation or raw material costs are well advised to project a higher price for energy through 2010 and beyond.