The Association for Strategic Planning Scores a Major Success

Dateline:  Los Angeles CA, February 24-26, 2008



More than 200 attendees from around the United States and Canada attended this largest of any annual meeting held by the ASP.  We were there as President and Program Director of the Boston chapter.  Like us, everyone we met was very stimulated by the opportunity to network and confer with a wide range of experienced colleagues in the field and by the deep dive workshops and concurrent sessions.  The setting at the Marina del Rey Marriott overlooking a huge private boat facility and offering views of the Pacific ocean at sunset provided a very comfortable context for learning and conversation. 

Author and consultant Kevin Clancy’s extremely entertaining and informative talk on his recent work, summarized in Your Gut Is Still Not Smarter Than Your Head: How Disciplined, Fact-Based Marketing Can Drive Extraordinary Growth and Profits, was one of the highlights of the event.  Based on his extensive research and experience in competitive intelligence, marketing and strategic thinking, Kevin laid out the challenges in identifying and penetrating profitable target market segments.  To the delight of everyone attending, Clancy was also handing out free copies of his book! 

Kevin will be the keynote speaker at the Boston chapter’s March 26th meeting (see feature article).  We can’t promise you a free book, but it will be an event not to be missed.  Be there or be square!

Art Kleiner, editor-in-chief of Booz Allen Hamilton’s strategy + business, ran a fascinating “deep dive” session on “Power and Legitimacy in the Living Organization.”  Kleiner, whose credential include multiple books and a long career in journalism, argues that the sciences of management and leadership are presently in the same condition of professionalism and knowledge as medicine was when it was being practiced by “barber surgeons” laying on leeches as a cure in medieval Europe.  His view of organizational dynamics weaves together insights about the workings of hierarchy, markets, networks and core groups (his newest contribution to management thinking) into an innovative framework for analyzing strategic interventions.

Multiple other presentations, such as Stephen Haines workshop “Leading Strategic and Cultural Change” and Seena Sharp’s talk “Competitive Intelligence for More Potent Strategies,” offered nuts and bolts how-to's on specific strategic and competitive intelligence activities. 

Beginning with breakfast at 6:30 AM and including a dinner talk that ended at 9PM, the event was event was jammed-packed, in fact maybe too much so.  We felt there might have been more emphasis on experiential education and learning at the conference rather than as much reliance on traditional “banking” education, where an authority talks and everyone else listens.  However, a lot of excellent information was being shared, and at least one session, Kleiner’s, was a demonstration of what a master teacher looks like at work.  Furthermore, the networking breaks, cocktail session, and meals made up for any limitations of the event’s pedagogy.  No one had any of their own business cards left by the end of the meeting!



Back to