Plan to Pivot

Plan to Pivot outlines a very different approach to management that highlights flexibility, responsiveness, and agility.

  • Plan to Pivot describes how the increasing frequency of events like climate change and political unrest, along with globalization, technology, and communications, are confirming that risk is accelerating, businesses are more volatile, and organizations are (or should be) trying to understand how to prepare to Pivot away from the next crisis and toward stability and opportunity.

    The book describes the importance of connecting planning with managing. It outlines a process grounded in the development and piloting of new ideas derived from customer feedback and market intelligence. For planners, the process of visioning possible future states as the context for the next round of investment/disinvestment decisions needs to be the new operating norm. For managers, the process of rapid product and program delivery, customer feedback, and bringing that information back to the planning team for inclusion in the next strategic plan, needs to drive an agile strategic management process.

    This Agile Management process is based on the principles of the Agile Manifesto (2001) where planning and management are one continuous cycle, centered on the customer and managed by smart teams. This is a new way to cope with speed and ambiguity. A new way of doing business.

    Plan to look ahead. Plan to Pivot. Plan to Communicate. All will be needed in the years ahead.

  • Part 1: Introduction of Planning and Strategy

    Chapter 1: Plan to Win or Why Bother?

    Chapter 2: A Complex Set of Conditions to Navigate

    Chapter 3: What Is Strategic Planning Really About?

    Chapter 4: What Is Strategy, and How Does It Work?

    Part 2: Figuring Out What to Do

    Chapter 5: How Corporations and Universities Plan

    Chapter 6: Planning Models

    Chapter 7: What’s New in Planning

    Chapter 8: Planning and Complexity

    Part 3: Understanding Increasingly Complicated Contexts

    Chapter 9: Management and Complexity

    Chapter 10: Organizational Structure and Strategy

    Part 4: Managing the Pivot

    Chapter 11: A Natural Evolution: Traditional to Agile

    Chapter 12: Agile: Filling a Gap in Management

    Chapter 13: The Key to Success: Planning to Pivot

    Part 5: Imagine, Create, and Plan to Succeed

    Chapter 14: Tools for Managing Complex Organizations

    Chapter 15: New Ideas and Next Steps: The Future of Strategic Management

All net proceeds from book sales to be shared between the Margaret T. and Dominic J. Starsia Jr. Student/Athlete Scholarship Fund at the School of Education and Human Development Foundation at the University of Virginia and the Building Goodness Foundation.