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The following exchange of opinions at The Planning Forum's International Strategic Management Conference was condensed from the “Dilemmas of Planning” session, chaired by Dan Simpson, Director of Strategy and Planning, The Clorox Company. The panelists were: Paula Cholmondeley, Vice President, Business Development and Global Sourcing, Owens Corning Fiberglas; Jean‐Yves Gueguen, Vice President, Corporate Planning and Development, American Express; Brian Marsh, Head of Planning Consultancy, Shell International Petroleum (London); Pete Schavoir, IBM Director of Strategy (retired), The IBM Corporation; and Gordon Shaw, Executive Director, Planning and International, 3M. The opinions expressed are the personal ones of panelists. Part 1 appeared in the September/October issue.

If an oracle could predict the next forty years with perfect accuracy, what would you do with the information? As the pace of change in the business environment continues to accelerate, confidence in our ability to forecast the future in which we will be operating seems to have gone the way of the fintailed cars and poodle skirts of the '50s.

Strategy is focused on the future, but most good strategies are well grounded in the lessons of history as well. Before you dive into developing strategies for the future, take a little time to learn from the past. Those lessons are contained in the histories of your company and industry, as well as in the personal histories of your company's leaders.

The following exchange of opinions was condensed from the “Dilemmas of Planning” session, chaired by Dan Simpson, Director of Strategy and Planning, The Clorox Company. The panelists were: Paula Cholmondeley, Vice President, Business Development and Global Sourcing, Owens Corning Fiberglas; Jean‐Yves Gueguen, Vice President, Corporate Planning and Development, American Express; Brian Marsh, Head of Planning Consultancy, Shell International Petroleum (London); Pete Schavoir, IBM Director of Strategy (retired), The IBM Corporation; and Gordon Shaw, Executive Director, Planning and International, 3M. The opinions expressed are the personal ones of panelists.

One of the biggest constraints to growth in many companies is too narrow a definition of their market. Don't get me wrong—high market share is a good thing. The positive correlation between high share and high profitability is has been known for decades.

My management‐fad detector started ringing recently when the Wall Street Journal reported that the business demand for competitive intelligence specialists is rising fast, with average salaries up 21% in the past two years. Some companies are setting up brand new departments to research competitors, and some are even tapping former CIA professionals for help.

I get perhaps three calls a month from inside and outside our company asking what to read to learn about strategy. In most cases, the caller is in a new position where strategy is important. But sometimes, the request stems from a performance review. “Learn to be more strategic,” goes the command, with no direction on how that is supposed to be done.

Somewhere along the way, the words “strategy” and “forecast” got confused. At its roots, strategy development is about good conversation—and, unless you're returning a call from the state lottery commission, good conversation is almost never about numbers. If there is any correlation between creating good strategies and a development process focused on financial projections, I'm sure it's a negative one.

In the past five years, pay‐for‐performance rewards systems have gotten more popular than casual Fridays. The proliferation of such plans is driven by solid rationale: People leading a business should get paid on results, not on seniority or suck‐up‐to‐the‐boss skills. I'm a strong supporter of the pay‐for‐performance concept.

The planning process is usually an integrated mixture of top‐down issues prepared at the senior levels of the organization, and bottom‐up work that goes on within the operating units. A question for this distinguished panel of CPOs is, “How can companies optimally balance the process?”