When I speak to business owners about planning I find their eyes often glaze over, or they break out in a cold sweat.
“Planning? Oh no!” they say. “Do we really need to talk about that? How will it make my business better?”
But planning doesn’t have to be an onerous task and it is very valuable.
I recently met with a new client to discuss the strategic planning program we are about to embark on with them.
The client was surprised to learn the process would only take about 10 hours of their time, in total, and the resulting document would not be a weighty tome destined for a dusty bookshelf, but instead about 10 pages of practical strategies, actions and targets that could be easily communicated to their team.
It got me thinking that many other people probably share the same misconceptions about strategic planning.
My aim for this blog is to explain:
What is a Strategic Plan?
The Strategic Plan shows the strategic direction of a business and will usually cover a period of one to five years.
I like a Strategic Plan to focus on a period of three years because, in today’s volatile world, things get a little hazy after three years (or even one, sometimes!).
The Strategic Plan gives context to the people within the business as to where the business is tracking overall, for example:
The 5-step approach to Strategic Planning
When working with clients to develop a Strategic Plan we generally follow five key steps:
… and has a delivery track and risk plan to keep all key players ‘honest’ in sponsoring and participating in the forward process.
Hint: The targets need to be clear, simple, recognisable and outcome focused – less is usually more in these cases. You also need a good mix of hard, financial and business-based targets, and softer, people and behaviour-based targets. Finally, a practical monitoring process will assist in making the plan a reality.
What a business owner can expect from a Strategic Planning process
From our experience, effective Strategic Planning need not be a long and involved process that culminates in a large detailed document.
The successful plans we facilitate usually involve developing and agreeing on the core elements over a facilitated working session of key contributors and decision makers.
We generally break the strategic planning process into stages; different stages require different levels of input from the various team members.
Hint: Don’t underestimate the value and importance of the communication process within your team and business (and with key customers, suppliers and financiers), as you develop the plan and also after it is finalised. Remember, they all have a role to play in your business being successful, so it’s important you don’t take their involvement and interest for granted.
If you need support, advice or facilitation services to develop a Strategic Plan for your business, contact the team at JPAbusiness on 02 6360 0360 for a confidential initial discussion.