Summary:

The great start to the success of your business strategic planning process is to identify the foundation upon which your business was built. A well defined mission statement and equally communicated vision statement identifying your desired future will make the job much easier. Businesses that set goals relating directly to their mission and vision statements excel over businesses that lack these defined statements.

Both these statements help focus a business in terms of direction, leadership, and goal-setting ; mission and vision statements are the basis for your organization’s strategic planning. Vision and mission statments need to be communicated to customers, employees, and stockholders.

Once the plan of action is decided upon, objectives should be broken down into actionable tasks that integrate into monthly, weekly, or daily activities. Working the plan in this manner keeps it active and assists leadership in making course corrections when internal and external factors present themselves.

Article Quote:

“A periodic review by management of your strategic planning actions will let you know if you have chosen the right strategic activities for your business. Additionally you can also make sure that the strategic planning activities you have chosen to implement are all supportive of your mission and vision statements. Use your mission and vision statements to chart and stay the course.”

Link: http://gfa-ng.com/vision/strategic-planning-begins-with-a-mission-statement-and-a-vision-statement.htm

Mission and vision statements help the organization by providing a foundation from which to begin the strategic planning process. Choose two to three clearly defined goals or objectives, then develop a plan of action. Leadership that can effectively communicating both the strategic plan and each individual’s part in achieving the plan improves results.

For more on strategic planning, see http://www.performancesolutionstech.com/category/strategicplanning/

Summary:

Strategic planning and strategic leadership styles vary just as the employees and business owners of companies involved in the planning process vary.

Today, more than ever, the ability to gain instant access to news and information has changed the way many companies do business. However, the necessary skills to effectively manage others has not changed that much. Today’s work force is much less tolerant of bullying by management, and instead are looking for qualified and genuine leaders to work for.

Strategic planning seeks to answer the questions where are we, where do we want to be, and how are we going to get there. When deciding on strategic goals, keep it lean with only one to three goals as this will help keep the plan uncluttered and focused.

Next, come up with a tactical plan that easily translates into daily or weekly tasks. that chip away at the completion of key goals. This step also requires developing a budget to allocate the necessary resources.

Article Quote:

“Strategic planning isn’t just for corporations. Small businesses, even a sole proprietor, benefit from making strategic plans on an annual basis.”

Link: http://www.ilabstech.com/info-blog/strategic-leadership-focuses-your-strategic-planning.html

To insure companies meet their goals, strategic planners include responsibilities, timelines and accountability in the mission statement. Change within the organization is often met with some type of resistance. Therefore, present the plan with clear expectations of each individual so they understand their role in bringing the plan to reality.

For more on strategic planning, see http://www.performancesolutionstech.com/category/strategicplanning/

Summary:

For years Robert Bradford, strategic planning expert, focused on four variables in the Simplified Strategic Planning Process– value, probability, management effort and financial risk when assessing strategic opportunities.  However, recently he decided to include a secondary analysis of opportunities, undertaken when reviewing opportunity screening worksheets.

The purpose of this screen is to enable your team to quickly sort out the opportunities with the greatest strategic potential for your organization. Start by asking the team to rate each opportunity on two dimensions – resource requirements and strategic impact on the organization. This process helps management prioritize initiatives and justify saying “no” to those that impede the strategic progress.

In evaluating initiatives, the no-brainers are those with high impact and low resource requirements.  The tricky discussions – and often the most strategically dangerous issues – occur in the middle level zone – opportunities with moderate impact and/or moderate resource requirements. These opportunities can mire your strategic level resources in initiatives that produce only incremental improvements in your organization’s performance, while more fundamental, truly strategic opportunities are starved for resources because they are “too difficult”.

Article Quote:

“This screening is particularly useful when you are evaluating far more opportunities than your team can realistically handle (in my experience, from three to ten strategic opportunities, depending on the team and its resources). ”

Link: http://www.cssp.com/strategicplanning/blog/?p=557

Evaluating strategic initiatives with this process creates better focus on those initiatives that provide the greatest strategic potential for the organization. The company will be in a better position if it can accomplish a few key initiatives well than to work on several with no real results.

For more on strategic planning, seehttp://www.performancesolutionstech.com/category/strategicplanning/

Summary:

Strategy planning is important but needs to be met with action in the real world if the strategy is to move from fantasy to reality. Dealing with reality requires the ability to cope with the facts instead of ignoring them from a twenty-thousand foot point of view. An example of this is what happened inside the Toyota company. Toyota executives had knowledge of fatal crashes involving their automobiles back in 2007, yet customers had to wait until February 2010 for Toyota to finally announced a full recall of over 8.5 million vehicles.

The problems of fatal crashes in other countries were not immediately important to the executives of Toyota. The planning process involved consensus in Japan rather than consensus worldwide. They were busy too looking at the big picture at a distance to see the detail that mattered.

Article Quote:

“Strategy isn’t always wrong. It can be extremely valuable. Planning doesn’t always fail. And it is certainly necessary. Yet overconfidence in the power of strategic planning has led to financial crisis, to botched and illegal wars, to missed opportunities in business, politics, sports, and life.”

Link: http://www.management-issues.com/2010/2/15/opinion/strategy-is-fantasy–action-is-real.asp

Strategic planning can be considered a fantasy because it looks to an unknown future and makes predictions about how it will unfold. Keeping the focus of the strategic plan on the core business values; in Toyota’s case that would be to design and manufacture dependable cars, will keep your company from trying to be everything to everyone.

Toyota became the largest car manufacturer in the world in 2009, in part because they wanted to make cars and trucks for each class of consumer. By changing the focus from dependability to ‘be everything to everyone’, Toyota’s quality controls were compromised.

Faulty parts were installed in their vehicles and when the fatal crashes were brought to Toyota’s attention, nothing was done to correct the problem. Nothing, until a widely publicized crash in California brought the problem right to Toyota’s front steps.

For more on strategic planning, see http://www.performancesolutionstech.com/category/strategicplanning/