Lets enter the world of strategic planning…..what’s your “Business Vision”.
If you are serious about achieving success and creating a sustainable business that enables you to have the lifestyle you desire you must take the time to analyze your “business vision”. This may seem obvious, but statistically 80% of business’s fail within the first 5 years, many of these failures are due to insufficient planning and neglect in setting clear objectives and goals.
Strategic planning may sound complex but its not. It simply means clearly defining your operations in these key areas:
Your vision, mission, principal values, policies and procedures, and goal setting.
Business Vision
What are you providing to your customers/clients, what processes are needed to deliver those products/services, do you have staff, where are you running your operation from – do you have premises or is it a home based, how will you promote your products and or services. Try to take the view of your business a couple of years down the track from now and write this overall vision down on paper.
Develop your Mission Statement – Condensing your Vision
This should be a clear and concise statement addressing your vision discovery. Your mission statement is all about the What, How and Who, there is no justification of “why” within this statement; this will be addressed in your values.
Your Principal Values
These are some of the things that you should address as you assess the value system for your business.
Why are you in business & why would your clients/suppliers want to do business with you.
What are the benefits of the products you provide, how will then enhance or add value to the customer’s life.
What importance you place on your customer service & relationship building.
Your values will directly relate to your service provision and will also play a role in Branding.
Developing your Policies, Procedures, and Objectives
So how are you going to achieve the mission and values that you have outlined, what procedures and policies do you need to implement to achieve these objectives? You should also define expectations and requirements not only for the internal mechanism of your business but also how that relates to service provision for clients and stakeholders.
Finally setting some Goals
This component cannot be understated. Goal setting is vitally important to the growth of your company.
Goals enable you to strive for targets and they should always be achievable and realistic. You should be able to immediately quantify your goals. Goal setting can be applied to any function of your business, not just the financial aspects. For example in regards to staffing, product development, service provision etc.
It may seem a little over the top when you are just starting out , but trust me…gaining clarity for your overall vision will make your business much easier to implement, maintain, and grow.
By taking the time to define these key elements you will begin to uncover how these areas relate to the functions of your business, ie; processes, funding, sales & marketing, management & teams.
It’s a bit like pieces of the jigsaw coming together, once you have a couple of edges in place it makes it easier to see the pieces that connect, and the more pieces you find that connect, the less there are to complete the puzzle.
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Jackie,
I cannot agree with you more, Strategic Planning does not have to be complicated, it’s more important that it get done, which as you point out the statistics show quite well. Additionally, as you infer its something that most entrepreneurs or business leaders already think about its just that the process is not formalised into any form of documented and actionable information.
We’ve also discovered that another critical step in Strategic Planning is to take that 1st step in getting started. Many organizations and departments within large organisations spend a great deal of time (and money) getting their plan together but then struggle with its implementation and the plan either sits on the shelf or falters right out of the gate. Many times the individuals that need to take action just don’t know where to start, despite the desire to do so.
We’ve developed an online system that is designed to pick up after the plan has been organised, something we consider a highly insightful and fully human endeavour, and assist with getting started by orienting itself towards taking action, tracking progress and reporting.
Mark Loessi
http://www.rapidinfluence.com
http://twitter.com/rapidinfluence
Thanks Mark for taking the time to share your views. I agree totally, I find that most people just lack the “how to do it” once shown the way, it becomes easy for them to build their success.
Jackie
Another brilliant post. The post so perfectly lays importance on all those major aspects which helps us to realize our goals. I feel that planning is very important in whatever we do and in business its even more crucial. Even without a formal business plan we’re taking risks. Plan to execute the plans successfully.
Thank you Bob, unfortunately many don’t plan sufficiently in business and ultimately fail.