No 48 February 2005 One Day Strategic Plan!I was recently asked by one of my major clients to submit to them my strategic plan. My strategic plan has been a very good one but it has been "in my head", not, on paper. So I succumbed and put pen to paper. What follows is some reflections from that process. You don’t have to kill a tree or shut down the office for a week to create a successful strategic plan. In fact, you can create a successful plan for your business in a few hours. It doesn’t have to be an overwhelming or a monumental task. It doesn’t have to be perfect or fancy. Just turn off the phones and let’s get started. Step One – Be the best. The result of a well-developed and executed strategic plan is to develop a competitive advantage. Just what is a competitive advantage? Business lingo aside, it is simply the answer to: What can you potentially do better than any other person or company? Understanding your competitive advantage is critical. It is the reason you are in business. It is what you do best that draws customers to buy your product/service instead of your competitor’s. Successful businesses deliberately make choices to be unique and different in activities that they are really, really good at and they focus all of their energy in these areas. You may decide to incorporate your competitive advantage into your mission and/or vision statements. Step Two – State your purpose. A mission statement is a statement of the company’s purpose. It is useful for putting the spotlight on what business a company is presently in and the customer needs it is presently endeavouring to serve. It also serves as a guide for day-to-day operations and as the foundation for future decision-making. To write a mission statement, answer the questions: What is my business? What am I trying to accomplish for my customers? What is my business’s reason for existing? Step Three – Visualise the future. A strategic vision is the image of a business’s future – the direction it is headed, the customer focus it should have, the market position it should try to occupy, the business activities to be pursued, and the capabilities it plans to develop. Forming a strategic vision should delineate what kind of enterprise the business is trying to become and infuse the business with a sense of purposeful action. Think outside the current square! To write a vision statement, answer this question: What will my business look like in 5 to ten years from now? Step Four – Take stock. The SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis helps you look critically at your business. It is a tool to help produce a good fit between a business’s strengths and its opportunities. Assess your strengths and weaknesses by answering these questions: What do I do best? What do I not do best? What are my business resources – assets, intellectual property, and people? What are my business capabilities (functions)? Assess your opportunities and threats by answering these questions: What is happening externally that will affect my business? What are the strengths and weaknesses of each competitor? What are the driving forces behind business trends? What are important and potentially important markets? What is happening in the world that might affect my business? Step Five – Profile your customers. If you want to move your business from being successful to wildly profitable, you need to meet your customers’ needs and wants better than your competitors do. Develop a customer profile by answering: What are my customers needs, motivations, and characteristics? How do I uniquely provide value to my customers? What should I improve to grow my customer base? Step Six – Write your goals and objectives. Goals and objectives are like stair steps to your mission and vision. Realistic goals and objectives are developed from the SWOT analysis and customer profile. Objectives set the agenda, are broad, and global in nature. Write two to five objectives that give action to your mission/vision and will take a few years to achieve. Then, develop goals to achieve each objective. Goals should be measurable, quantifiable, and support your objectives. Think about achieving them in a one-year timeframe. Effective goals must state how much of what kind of performance by when is to be accomplished and by whom. Make sure both your goals and objectives build on your strengths; shore up your weaknesses; capitalise on your opportunities; and recognise your threats. Step Seven – Assess your resources. Now that you have completed your goals and objectives, it is time to do a resource assessment. One of the biggest stumbling blocks to all well laid strategic plans is time and money. As with every business, budgets are never big enough to do everything you want to do. Prioritise key goals by asking: Do implementing the goals make financial sense? Do you have the resources (human, equipment, networks, incidentals) to achieve your plan? Step Eight – Take action. Tactics set specific actions/action plans that lead to implementing your goals and objectives. Basically write a to-do list for each goal. A quick way to develop your tactics is to answer this question: What roadblocks exist to achieving my goal? Use the answer to develop action items for each goal. Assign responsibilities and deadlines to ensure implementation. Step Nine – Keep score. In step six, you wrote goals that were measurable. Put these measurements and targets on a scorecard (in Excel will do), which acts as an instrument panel guiding your company towards achieving your vision. With the scorecard, you can actively track your progress on a monthly basis. Step Ten – Make strategy a habit. Devotion to the successful implementation of the strategy and plan is key. The plan needs to be supported with people (and that might be just you), money, time, systems, and above all communication. Communicate the plan to everyone in who needs to know. Set aside time monthly or quarterly strategy to reflect and report (to yourself) on the progress toward achieving the goal. Don’t forget to take corrective actions when needed and adapt as the environment changes. Conclusion My last word of advice is a plan is a living document. It does not have to be perfect or 100 percent complete to start using your strategic plan. A business without a plan, I am told, is like a car without a steering wheel. A rough draft is better than no plan at all. As I stated at the start, my strategic plan has been "in my head" and by putting my plan on paper I hope that I will be able to look back on 2005 and celebrate what I have planned as a well-earned success. That's the hope, I hope it's the reality.
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