Archive for the ‘Strategic Planning’ Category

2010 New Year’s Resolution for Your Business

Wednesday, December 30th, 2009

2010 is a new year and it is a new opportunity to “manage your business like a business”. 

Imagine you are planning a trip from one city to another city in a state you have never been.  Being from Wisconsin, I like to use San Antonio and Houston Texas as examples.  Picture a state map of Texas which you have found from a search on the Internet.  One star shows San Antonio in the southern part of the state and towards the east you see another star which shows the city of Houston.

Now, I am going to drop you off in San Antonio and ask you to drive to Houston using this map.  You can do it.  You probably would start by asking someone for directions, usually a clerk at a convenience store or a gas station.  Then you begin by driving southeast on the highway, watching for directional signs, hoping to find one that tells you what exit to take sending you in the right direction towards Houston.  The trip would take quite long time and you would spend money on gas, lodging, food, and most likely experience a lot of frustration along the way.  Who would travel this way?

Most of us would buy a road map with the individual highways and city streets clearly marked.  We would then be able to estimate who much gas we might need, we would call ahead and make hotel reservations in Houston so when we got there we knew we had a place to rest for the night.  We might use the Internet and plan where our favorite restaurants where or plan to try a famous restaurant we read about in a travel magazine.  We would do research for the trip in order to have a pleasant experience with a lot less frustration.

That is what strategic planning can do for an organization.  It is like traveling with a road map rather than a state map.  Organizations that use strategic planning often have a more specific focus and direction for accomplishing their goals.  A strategic plan can be one of your most valuable completive advantages!

Let me know what you think.

 

Take Care,

Gary

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Fire Fighting versus the Strategic Planning Process

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

One of the early steps in the strategic planning process is to assess the current state of your organization.  Through this process the ‘most urgent’ issues are identified and neutralized.  Once neutralized the organization now has time to plan a strategy to eliminate the ‘root cause’ of these most urgent problems.  These urgent issues must be dealt with first before a formal strategic planning process can be developed.  Customizing a process to eliminate the root cause may take time and you don’t want to miscalculate the cause(s) and have to back track the process later. 

Once the most urgent issues are dealt with, now you can begin to be proactive in developing a customized process to deliver your organization’s strategic goals and objectives. 

An important concept for strategic planning has to do with the owner’s ability to redirect his or her energy from ‘fire fighting’ to ‘strategic planning’.  Once the root causes are eliminated, the owner’s time spent fighting fires will be significantly reduced and this time must be filled with other value added activities.  Why would anyone want to eliminate a main portion of their daily activities without filling it with something else?  These emotions have to be dealt with within this process.  Having the owner focus on the metrics used to track the success of the strategic progress in the various areas will add value to the entire strategic planning process.

There are several very good tools used to assess your organization.  This is not a random process, it is calculated and structured using proven tools to show benchmark metrics which will be used later to assess the success of the strategic planning process. 

Let me know what you think.

Take Care

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