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.
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