Get focused on the things that matter. A practical process that delivers results.
Strategic Planning to guide your business
Strategic Planning
If you're juggling strategic change with day-to-day managment, or have too many initiatives you don't know which ones to prioritise, a Strategic Plan will help you get control.
It may seem too big and cumbersome to tackle, but effective Strategic Planning can be achieved by following our structured, practical framework and embedding it as a process.
We leverage your expertise and guide you through the process to establish real focus on what will drive your business forward.
Our process is proven in many organisations and extends beyond what most experts view as a Strategic Plan.
If you want to ensure the longevity of your business, our process will provide you with the plan in a way that makes sense.
Why do Strategic Planning?
Pro-active management
In the 1930's the average life span of a business was 67 years, now it is just 15 years.
Our process helps identify trends that could impact you materially and prepare for them before they impact you negatively, or to take advantage of positive trends and opportunties.
Get focused
You may have what seems like an endless amount of strategies and tactics you can employ that make sense when looked at in isolation.
But a strategy should focus on the issues that will have the greatest impact.
They need to be considered in the context of key internal and external drivers of your business.
You shouldn't have any more than five key strategic issues, so our process helps identify what these are, the reasons for them and evaluates their financial impact.
Get focused on the things that matter.
Everyone on the same page
Humans love to keep score.
And they work best when the rules are clear.
Our process will clearly define the areas everyone in your organisation should be focused on, and why they are important.
Get aligned and establish clear accountability.
Make better decisions
Strategic decisions are long-term decisions.
If you implement a hastily developed strategy, it takes time to reverse negative impacts.
This can be costly and you will probably have missed out on other opportunities to generate growth.
Our process helps quantify your strategies to reassure you they are the right ones.
Start with the end in mind
What are you trying to achieve?
Managing a business without Targets and Objectives is like playing a game of football without scoring.
Clear and measurable targets are critical as well as establishing the pathway to achieve them.
Embed the process
If done properly, Strategic Planning doesn't have to be an exercise completed by someone externally.
Once you have the tools you can maintain and update your Strategic Plan annually or as demanded by changes in your industry.
Four Boxes Your Strategic Plan Should Tick.
There are many different strategic planning approaches, depending on who you speak to.
But there are key elements that should be present in all good Strategic Plans.
If your Plan doesn't address the following, it needs a re-think.
The best way to know what a good Strategic Plan should include is to consider it in light of the following generally accepted definition of 'Strategy':
"A planned choice of actions designed to achieve a long-term result"
This is broken down further below.
1. Planned
Organisations need to set a target, make a plan to achieve it, then execute.
Monitor how you are performing and adjust if necessary. Plan=>Do=>Check=>Act.
Vision and Mission statements ARE NOT plans or targets - they aren't specific enough, and are usually unrealistic.
So begin your plan with a clearly defined Purpose.
Include in your Purpose a target that is clear, measurable, and identify for who's benefit it is (e.g. shareholders, members, etc.).
A plan should include operational and financial targets, supporting this strategic Purpose, over a longer-term period (see below), which is something most strategic plans don't do.
If you don't have financials projected over the planning period then you can't track performance against it.
2. Choice
Consider ALL of the choices available to you.
This should be a long list of strategies that could be chosen to ensure nothing is left out.
Take the blinkers off - don't just consider strategies that you have already pursued or reviewed before.
If your industry faces major disruption, or you want to get ahead of your competition, it's particularly important to consider 'step-out' strategic alternatives.
3. Actions
After choosing the right strategies, you need to come up with lower-level actions of 'how' success will be achieved.
This is where strategies are generally categorised into Marketing, HR, IT, Financial etc.
They should be at a level that provides context of why the strategy was chosen, and how it will be executed successfully, and who will be responsible.
4. Long-term
The planning period needs to be long term.
At least three years, preferably five.
If you are looking at periods of one year or less, all you see are existing problems.
Industry disruption, economic impacts and other external changes can take five years to occur.
These need to be considered ahead of time so that plans are established to deal with them.
If you don't do this, your competitors will and you will be left behind.
The Strategic Planning Process
Our structured Strategic Planning process applies easy to understand techniques, clearly linked with each other, to help you establish focused strategies with clear reasoning behind them.
Our process covers the following key areas:
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Setting Targets & Objectives: What are you trying to achieve and how far away are you from achieving it?
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Strategy Selection: What are the available strategies to achieve the stated Targets?
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Confirmation of Strategies: select the strategies that will enable you to achieve your Targets.
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Execution: How will the chosen strategies be executed?
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Projected Performance: What does your organisation look like once the chosen strategies are executed?
Key outputs from the process (our Fixed Price Strategic Plan) include:
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Selection of Targets and Gap Analysis to determine how far away your organisation is from achieving its Targets.
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Internal and external environment analysis (SWOT, PESTLE).
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Mapping of chosen strategies to the key strategic issues effecting your organisation
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5-year projected Financials (Profit & Loss and Balance Sheet) isolating the impact of each strategy
