Business Planning and Strategy
We’ve all heard the phrase, “Fail to plan and you plan to fail.”
It’s true. The staff here at Street Level have all had failures. Some were huge failures but we learned from all of them. The one thing we all agree upon is having a plan. Without constant re-planning or analysis of where you are going it’s highly unlikely you will reach your goal. 95% of businesses fail in their first 5 years. That’s a high number.
There are two reasons most businesses fail. Under funding and failing to plan. With a simple business plan most businesses could see if they are going to be profitable before they even open their doors. Street Level understands the nuances of planning, strategy and implementation to help you succeed and knows what pitfalls to help you avoid closing your doors.
What is Strategic Planning?
Strategic Planning is the managerial process which, examining the organization
as a whole, addresses three key questions:
1. Where are we today?
2. Where do we wish to arrive, and when?
3. How do we get from here to there?
We can't begin the process until we've decided to do so. And we won't decide to do so until we've recognized the benefits of planning. Next is a dedication of resources to the process. For nothing in the world is free. And that includes strategic planning. You'll have to pay for planning. Its costs can be measured in terms of people, place, time and money. Having decided that strategic planning is beneficial, and that its benefits outweigh the costs of planning, you can then begin the process itself. You'll then enter the first process step.
Situation Analysis
You can begin the situation analysis...tackling the first key question "Where
are we today?" Situation analysis involves a look at your organization
both internally, in terms of its strengths and weaknesses, and externally,
in terms of its opportunities and threats. Following the situation analysis,
your planning team next develops its Mission Statement, a concise declaration
of "what business we are in," and "who our customer is."
That Mission Statement then sets the stage for the objectives and strategies
to follow. The next process step addressing a key question is Objective Setting.
Objective Setting involves establishing a "handful" of quantified
objectives in addressing the question "Where do we wish to arrive, and
when?"
Strategies
Your planning team will address the third question, "How do we get from
here to there?", during a process step called Strategizing. You'll develop
two kinds of strategies: Defensive Strategies and Strategies Built on Strength.
You'll develop defensive strategies to solve internal weaknesses which make
your organization vulnerable to external threats. And you'll develop strategies
built on strength to take advantage of external opportunities.
After you have concluded with Situation Analysis, Objective Setting and Strategizing, the three key steps in the process, you'll then have something you can call a strategic plan. You can give it a title, bind it in a pretty book, and communicate it to "the troops". Then the real work begins. Because 85 to 90% of your time, work, effort (and probably your tears) will be involved in the implementation of your plan.
Monitoring Results
But implementing, by itself, isn't enough. You've also got to monitor that
implementation. You measure results. You ask, "How is it going?"
You can think of this "short term feedback" as a weekly or a monthly
up-dating do discover if you're implementing your plan according to your initial
intention.
A longer feedback loop within the planning process goes back from measurement
of results to situation analysis, where you'll re-enter the process at the
beginning of the planning cycle, generally one year later. You can think of
this as a "reset" for the strategic planning process.
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