Business

It’s time your company embarks on strategic planningSome business leaders think having a strategic plan is not necessary for success. It might be because things have worked for them so far or it’s because they have not been exposed to strategic planning and are just phobic about it. The environment is changing and sometimes rapidly so. As a result new concepts are coming onto the market and certain ways of doing business seem to be taking over how business is done. Without a proper analysis of your environment you will not be able to identify these new trends. Strategic planning enables you to do a thorough analysis of your environment and will likely expose you to new developments that will give your business an edge over the competition. Business leaders who don’t prepare strategic plans have come up with a number of reasons to justify their stance. They have argued that: l The environment is changing so rapidly that strategic plans become outdated even before they are implemented. So why waste valuable management time in planning? l Management is too busy on operational issues to have time out to go for strategic planning workshops. l Management don’t have the skills to prepare a strategic plan l It’s a waste of valuable time that could be well spent looking for new customers l Why bother if the company is successful even though it has never had a plan in place. l Management feels that strategic plans restrict companies from taking new opportunities that would not have been planned for. l In a crisis plans cannot be implemented anyway All these reasons look very plausible. However one needs to examine what would happen to an organisation if it is left to coast along without a vision. Some might be arguing against having a strategic plan because they see companies that make plans not using them to guide the company on a daily basis. They make very good plans only to gather dust on the executives’ book shelves. A strategic plan is supposed to be a living document which you refer to often and check your organisation’s performance against. A plan that is not used regularly is as useless as having no plan at all. It is said that if you fail to plan you are planning to fail. You can’t start a business without drawing up a plan of what you want to do and achieve in the future. Having a strategic plan is very critical for any business that hopes to grow and continue in existence for the foreseeable future. Having a strategic plan is very critical for your business and also for your life. A plan will help you to crystalise what exactly your organisation is there for, that is, it’s purpose and how you will achieve that purpose. As you draw up a plan you also have to come up with a vision for the future; what you would like your company to be in ten or more years. This will give you some goal that you would like to achieve. A plan enables you to make proactive decisions; you don’t have to be reacting to situations all the time. As an organisation you need to create the future not for other organisations to create your future. With a plan and a mission and vision in place you are able to gauge your performance because you will be able to measure performance against a target. You also develop a clear roadmap as to how you will achieve the mission and the vision. A plan gives you a clear framework to evaluate any decisions that the team will be making. Any decisions contrary to the plan will be set aside or rejected. This ensures uniformity in decision making. Also the team will work with a common vision, purpose and direction. Every team member will be clear on what he/she must do and when they should do it. A plan helps to coordinate activities in all departments. There will be goal congruence. Everyone will be working to achieve one goal. Everyone will be working with one objective in mind and this helps keep everyone on the right track. A good plan should be able to give you focus. You need to focus on what you have decided to do and you put all your energy on that assignment so that you are not distracted by minor issues. High achievers keep their focus on the important issues and this can be done if you have a plan that acts as a roadmap. If your business has to grow you need to plan for that growth. It doesn’t come by a fluke. It’s something that you have to plan and then determine to achieve that plan. Philip Orsini said; “Companies don’t fail because they grow. They fail because they don’t plan their growth.” Business leaders should always be planning about the future of their businesses. They should be scanning the environment for anything that might scuttle their plans and make necessary changes to eliminate any threats or to exploit opportunities that might present themselves. To pick these opportunities you need a plan in place. l Stewart Jakarasi is a business and financial strategist and a lecturer in business strategy (ACCA P3), advanced performance management (P5) and entrepreneurship. He provides advisory and guidance on leadership, strategy and execution, preparation of business plans and on how to build and sustain high-performing organisations. For assistance in implementing some of the concepts discussed in these articles please contact him on the following contacts: sjakarasi@gmail.com or WhatsApp +266 62110062.

Published

2 years ago

on

December 7, 2022

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