Strategic planning provides focus and calm when chaos enters the game.
Strategy is about making choices, trade-offs; it’s about deliberately choosing to be different.
Michael Porter
Do you have a strategic plan? If not how do you know what the future looks like with so much disruption in every industry?
In our experience, many leaders don’t have a strategic plan because they are technicians. They know what they do, and they are good at it, but they don’t know how to look into the future.
Another reason leaders don’t have strategic plans, is that they don’t know how and feel they should know.
All businesses need sound direction to ensure they meet their potential. It is assumed that the strategic planning aspect of growing a business is complex. But if you know where you want to get to that’s half the battle. Next is to reverse engineer the way you get there.
A robust strategy will help you understand what is required to meet your goals daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually, 3 years, 5 years.
The easiest way to start developing a strategic plan is covered in 3 simple steps:
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- Start simple (Write down where you want to be in 1 and 3 years).
- Identify what steps you think you need to take and what help you need.
- Then ask for that help!
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There is no value in going it alone when many business challenges both good and bad have already been solved by others.
STRATEGIC PLANNING PROCESS
Business leaders don’t spend enough time on the strategic planning process as they simply see it as being too hard. When you break it down into bite size chunks through our Discovery Process, you define where to start and what to action.
STRATEGIC SMART GOALS
Don’t just set goals, set SMART goals. The acronym SMART can be used to provide more comprehensive goal setting: S – specific. M – measurable. A – agreed upon. R – realistic and T – time-based.
RESOURCE PLANNING
The key to delivering on a strategic plan is the ability to deliver on the commitment. Aligning a team around you; suppliers, staff, mentors and coaches will improve the chances of success because you can create accountability.
CREATING YOUR BHAG
If you have never heard of a BHAG (Big, Hairy, Audacious, Goal) then its time to start developing one. It’s about setting a goal that sits outside your comfort zone and won’t be easy to get to. It demands you develop a growth mindset and build resilience.
STRATEGIC PLANNING SESSIONS
No-one likes lots of meetings and planning sessions. But there is little more effective than a whiteboard, a core question and an open mindset. We see significant breakthroughs in high paced, short sessions with a key focus.
STRATEGIC IMPLEMENTATION
This is where the rubber hits the road and action is required. In our experience partnering up with a delivery team like Waking Giants creates a support system to keep the leadership and tasks at hand on track to meet those goals.
“From day one Grant and his team have been exceptional in our journey to increase and develop new brands, and the concepts that they have created have exceeded all our original expectations.”
Braden Hickmott, Development Director, Hallmark Group
Planning – what works for you?
Forming good intentions and setting goals is certainly – at one level – committing to reaching a desired outcome or behaviour. The trouble is…
Growth is a Choice in Life and in Business
It’s both an exciting and volatile time to be in business – who would have thought such a trusted and established business like Dick Smith could face such challenges…
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