Strategic Planning

With Unlimited Resources, You Can Pursue All Alternatives

With unlimited resources, you can pursue all alternatives.

Since none of us has unlimited resources, which opportunities will your organization pursue in 2010?  Will you fill that key position?  Expand the product line?  Cut back in specific areas?  Borrow money to invest in capital equipment?

With an effective plan for 2010, you get to choose your course instead of letting your customers, competitors and market forces determine your results for you.  The fact is that there are some market segments where you competitors can beat you and other market segments where they can’t beat you.

Five Steps
As we come to the end of one of the most challenging years ever, do you have a clear plan for 2010?  Here are five steps you can take to improve your 2010 financial results:

• If you don’t have a business plan for 2010, develop a plan that will serve as a blue print for 2010.  You’ll be working your plan for growth, while your competitors get pushed around again like they did this year.
• If you have a business plan in place, is there a process that takes 14 steps in your company, while a competitor has figured out how to do the same process in 5 steps?  Is there a key employee or leader that is not performing well in his/her role?  There is a gold mine of opportunity for improved financial results to be mined in your organization.  Let us help you address organizational issues and build best practices in key areas.
• If you have fully implemented best practices, do you have a strategic plan?  More specifically, do you have a breakthrough strategic plan? There is a significant difference.Most strategic planning processes start with deciding on a mission statement without regard for whether the market wants any of what you have to sell.  A breakthrough strategic plan starts with an analysis of the external market environment.  Our process asks you “Where are there key opportunities that you are uniquely equipped to take advantage of that will deliver improved revenue, gross profit   and operating profit?”  Build competitive advantage that is unique to your company’s strengths.
• If you have truly developed a breakthrough strategic plan, what’s next?  Innovation.  Specifically, management innovation.  We have seen incredible product and technology innovation over the past fifty years.  However, the model we use to manage our organizations has its foundation in early 1900’s in the then emerging industrial revolution.  It was designed to achieve efficiency.  It did that.  But, today, we need more than that.There is a growing list of companies that are beginning to create innovative new management models that are built for the challenges we face today such as a global marketplace, deregulation, the pace of change, information overload and the impact of the Internet.  Why not be one of the companies that are soaring beyond the constraints of old management methodology?  We can help you get there.
• Finally, even if you have completed your planning for 2010, did you get feedback and guidance from a professional resource outside of your company?  “Improving the PRC process” may mean something to you today, but it’s not measurable and it’s not clear which part of the PRC process needs to be improved.  It also has no deadline and no one responsible for it.  Bottom Line:  It won’t get done, just like the things that didn’t get done last year.  Let us help you make sure your plan delivers the results you need it to deliver.

2010 is just around the corner.  What steps will you take to be better prepared than your competitors for what is likely to be yet another challenging year?

We hope you’ll use these suggestions to drive results for your organization in 2010.  If we can be of assistance to you by guiding you through these strategic initiatives, please don’t hesitate to contact our Founder and President, Jim Connolly, for a no cost and no obligation consultation.  Use our expertise to drive results in your organization.

As always our blog articles and Web site are available as a free resource to you.

Strategic Planning and Beyond

Hopefully you operate your company with a yearly business plan that includes a plan for sales growth and a budget based on reality.  And, hopefully, you compare your progress compared to plan throughout the year and make adjustments accordingly.  At the very least you should be using these tools.  If you’re not, you’re driving the company bus with your eyes closed.

If you see value in planning beyond one year, you are probably doing some form of strategic planning.  An effective strategic planning process helps you proactively determine the future of your organization by taking advantage of market opportunities that your competitors are not as well equipped to take on.  An effective strategic planning process will have a direct positive impact on your company’s profitability and organizational results.  If you are using strategic planning as a tool to lead your company, your eyes are open and you have a pair of binoculars, while your competitors are planning to buy some binoculars someday when they get a chance.

What’s beyond strategic planning?

While strategic planning can add significant results to your organization’s bottom line, there is something you can do beyond strategic planning to create breakthrough results.  Management innovation.  Management innovation is defined as anything that substantially alters the way in which the work of management is carried out. 

Face it, the management models we use today were created by industrial age pioneers born in the mid to late 1800’s.  But, we’re not in the 1800’s or the 1900’s any more, are we?  Today’s challenges include globalization, deregulation, the pace of change, the impact of the Internet and so on.  Our current management models were not designed to address the challenges we face today.  

A growing list of companies are challenging their assumptions about their current management practices and creating management models that address the challenges in today’s society.  The results are organizations achieving breakthrough results not even imagined possible by business or strategic planning.  How did they do it?  Fewer layers of management.  Increased levels of accountability and passion.  Every employee focused on delivering financial results.  No, it’s not a dream.  And, yes, it is possible.

Where do you find resources for management innovation?  One resource that I recommend is The Future of Management by Gary Hamel.  Warning!  The material in the book, like the author, is a bit dry.  OK, very dry.  In addition, the book is aimed at Fortune 500 companies.  You’ll have to do some translating to make appropriate application to your company.  However, it’s a great starting point. 

Where do you find resources to help you create and implement management innovation in your company?  Call us.  We’ve helped many organizations implement innovative management practices that resulted in our clients becoming leaders in industries where there hasn’t been anything new in years or decades. 

Management innovation is game changing.  Change the game before your competitors change it for you.

Charting Your Organization’s Course - The First Step

With unlimited resources, your company can pursue all alternatives.  What?  You don’t have unlimited resources? 

OK, so, with the limited resources you do have, which opportunities will your organization pursue?  Which opportunities will provide the best returns?

An effective planning process allows you to chart a course for your company from the present to the desired destination.  The first step in this process of charting a course from Point A to Point B is to define Point A.

Time and time again, I work with a company’s leadership team to chart a course for the organization’s future.  Whether it’s business planning, strategic planning or management innovation work, I’m still amazed at the lack of a consensus on where they are as a starting point.  One leadership team of four people that I worked with a couple of years ago had four different opinions ranging from we’re having a few operational challenges to the future of the company is at risk.

Before you start charting a course for the future of your company, assemble the leaders of the organization for a heart to heart discussion of the current realities and the current challenges.  It’s the difference between putting one person on each of twelve buses or putting all twelve people on one bus.  As a group, choose one bus.

Planning for 2010

Many people are assuming that 2010 will be better than 2009 because they believe that 2010 can’t be worse than 2009 has turned out to be.  However, success takes more than hope.  In fact, success takes more than dreams and hard work. 

Achieving the results you want your organization to achieve does happen by accident.  Achieving results requires two things.  First, successful companies use detailed but flexible plans to plot their course and direction.  Second, achieving results requires strategic thinking, not incremental thinking.

With an effective strategy, you get to choose your course instead of letting customers, competitors and market forces determine your results for you. 

So, will you decide your organization’s future or will you let your competitors decide it for you?