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What's in Your Plan?
Happy New Year! 2010 promises to offer better opportunities than did 2009. However, in our hyper-competitive business environment success will still not come easily.
We all want to be successful in 2010 - but 'wanting to' is not a strategy. An essential step to your success this year will be - having an appropriate plan and executing on that strategy. It's more important to know where you are going than to get there in a hurry. Organizations that are consistently successful are those where:
Whether you are leading an organization, a division or a department developing a plan significantly increases your chances of achieving your goals - much like making reservations at a specific time for a particular table in your favorite restaurant. Planning:
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Gives you more control over your future
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And helps you address inertia, comfort zones and a 'the way we do things' culture.
Of course, the complexity of your plan will depend on the number and strength of the forces of change that may affect that strategy. However, all plans in a fundamental way must address three core elements:
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Where are you now - your mission
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Where do you want to go - your vision
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How will you there - your all important action steps, accountabilities and deadlines
As simplistic as these three elements appear, frequently there is insufficient clarity - particularly regarding the third element leading to: 'Oh, I didn't know that that was what I was supposed to do', 'You wanted that done this quarter?', etc.
Depending on your forces of change, other potentially useful planning tools include:
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Analyzing your current and anticipated macro and market factors
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Segmenting your customer base
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Listening in-depth to, at least, your primary customer segment
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Structuring your customer value proposition
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Identifying your organizational success factors
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Recognizing and enhancing your core competencies, etc.
We at The Focus Group have also successfully assisted organizations with - rather than a classical strategic planning process - an Organizational Development planning methodology. This process identifies an organization's most critical business issues and then obtains suggestions for addressing those issues individually and confidentially from all stakeholders on the planning team. This model is very focused, practical, action-oriented and generates maximum buy-in from the planning participants.
You have numerous planning methodologies available to you but, as you know, 'if you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there.'
And we learned in 2009 that 'any road' was certainly not desirable. Early in 2010 commit to having everyone on your team 'know what's in your plan'.
We wish you the very best in 2010. |
