One means to determine and line up family and business goals is by business and family strategic planning. In these plans, you will produce a mission statement for the company and for the family that allows each component to co-exist with the other. Once you have completed this task, arrange goals for the family business that will allow the family and business to flourish. Afterwards, construct a strategy to achieve these goals and, finally, formulate policies and procedures that moderate the family’s participation in the business.

Strategic planning for family-owned businesses requires that you incorporate family issues, such as:

One of the greatest challenges in business strategic planning is publicizing the strategic plan to the members. Here is how Club Resources, a Club Strategic Planning Consultant communicates Strategic Planning progress to its client club members, using a progressive approach:

1. Accumulate facts, carry on research and studies, collect results and analysis.

Included in this phase: Focus groups, member survey, committee studies, SWOT, Best Practices Self Evaluation, Capital Reserve Study, 5-Year Proforma and sensitivity Model, Bylaws Review, Comparative Club Study, Membership Trends and Projections, Financial Trends and Projections, and more.

2. Pre-Retreat Workbook:

A compilation of Discovery Results assembled in a large resource notebook for each of the Board Planning Retreat attendees.

3. Summary Presentation:

If your most recent risk assessment shows that your organization has a high level of risk, it may be time to start reasoning about how to address them. Safeguarding your organization from possible risk normally involves fashioning one of two choices: first, risk avoidance – i.e., avoiding activities and business opportunities that present a high risk – and second, really modifying your business practices and operating conditions in order to positively fight the risks you currently face.

While the first choice may be good in the short term, the second is doubtlessly the alternative with better long-term opportunity for success. By positively addressing your biggest risk factors and adopting a risk mitigation strategy, you’ll be bolstering the foundations of your business, preparing it to assimilate shocks and handle storms in any fickle years that may come.

Corporations were able to gain the advantage by focusing on becoming the dominate player in their space. To this end, they have primarily pursued competitive advantage by focusing on economies of scale, and better capabilities and competencies. Boston Consulting Group (BCG) argues that this no longer enough.

Organizational strategic planning is very essential for African businesses. Why? Simply because Africa is not really known as a hub for many investors. The continent is still on the process of development. Although opportunities are already seized by many, like China, risks are still there. Another thing is that, as years pass, Africa is becoming a battlefield for many investors. Competition is getting tighter. Playing there all alone is like fighting a losing battle. You are shorthanded and helpless. But by consulting business experts, you will somehow create a good game.

By defining your business’ strategy, direction and decision-making, there is way for you to endure the challenges that may occur throughout the campaign of your business. Strategic planning is done for future gain. By considering political, economical, environment, social and economical factors, one will come up with the best responses to continent-wide setbacks. Although it cannot tell what would be the market on the coming years, but it can at least tell you what to do whenever or while the market is having inconsistent shifts. It can point you where to go or what should be done. From the word itself, strategic planning, it is a well-studied preparation. It is applicable in any business environments in the world. But when talking about Africa, everything is different, both opportunities and challenges.
Situational analysis is also a part of an organizational strategic planning. A plan would go up to the interiors of every business situations, determining the cause and effect of the scenario. This will give you an on-time answer, which will prevent you from getting left behind by your competitor. This analysis touches factors like customer, competition, technology, supplier markets, labor markets, economy and the regulatory environment.

To get a good place in the African business market, it is necessary to have an appropriate business plan. You can’t assume that the market in the Black Continent is just like the usual, that would be the most absurd though that an investor can ever think of. Business opportunities are right there, and you will definitely need a strategy to achieve them.

Posted by Audrina Majella

There are many reasons why strategic plans fail, especially:

• When the company fails to understand the customer.
• The motive behind customer purchase.
• The real potential of the product.
• Inadequate or incorrect marketing research
• Failure to predict environmental reaction
• Reaction and plans of competitors.
• Competitive brands.
• Price wars.
• Will government intervene?
• Over-estimation of resource competence.
• Can the staff, equipment, and processes handle the new strategy.
• Failure to develop new employee and management skills.
• Failure to coordinate.
• Reporting and control relationships not adequate.
• Organizational structure not flexible enough.
• Failure to obtain senior management commitment.
• Failure to get management involved right from the start.
• Failure to obtain sufficient company resources to accomplish task.
• Failure to obtain employee commitment.
• Lack of well explained new strategy to employees.
• Lack of given incentives to workers to embrace the new strategy
• Under-estimation of time requirements.
• No critical path analysis done.
• Failure to follow the plan.
• No follow through after initial planning.
• No tracking of progress against plan.
• No consequences for above.
• Failure to manage change.
• Inadequate understanding of the internal resistance to change.
• Lack of vision on the relationships between processes, technology and organization.
• Communications barriers.
• Lack of information sharing among stakeholders.
• Exclusion of stakeholders and delegates.

Limitations of strategic management

Although a sense of direction is important, it can also kill creativity, especially if it is strictly enforced. In an uncertain and ambiguous world, flexibility can be more important than a rigidity of strategic compass. When a strategy becomes internalized into a corporate culture, it can lead to group think. It can also cause an organization to define itself too narrowly. An example of this is marketing myopia.

Many theories of strategic management tend to undergo only brief periods of popularity. A summary of these theories thus inevitably exhibits survivorship bias (itself an area of research in strategic management). Many theories tend either to be too narrow focusing to build a complete corporate strategy on, or too general having details shortage and too abstract to be applicable to specific situations. Populism or faddishness can have an impact on a particular theory’s life cycle and may see application in inappropriate circumstances. See business philosophies and popular management theories for a more critical view of management theories.

In 2000, Gary Hamel was the first to use the term strategic convergence to explain the limited scope of the strategies being used by rivals in greatly awkward circumstances. He exaggerated in lamenting that strategies converge, because the more successful ones are implemented blindly by firms like a template so they do not understand that the strategic process involves designing a custom strategy for the specifics of each situation.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

When you hear the word strategy, what comes to your mind? I bet you suddenly felt uneasy. It is because people make strategy harder than it needs to be.

The problem is because business people always associate strategy with such tools like environmental scans, SWOT analyses, business impact analysis, risk analysis, financial modeling, and so on and so forth. From these words alone, it is enough to make you puke your guts out. Other people get into trouble because they think it is all about the broad, conceptual, future-oriented, big picture stuff. Others think that strategy is all about changing paradigms.

The reality is that strategy is all of the above and more. It is about knowing that you cannot develop a strategy without the aid of the tools. Simply put, you cannot do a good job of developing strategy without a complete and thorough understanding of the variables involved.

Developing a strategy is not as difficult as it sounds. It is actually a lot easier than you thought it would be. Try to answer these interlinked questions and you will surely be guided in developing your own business strategy.

1. What are the broad aspirations of the organization? This is essentially the most basic question that anyone has to consider. There must be an understanding about the goals or objectives of the organization. To get 30% of the market share, or to increase profits by 30%. These are common goals but which are concrete and measurable. The aspirations have to be defined. They have to be clear and measurable. You just cannot say that you want to be a market leader or an industry leader because you will never know how you are faring. Defining the goals and objectives of the company in broad but measurable terms is more important to you and the business

2. In our chosen field, how do we intend to win against the competitors?

Again, this is another basic question that would define our strategy. If our objective is to increase market shares by 30%, then how do you propose to achieve this? This is ultimately the path towards the oasis or the fruit-bearing tree, if you want to be visual with this point. How do you propose to go to your destination? There are various paths, as you may well know.

The choice is yours on which path to thread. You can do this by saturating the market with your marketing collaterals as in your print brochures or radio airtime or magazine features. You may also want to explore holding events to launch a product. Whatever path you pursue, what is important is for you to continually assess the success of your strategy.

3. What capabilities are necessary to build and maintain your advantage in the chosen path?

In order to sustain efforts to achieve your company’s aspirations, list down all the necessary capabilities i.e. human resources, equipment, material resources, finances. It is important that you know what you need to achieve the goals. Compare it to a boat. You would not go anywhere without oars, would you? Better than the oars, you will be able to reach your destination faster with sails. However, if you really want to go full throttle, nothing beats 100 horsepower engine. Therefore, if you decide to do it by brochure printing for example, your resources should allow you to do this on a sustained basis.

Again, having a strategy is not as difficult as it seems. You just need to develop your guidelines is stick to it for you to succeed in whatever path you choose to thread.

Kaye Z. Marks is an avid writer and follower of the developments in print brochures or brochure printing industry that help businesses in their marketing and advertising campaigns.

Strategic planning is the formal consideration of an organization’s future course. All strategic planning deals with at least one of three key questions:

1. “What do we do?”
2. “For whom do we do it?”
3. “How do we excel?”

In business strategic planning, some authors phrase the third question as “How can we beat or avoid competition?”. (Bradford and Duncan, page 1). But this approach is more about defeating competitors than about excelling.

In many organizations, this is viewed as a process for determining where an organization is going over the next year or – more typically – 3 to 5 years (long term), although some extend their vision to 20 years.

In order to determine where it is going, the organization needs to know exactly where it stands, then determine where it wants to go and how it will get there. The resulting document is called the “strategic plan.”

It is also true that strategic planning may be a tool for effectively plotting the direction of a company; however, strategic planning itself cannot foretell exactly how the market will evolve and what issues will surface in the coming days in order to plan your organizational strategy. Therefore, strategic innovation and tinkering with the ‘strategic plan’ have to be a cornerstone strategy for an organization to survive the turbulent business climate.

Vision statements, Mission statements and values
Vision: Defines the desired or intended future state of an organization or enterprise in terms of its fundamental objective and/or strategic direction. Vision is a long term view, sometimes describing how the organization would like the world in which it operates to be. For example a charity working with the poor might have a vision statement which read “A world without poverty”

Mission: Defines the fundamental purpose of an organization or an enterprise, succinctly describing why it exists and what it does to achieve its Vision.

It is sometimes used to set out a ‘picture’ of the organization in the future. A mission statement provides details of what is done and answers the question: “What do we do?” For example, the charity might provide “job training for the homeless and unemployed”

Values: Beliefs that are shared among the stakeholders of an organization. Values drive an organization’s culture and priorities and provide a framework in which decisions are made. For example, “Knowledge and skills are the keys to success” or “give a man bread and feed him for a day, but teach him to farm and feed him for life”. These example values may set the priorities of self sufficiency over shelter.

Strategy: Strategy narrowly defined, means “the art of the general” (from Greek stratigos). A combination of the ends (goals) for which the firm is striving and the means (policies) by which it is seeking to get there.

Organizations sometimes summarize goals and objectives into a mission statement and/or a vision statement. Others begin with a vision and mission and use them to formulate goals and objectives.

While the existence of a shared mission is extremely useful, many strategy specialists question the requirement for a written mission statement. However, there are many models of strategic planning that start with mission statements, so it is useful to examine them here.

* A Mission statement tells you the fundamental purpose of the organization. It defines the customer and the critical processes. It informs you of the desired level of performance.

* A Vision statement outlines what the organization wants to be, or how it wants the world in which it operates to be. It concentrates on the future. It is a source of inspiration. It provides clear decision-making criteria.

An advantage of having a statement is that it creates value for those who get exposed to the statement, and those prospects are managers, employees and sometimes even customers. Statements create a sense of direction and opportunity. They both are an essential part of the strategy-making process.

Many people mistake the vision statement for the mission statement, and sometimes one is simply used as a longer term version of the other. The Vision should describe why it is important to achieve the Mission. A Vision statement defines the purpose or broader goal for being in existence or in the business and can remain the same for decades if crafted well. A Mission statement is more specific to what the enterprise can achieve itself. Vision should describe what will be achieved in the wider sphere if the organization and others are successful in achieving their individual missions.

A mission statement can resemble a vision statement in a few companies, but that can be a grave mistake. It can confuse people. The mission statement can galvanize the people to achieve defined objectives, even if they are stretch objectives, provided it can be elucidated in SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound) terms. A mission statement provides a path to realize the vision in line with its values. These statements have a direct bearing on the bottom line and success of the organization.

Which comes first? The mission statement or the vision statement? That depends. If you have a new start up business, new program or plan to reengineer your current services, then the vision will guide the mission statement and the rest of the strategic plan. If you have an established business where the mission is established, then many times, the mission guides the vision statement and the rest of the strategic plan. Either way, you need to know your fundamental purpose – the mission, your current situation in terms of internal resources and capabilities (strengths and/or weaknesses) and external conditions (opportunities and/or threats), and where you want to go – the vision for the future. It’s important that you keep the end or desired result in sight from the start.[citation needed] .

Features of an effective vision statement include:

* Clarity and lack of ambiguity
* Vivid and clear picture
* Description of a bright future
* Memorable and engaging wording
* Realistic aspirations
* Alignment with organizational values and culture

To become really effective, an organizational vision statement must (the theory states) become assimilated into the organization’s culture. Leaders have the responsibility of communicating the vision regularly, creating narratives that illustrate the vision, acting as role-models by embodying the vision, creating short-term objectives compatible with the vision, and encouraging others to craft their own personal vision compatible with the organization’s overall vision. In addition, mission statements need to be subjected to an internal assessment and an external assessment. The internal assessment should focus on how members inside the organization interpret their mission statement. The external assessment — which includes all of the businesses stakeholders — is valuable since it offers a different perspective. These discrepancies between these two assessments can give insight on the organization’s mission statement effectiveness.

Another approach to defining Vision and Mission is to pose two questions. Firstly, “What aspirations does the organization have for the world in which it operates and has some influence over?”, and following on from this, “What can (and/or does) the organization do or contribute to fulfill those aspirations?”. The succinct answer to the first question provides the basis of the Vision Statement. The answer to the second question determines the Mission Statement.

Strategic planning outline
The preparatory phase of a business plan relies on planning. The first chapters of a business plan include Analysis of the Current Situation and Marketing Plan Strategy and Objectives.

Analysis of the current situation – past year

* Business trends analysis
* Market analysis
* Competitive analysis
* Market segmentation
* Marketing-mix
* SWOT analysis
* Positioning – analyzing perceptions
* Sources of information

Marketing plan strategy & objectives – next year

* Marketing strategy
* Desired market segmentation
* Desired marketing-mix
* TOWS-based objectives as a result of the SWOT
* Position & perceptual gaps
* Yearly sales forecast

According to Arieu, “there is strategic consistency when the actions of an organisation are consistent with the expectations of management, and these in turn are with the market and the context” (S.K. Sharman in Human Resource Management: A Strategic Approach to Employment)

Methodologies
There are many approaches to strategic planning but typically a three-step process may be used:

* Situation – evaluate the current situation and how it came about.
* Target – define goals and/or objectives (sometimes called ideal state)
* Path – map a possible route to the goals/objectives

One alternative approach is called Draw-See-Think

* Draw – what is the ideal image or the desired end state?
* See – what is today’s situation? What is the gap from ideal and why?
* Think – what specific actions must be taken to close the gap between today’s situation and the ideal state?
* Plan – what resources are required to execute the activities?

An alternative to the Draw-See-Think approach is called See-Think-Draw

* See – what is today’s situation?
* Think – define goals/objectives
* Draw – map a route to achieving the goals/objectives

In other terms strategic planning can be as follows:

* Vision – Define the vision and set a mission statement with hierarchy of goals and objectives
* SWOT – Analysis conducted according to the desired goals
* Formulate – Formulate actions and processes to be taken to attain these goals
* Implement – Implementation of the agreed upon processes
* Control – Monitor and get feedback from implemented processes to fully control the operation

Situational analysis
When developing strategies, analysis of the organization and its environment as it is at the moment and how it may develop in the future, is important. The analysis has to be executed at an internal level as well as an external level to identify all opportunities and threats of the external environment as well as the strengths and weaknesses of the organizations.

There are several factors to assess in the external situation analysis:

1. Markets (customers)
2. Competition
3. Technology
4. Supplier markets
5. Labor markets
6. The economy
7. The regulatory environment

It is rare to find all seven of these factors having critical importance. It is also uncommon to find that the first two – markets and competition – are not of critical importance. (Bradford “External Situation – What to Consider”)

Analysis of the external environment normally focuses on the customer. Management should be visionary in formulating customer strategy, and should do so by thinking about market environment shifts, how these could impact customer sets, and whether those customer sets are the ones the company wishes to serve.

Analysis of the competitive environment is also performed, many times based on the framework suggested by Michael Porter.

Goals, objectives and targets
Strategic planning is a very important business  activity. It is also important in the public sector areas such as education. It is practiced widely informally and formally. Strategic planning and decision processes should end with objectives and a roadmap of ways to achieve them.

One of the core goals when drafting a strategic plan is to develop it in a way that is easily translatable into action plans. Most strategic plans address high level initiatives and over-arching goals, but don’t get articulated (translated) into day-to-day projects and tasks that will be required to achieve the plan. Terminology or word choice, as well as the level a plan is written, are both examples of easy ways to fail at translating your strategic plan in a way that makes sense and is executable to others. Often, plans are filled with conceptual terms which don’t tie into day-to-day realities for the staff expected to carry out the plan.

The following terms have been used in strategic planning: desired end states, plans, policies, goals, objectives, strategies, tactics and actions. Definitions vary, overlap and fail to achieve clarity. The most common of these concepts are specific, time bound statements of intended future results and general and continuing statements of intended future results, which most models refer to as either goals or objectives (sometimes interchangeably).

One model of organizing objectives uses hierarchies. The items listed above may be organized in a hierarchy of means and ends and numbered as follows: Top Rank Objective (TRO), Second Rank Objective, Third Rank Objective, etc. From any rank, the objective in a lower rank answers to the question “How?” and the objective in a higher rank answers to the question “Why?” The exception is the Top Rank Objective (TRO): there is no answer to the “Why?” question. That is how the TRO is defined.

People typically have several goals at the same time. “Goal congruency” refers to how well the goals combine with each other. Does goal A appear compatible with goal B? Do they fit together to form a unified strategy? “Goal hierarchy” consists of the nesting of one or more goals within other goal(s).

One approach recommends having short-term goals, medium-term goals, and long-term goals. In this model, one can expect to attain short-term goals fairly easily: they stand just slightly above one’s reach. At the other extreme, long-term goals appear very difficult, almost impossible to attain. Strategic management jargon sometimes refers to “Big Hairy Audacious Goals” (BHAGs) in this context. Using one goal as a stepping-stone to the next involves goal sequencing. A person or group starts by attaining the easy short-term goals, then steps up to the medium-term, then to the long-term goals. Goal sequencing can create a “goal stairway”. In an organizational setting, the organization may co-ordinate goals so that they do not conflict with each other. The goals of one part of the organization should mesh compatibly with those of other parts of the organization.

Source: Multiple including Wikipedia

1. The Strategic Plan is about “must have” growth – nothing else. Bottom line, all of your strategic goals should be about growth, example: growing sales, growing people’s effectiveness, growing internal efficiencies. Growth is what we are after; not mission statements, not organizational philosophy, not politically correct statements (to insure every group has a line item in the Strategic Plan) – just growth. And not just any growth. Not just nice-to-have growth, “wouldn’t it be nice/good/we really should” growth – you want to keep your Strategic Plan very lean and mean, and limit it to just the areas of growth that will power the business forward.  Be thinking in terms of the opportunities given your strengths and the market landscape that are mandatory for the growth of the business.
2. Aside from tracking financial returns as part of your strategic plan, every goal has to have a plan, represented as initiatives.  Every initiative supporting a growth goal has to stand two tests. If your strategic goals and initiatives don’t link to goals and projects in your business operations, they will typically be under-supported in the day-to-day work process and shouldn’t be in your Strategic Plan.  This is our working definition for alignment.  But what about those tests?  1. The first test we use when looking at initiatives is – “Do they represent a compelling plan for achieving the strategic goal?”  They should represent a believe-able, testable, sequence for achieving the strategic objective while minimizing risk of lost time, missed opportunities and incorrect use of resources.  Initiatives represent your game plan.  How good to you want your plan to be?2.  The second initiative test is embraced by the following question, “Is that (initiative) really required to reach the strategic goal?”  If the initiative is not critical to reaching your strategic goal, don’t keep it in your plan.  Keep your plan light and focused, you want to carry and drive this through-out the year.   Sacrifice or trade comprehensive descriptions for targeted, punchy sentence stubs.

Note: All non-critical initiatives should be in your Operations section, not your Strategic Plan. Don’t fill up your Strategic Plan with multiple layers of initiatives, many, if not most, of them should be represented as projects under different business, product and service initiatives in the Operations area of your business in a strategic management software tool like ManagePro.

1. If a goal isn’t measured, it doesn’t belong in your strategic plan. If you haven’t figured out a meaningful way to measure each strategic goal and supporting initiative – it doesn’t belong in your plan. If you’re not tracking it via your scorecard, don’t keep it. Said another way, if it’s not worth the time to measure and track, it doesn’t belong in your Strategic Plan. It’s that simple.  Whether or not a strategic goal is measured and tracked is one of the best for predicting what you will actually execute through the year.

Conclusion:  To construct a strategic plan that can really empower your entire organization, focus on three areas:

1.    Make sure the strategic plan is focused only on Growth

2.    Every strategic goal has to have an action plan of initiatives

3.    Whatever is worth including, is worth measuring – regularly

The author of this series, Rodney Brim, is CEO of Performance Solutions Technology (PST).  PST develops and assists organizations in deploying performance management software solutions, and presents these guidelines based upon our work with 1,000’s of companies to help ensure your success in the pursuit of strategic and performance management.  Performance Solutions Technology is found on the web at http://www.PerformanceSolutionsTech.com

Source: ArticlesFactory.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Potential Problems and Company Objectives: First identify and rank your potential problems in your company operations. With your problems identified and ranked in importance and severity, you can develop company objectives to minimize and manage the identified problem areas, emphasizing your company’s strengths.

Risk Analysis: When are Problems likely to occur?  What can you do to mitigate the potential risks and problems?  How will you deal with these problems?  The risk analysis looks at how you can turn problems into opportunities, which parlays into the next section.

Company Strategy, Strategic Tactics and Programs: First develop your strategy, then the relating strategic tactics and then the resulting strategic programs. Strategy is focus and consists of key factors that distinguish your company and are most expected to contribute to your success.  It is important that your company strategies complement each other so you are not sending your business in separate directions. Strategic tactics are used to implement strategies and relate to a specific strategy. Strategic programs are specific business activities which have concrete dates, assigned responsibilities and developed budgets. Programs relate to specific tactics of a specific strategy.

Sales Strategy: Develop the sales strategy as it specifically relates to the marketing strategy.  Establish the different sale methods and channels. Determine your sales process and goals.

Sales Program: The sales program addresses how your sales strategy will be implemented.  You should have systems in place to measure the strategy implementation and to support your sales efforts.

Strategic Alliances and Joint Ventures: Define your keystone alliances and partnerships. Develop cooperative marketing and development opportunities. Identify any inherent risks.

Rolling Basis Operating Budget: The operating budget is a planning and control mechanism which helps you develop the sales forecast.  It should be on a rolling basis, outward looking for one year, and the format on a monthly basis. It is important your operational budget reflects your strategic planning goals.

Sales Forecast: Based upon your sales strategy and programs, and considering your operational budget, develop a three to five year projected sales forecast.  This sales forecast will be used to develop your detailed profit and loss statement of your business plan.  It is very important to correlate how your sales forecast relates to your market analysis, market segments, marketing strategy and sales strategy.

Milestone Table: Provide your future company goals, milestones and corresponding strategies, along with your marketing and sales program rollout.

Control Mechanisms:  What mechanisms for control of each critical skill and resource are available to you?  Is direct ownership necessary for your resources and skills or can they be outsourced and at what cost savings? These are just some of the questions to address when identifying control mechanisms for your strategic plan’s resources.

Strategic planning is such an important part of running a successful business, I highly recommend retaining an experienced business consultant, ensuring your strategic plan is effectively developed, and most importantly, effectively implemented throughout your company operations.  After your strategic plan is implemented, an experienced business consultant can also help you ensure the strategy stays on track, reaches its goals and is adjusted as necessary due to market changes and unforeseen problematic events.

Frank Goley works for ABC Business Consulting and is an expert in developing and implementing business plans, marketing plans and strategic plans.

As things appear on the horizon each of you will be asking the question, what’s important about that from your various perspectives. You will be able to articulate the important elements of foreseeable future possibilities so you can all focus on the possibilities each offer. The goal of the business is, after all, to help each of you make your dreams come true.

Strategic planning keeps you focused on the options you now see more clearly, so you can collectively make choices that benefit the company and all of the people involved.

In this brief article I will describe the five key elements of a business strategic plan. It has been my experience that when these three elements are combined into a simple straightforward do it yourself process your company will achieve its goals. This is not rocket science, unless you are building rockets, and will work for companies of as few people as one and as many people as you have on board your company.

Your Strategic Planning Team:
The strategic planning workbooks, textbooks, and how-to books all discuss the importance of the strategic planning team – the implication being that the company must be big enough that there are leaders at every level who can become part of the strategic planning team. Unfortunately that eliminates about 75% of all the companies in existence.

If that includes you do not fear as I am about to show you how you can reach out to the best people possible, individuals with various perspectives whose input will help you create a balanced strategy. In addition these successful people will help you develop and maintain this workable strategy over the long haul. And since they are not going to be charging for their input you will be able to afford an active strategic planning team forever.

I recommend that you connect with members of your industry’s trade association, business owners whose results have been demonstrated over time and whose opinions you trust. The well known power of group dynamics suggests that you limit the size of your strategic planning group to 6-8 people including yourself.

Each of you should also be located outside each other’s traditional marketing areas. If some of you are nearing retirement with vast experience, others in the midst of their careers growing their companies and some who are successors in successful businesses in your industry you will have an important range of diversity. Those who have been around a while can see things coming that are invisible to those just starting out and vice versa.

The Strategic Planning Process:
The strategic planning process should be simple, just three questions to focus on, so you will keep them at the top of your mind. Naturally there are multiple components of these three questions that will become second nature as the process of discussion moves along.

What are you going to sell in the future and how? Each member of your strategic planning team will offer different ideas based on what’s working for them now, what they have already considered for the future and their perspective (such as their Internet savvy or lack of same).

Who are your target customers and why? Every successful business owner focuses on their market share inside their traditional market. With different perspectives you will be able to expand that traditional marketing area AND focus on increasing your share of each customer. Members of your strategic planning team will open your mind to tactics they are using to sell more products of one kind or another to your existing core customers.

How can you differentiate your company vs your competitors? This often means discontinuing lines no longer profitable that you’re still carrying because you’ve always carried them. It may mean focusing on fewer products and services where your specific capabilities excel. And it most assuredly will mean introducing new products and services recommended by your strategic planning team based on their experiences and perspectives.

Once you and your team have these three questions at the forefront – the qualifiers become automatic. What’s important? What is it now? What exactly do you want it to be? And what’s possible to achieve at the intersection of your goals and your resources?

A Commitment To Action:
With the continual input from your strategic planning peer group you will be able to more easily target strategic opportunities all around you. Opportunities that would have continued to be invisible to you without their well considered input. These actions will, in and of themselves help you choose those capabilities important for your future growth and enhance your capacities for making the most of them.

As you and the other members of your strategic planning peer group put your plans on paper and keep them in front of each other you will develop an environment for continually review and modify your evolving mission statements.

Continually articulating your goals for the future as they are continually refined by your strategic planning peer group will keep the important next steps always in view. Taking action yourself or delegating it to the individuals or teams within your organization who have the power, authority, and accountability for their completion is all that now stands between where things are today and where you want them to be in the future.

If you are seriously interested in your organization’s future you’ll find that there’s really no better way to create and manage your strategic planning process.

About the Author

Your next move should be to click below and take five minutes to review my recently published report that contains complete instructions for your Do-It-Yourself Strategic Planning process at http://www.DIYStrategicPlanning.com Article by Wayne Messick, publisher of http://www.iBizResources.com

An Overview Of Strategic Six Sigma

Many CEOs are skeptical about the outcome of Six Sigma, despite huge annual spending. A critical component which helps integrate the visions of the leader with the functioning of the organization is strategic programming derived from “strategy deployment mapping”. This is said to produce an entirely new direction for the organization. The skepticism about the vision of building a future begins to gain momentum with the linking of visions to action plans and when it delivers tangible results. Six Sigma takes strategic planning to a different plane of thinking by delivering on this promise.

Success Begins With Planning

It should not be forgotten that the foundation for success is proper and adequate planning. Planning is the elaborate statement of vision by the leader of the company. This is true for both large corporations and smaller start-ups. The core of transforming organizational vision into tangible gains by employees has many steps to overcome obstacles on the path to achievement. Achievements will have to be translated to customer satisfaction for Six Sigma to be successful.

Sharing Of Vision

The vision which begins its journey with upper management needs to be shared by all the stakeholders. It may be difficult to demonstrate to employees that their actions relate to customer reactions directly. Another missing link that needs to be connected is the customer himself. The emphasis of Six Sigma is on factoring in customers & engaging them in defining needs. Deploying employees actively connects these disjointed needs. The powerful tools of Six Sigma highlight and simplifies the linkage between key elements, activities, strategies and finally the vision, paving way for smooth sharing of ideas. The methodology of Six Sigma communicates company vision effectively to all concerned in a language understandable by each of them.

Critical Mass

There is also a danger of leaders getting bogged down by trivial matters of day-to-day operations and numerous details. Two of the tools of Six Sigma (metrics), key requirements and differentiators, come to the rescue. These two metrics highlight the importance or irrelevance of some data and push for excellence on those that matter. The end result is helping leaders to envision the strategic importance of activities and steering clear of trivial, mundane things.

Deployment of Six Sigma can’t be disconnected from strategic planning and financial activities, either. If the decision to implement Six Sigma is a result of strategic planning, it means the leadership has recognized the need for complete retooling of the organization, no matter what phase it is in.

About the Author:
Tony Jacowski is a quality analyst for The MBA Journal. Aveta Solution’s Six Sigma Online offers online six sigma training and certification classes for lean six sigma, black belts, green belts, and yellow belts.

Here are some skills that the very best strategic thinkers have, and use, every day.

They Have a Vision

They are great at both thinking with a strategic purpose as well as creating a Visioning process. They have both tools in their kit and they use both to complement each other. This form of supportive thinking and seeing the future, creates a way of thinking and evolving strategy that is focused and yet broad.

Make Time

In a busy businesses and organisations, be they small or large, making the time is vital. At the top of their game key strategic thinkers take time out. Maybe a retreat (maximum points!); maybe a day in a hotel foyer; maybe an afternoon somewhere/anywhere, with a blank sheet and a thinking hat on. Whatever works for them – but they do it.

Are Not Hasty

The clue is in the description, Strategic Thinking is not about today, tomorrow or next week. In close partnership with holding a clear vision for the business future, these two create the tomorrows of the future. But not tomorrow! This is shaping, coaxing, tuning for a quality business performance in the years to come. Great exponents take time to fine tune, revise and engineer quality futures!

Absorb and Notice

They are truly aware. In any business, there are clues, often subtle, both internal and external, to help guide future direction and realize opportunities. Great Strategic Thinkers take all of this in, so that as they set aside time to think, they have a full deck of information to guide them. Sometimes, it’s an ‘aha’ moment on vacation, when they observe something that resonates; it might be on a morning walk out in the country; it might be what someone says as they serve them coffee. Making links, however tenuous, is what makes this work so well.

Review Often

The best Strategic Thinkers check that their thinking has been validated. Is it going to work, against a world of regular, consistent and yet sometimes volatile change? This activity is a moving target, so to build a better understanding, snapshots; benchmarks and regular stocktaking are all very useful to confirm the quality of the thinking – and absorbed into the skillset for their and their organizations future.

Learn from Experience

Over time, these folk use their experiences, small and large, to think better on strategic issues. This makes their use of this time really efficient and particularly effective. There are learned short-cuts to the perhaps more formalized strategic planning process and experience is a huge, valuable added bonus.

Use a Team

By utilising more than just their own brain (though this is vital for some of the process!), those great at Strategic Thinking bounce ideas off others in the workplace and encourage their input above and beyond their delivery of the day job. The old adage that 1+1=3 in the input of thinking is hugely valid. And 5 people make a much more significant contribution than 2 – and so on!

Realism Rules (A Little!)

Although they create ideas very openly, key strategic thinkers have a sense of realism and honesty about what is achievable in the longer term. This is not to hold them back; more it is to deliver success. They underpromise and overdeliver, whilst also ensuring that the day to day business of the organization – the ‘now’ – is served adequately too. That’s what gets the business paid today, whilst building the future of tomorrow.

Have Clear Milestones

By creating checks in their thinking, to review progress, they have the opportunity to tweak. They have an innate ability to spot the twists and turns necessary. A 5,000 mile journey by a jet plane reaches the destination only by regular and consistent course checks and adjustments.

Are Non-Judgemental

Because the route to a successful future is not bounded by judging their, or others, thinking as they get creative – that is for elsewhere – better ideas flow. Open minds are encouraged and the detail tested later. Open minded thinking needs real checks and balances – but AFTER the openness has stimulated the breadth of imaginative ideas only such freedom can provide.

In the most successful organizations over the years and decades, where the test of time has shown them the excellent businesses they are, the Sony’s, Coca Colas, Nokias and Toyotas of this world think ahead and encourage great Strategic Thinking at least somewhere in their busness plans.

In a cut-throat today world of this year’s bonus and dividend, big business has a tendency to look short-term and manage that efficiently and well. A sustainable future needs more, whatever size your business is.