How Do You Achieve Better Strategic Planning Results?

pic­ture by Eliya The fol­low­ing is a guest post by Mar­tin Harsh­berger Pres­i­dent of Mea­sur­able Results LLC, and Bot­tom Line Coach.

I think strate­gic plans have got­ten a bad rap. If you believe the research most com­pa­nies don’t even have one even though it is said that over 75% of busi­nesses that fail don’t have a plan.

When talk­ing to peo­ple, espe­cially those that don’t have a plan, I often hear, “strate­gic plans are use­less, they are just guesses”.

In doing the back­ground research for my book, “Bot­tom Line Focus”, I read a lot on the sub­ject and I think I finally under­stand why plans are per­ceived as guesses.

Most peo­ple sim­ply don’t know how to develop a mean­ing­ful plan.

They doc­u­ment some “goals” as to where they want to take their orga­ni­za­tions, assign some actions based on those goals and then basi­cally hope it all happens.

Before you can develop a mean­ing­ful plan for your orga­ni­za­tion you need to under­stand three things very clearly.

1. Where you want the orga­ni­za­tion to be in 3 to 5 years, in detail. What mar­kets, what prod­ucts, what your dif­fer­en­tia­tor will be in that mar­ket etc.

2. Where you are now. A detailed look inter­nally at your strengths and lim­i­ta­tions, as well as exter­nally at your oppor­tu­ni­ties and threats.

3. What small, timed and clear steps you need to accom­plish to get you from step 2 to step 1.

Major orga­ni­za­tional changes are accom­plished by a thor­ough under­stand­ing of what needs to be done and where you want to go, along with clear account­abil­ity and buy in of all concerned.

Like the old say­ing goes you “eat an ele­phant one bit at a time”.

In order to get bet­ter strate­gic plan­ning results, you need to spend some time devel­op­ing a sound strate­gic plan­ning process. My 35 years of expe­ri­ence has taught me most com­pa­nies sim­ply don’t know how to plan.

As I men­tioned in my last blog post I just fin­ished read­ing a book enti­tled “How Toy­ota Got to be Num­ber 1″ by David Magee. He writes in detail of how Toyota’s long-term strat­egy is based on the sin­gle goal of striv­ing to build the best vehi­cle in the world, and to offer con­sumers more for their money. Every­thing they do is focused on that vision.

Most of us think that the Toy­ota Man­u­fac­tur­ing Sys­tem is the basis for their suc­cess; The truth is that is sim­ply one of the many tools they use to achieve their goal of build­ing the best vehi­cles. The real secret is the cul­ture they cre­ate within the orga­ni­za­tion that fos­ters employee engage­ment, and maybe most impor­tantly the expec­ta­tion that every employee will imme­di­ately report prob­lems and take steps to solve them. They strive to develop a cul­ture where everyone’s input is val­ued and sought after.

This cul­ture is part of their strat­egy and is found in every­thing from the hir­ing process to over a year of train­ing for most employ­ees. The point is their strate­gic plan states they want to build the best vehi­cles pos­si­ble, and they have set goals for every func­tion of the orga­ni­za­tion that focuses on attain­ment of that vision. Every­one in the com­pany from pro­duc­tion, to man­age­ment, to engi­neer­ing and includ­ing human resources devel­ops goals that align with the strate­gic direc­tion, and they con­stantly review prob­lems that may inter­fere with attain­ment of their vision.

The bot­tom line is if you want bet­ter strate­gic plan­ning results put effort into devel­op­ment of a bet­ter strate­gic plan­ning process.

Mar­tin Harsh­berger is Pres­i­dent of Mea­sur­able Results LLC, and Bot­tom Line Coach. His coach­ing prac­tice works with busi­nesses to develop options through improved prof­itabil­ity and cash flow.

His new book just released Bot­tom Line Focus is avail­able at the web­site or on Amazon.