Intro To Strategic Planning Systems

Course Objectives

At the completion of this module you will be able to:

• Understand the purpose and benefits of strategic planning for growing businesses.
• Understand and implement the strategic planning process into your business.
• Better understand your personal aspirations, including your strengths, weaknesses, and personal values.
• Develop a personal mission statement.
• Identify your personal success factors, objectives, and goals.
• Develop a plan to achieve your personal goals and monitor your success.
• Analyze your business to determine your primary focus, the nature of your business, and the strengths and weaknesses of your business.
• Develop and implement your business philosophy, including company values.
• Develop and implement your company mission statement.
• Determine which direction you would like your business to go by developing critical success factors, objectives, and goals for your business.
• Develop a strategy to reach your goals and objectives through actions plans, tracking and reviewing processes, and communication.
• Understand the importance of organizational structure and develop an organization chart that will help you run your business effectively.

Purpose of Strategic Planning Course

The purpose of this module is to help you develop the systems you need to chart your course to a successful future. Planning for the future is a powerful tool you can use to help your businesses grow and mature into a well run organization.

The value of future planning can’t be overstated, yet most business owners have never gone through a detailed planning process. Some see it as a waste of time. Others think it’s something only big companies do. Strategic planning does take time, but it’s an investment in time that pays big dividends in the long run ⎯ in both time and money.

Consider a sports team that enters into competition without adequate preparation or a game plan. Or an airplane that sets off without its course charted. Success is not accidental, and it’s not a matter of chance. It requires a foundation to be laid and built upon, and that foundation begins with planning. Although corrections are made along the way, a football team doesn’t take the field without its plays understood in advance; an airplane doesn’t set off without a chartered course.

Planning for the future requires you to set personal and professional goals, to take an in-depth look at your business and business environment, and formulate a course of action designed to reach your goals. Planning includes determining where you are now, where you want to go, and how you’re going to get there.

Like most entrepreneurs, you probably started your business to achieve personal goals. Opening your doors for business was the first step. But achieving your goals will require your business to grow.

Success doesn’t just happen. Starting a business isn’t like a lottery in which luck determines who is successful. Those business owners who create a lasting business do so by planning for their success.

Planning for the future is especially important to you as a small business owner because any changes in the business environment can have a significant impact on the success of your business. Strategic planning helps you anticipate the future and make course corrections early. It allows you to decide in advance what must be done and how it will get done. It enables you to approach your business proactively rather than always being in a “fire-fighting” mode. It allows you to gain and keep control of your business so you can achieve the personal goals that prompted you to go into business for yourself in the first place.

This course is the beginning of an ongoing process — planning never ends. Building a business is a journey, not a destination. There is always someplace further to go — a new market to enter or internal processes to improve. Until you reach perfection — which will never happen — the planning process must continue. The planning systems discussed in this course will lay the foundation on which the ongoing success of your business will be built.

What is Strategic Planning?

Strategic planning is a process businesses of all sizes use to turn dreams into realities. In a sense, it’s a recipe for success. The process defines what issues are important to your business and focuses the necessary attention and resources on those issues. As a result of this process, a strategic operating plan is created that charts the path to your success. The plan communicates to the entire organization, and outsiders, what the organization will be working towards and defines the steps the company will take to get there.

You’ve taken the first step by going into business for yourself, but how do you get what you want from your business? Strategic planning bridges the gap between where you are today and where you want to be. It also lays the foundation for your business to develop a life and personality of its own.

You create a strategic operating plan for the same reason you take a map along on a trip to an unfamiliar destination. You need direction. Think of your strategic operating plan as a road map you develop based on your goals, the capabilities of your business, and potential obstacles.

Planning provides psychological directions as well, acting as a motivating and unifying force. In selecting a course of action to follow, things get accomplished that otherwise would never get done.

Most business owners start their journey with some kind of destination in mind, even if it’s not well defined. But it isn’t too long before they hit a bump in the road.

Perhaps the first ad of a new advertising campaign failed to bring about the results they expected. Perhaps the new employee they hired to take over an important area didn’t work out. Whatever the situation, they put on their brakes and get out to examine the potholes in the road. They may fret and wonder whether they’re on the right road after all. Perhaps they decide the road has too many potholes and veer off in another direction, hoping it will eventually get them to the same destination as long as they keep heading east. If they had their map along, they would know that they were on the right road to their destination, even if they hit a few potholes or had to make a couple of detours along the way.

Clearly defined goals give you a positive reason to go to work each day and a well communicated plan enables everyone in your company to get behind what you’re trying to achieve. Your plan helps you create a work environment that produces top performers because everyone knows what the overall purpose of the business is, what objectives are trying to be reached, what tasks must be done to meet those objectives, and what guidelines must be followed in the performance of those tasks. It keeps the entire team going in the same direction.

It is much easier to move forward when all your people, resources, and plans are heading in the same direction.

As a business owner, your time is your most valuable resource. You need tools to enable you to apply this precious resource where it has the highest profit impact. Clearly defined goals will help you make sure that the day-to-day activities you engage in are directly related to reaching your goals.

Have you ever become so caught up in your daily activities that you lost sight of the purpose of your work? Have you lost sight of what goals your activities are directed toward reaching? Through the planning process you can examine how you spend your time and determine if you’re allocating the time needed to reach each objective. You can also determine if you’re spending time on activities not directly related to the achievement of your objectives. It isn’t good enough to know how to do a function ⎯ you must also understand why you’re doing it if you’re going to work smarter rather than harder. If the “why” isn’t helping you achieve your goals, you’re wasting your time.

Strategic planning takes the guesswork out of success. It lays the foundation that enables you to anticipate the future and make important decisions before problems arise. Decisions such as which products should be aggressively promoted and which should be abandoned, or which marketing methods will be most effective.

Strategic planning is an ongoing process that enables you to change your plan as needed. It’s a system for the continual development, improvement, and refining of your business.

Your strategic operating plan doesn’t have to be an elaborate or complex set of statements and fiscal charts. You are creating this plan to give your business direction and focus. You will use it internally to check your progress and to remind you of what you’re trying to achieve and you may use it externally to demonstrate your business tactics and vision to interested parties.

The Strategic Planning Process

The result of your strategic planning process will be a strategic operating plan. Yet much of the value lies in the planning process itself. The strategic planning process requires effort to evaluate and discuss your business. Through the process you will better define your business and your vision for it. The process distills what you learn from all sources (market research, personal insight, experience) and ties it together into a clear vision that will drive your business forward.

Although planning does lead to a strategic plan, it doesn’t stop at that point. In the business environment, changes frequently occur and you have to be prepared to reassess and revise your strategic plan. For your business to remain competitive, the strategic planning process must be ongoing.

Planning your future requires commitment. The process can be challenging, as it requires you to take a comprehensive look at all of the factors that impact your business including your internal processes and procedures, your customers, and your competitors.

Strategic planning is a learning process that requires a willingness to take some risks and try new things. What you learn from these experiences will help you develop even better strategies in the future. Successful businesses know that having a strategic plan in place is a clear business advantage.

As much as a planning process, strategic planning is a thinking process. Systems can process information, but only people can comprehend it and internalize it. To plan effectively requires you to develop a strategic thought process. It involves innovation and creativity. It challenges your existing point-of-view and helps you look at your business from an exciting new perspective.

Elements of the Strategic Plan

As you go through the planning process, you will write down the results of each planning stage. At the end of the process you will take the information you have gathered and organize it into a strategic operating plan which will contain the following elements:

1. Business philosophy: Your company’s core values and ethical standards.
2. Mission statement: Your company’s declaration of purpose, direction, and goals.
3. Critical success factors: Those performance areas critical to achieving your business mission.
4. Objectives: What your company wants to achieve in the long-term.
5. Goals: Specific goals your company must accomplish to meet objectives.
6. Tasks: The steps necessary to reach your goals and objectives.
7. Action plan: A plan of activities to be performed to achieve your goals and objectives, including what is to be done, who is to do it, and when it must be completed.

This course will take you through the following steps of the strategic planning process:

Defining Your Personal Aspirations. Identifying what you hope to achieve from your business, defining your personal goals, and integrating your personal desires into the business. Once you understand what it is you want out of life, you can create a business that fulfills your personal aspirations.

Developing Your Business Philosophy. Developing a business philosophy, including identifying core values and developing a code of ethics. This guiding philosophy will provide the moral and ethical parameters from which you will conduct business.

Analyzing Your Existing Business. Identifying why you exist as a business, where your business is today, and what its strengths and weaknesses are. A systematic study of your business today will help you determine where you want to go and what you must do to get there.

Developing Your Mission Statement. Developing a statement of purpose and vision for your business. Your mission provides overall direction for your company and provides a foundation for all future planning.

Determining Where You Want To Go. Defining your critical success factors and determining your business objectives and goals. These provide the direction you need to use your time and resources more effectively to achieve your mission.

Determining How You Want To Get There. Designing a course of action to make your goals happen, determining the resources needed to accomplish your goals, and developing systems to track your progress.

Developing an Organizational Structure. Determining present and future staffing needs, developing and using an organization chart, defining relationships among principals and family, and determining line and staff authority. A structured organization allows you to efficiently implement the strategic operating plan you have created.