Key Steps to Strategic Planning – Part 1
To stay on the growth path in 2020, alignment on a vision, strategy, and key initiatives is essential. By having participation and alignment across your company in the planning process, you can be certain that each team knows it’s part in the success of the company. Here’s a high-level overview for a company with a […]
Why Have a Strategic Planning Meeting?
The more I facilitate strategic planning meetings, the more I recognise the challenges that business leaders face wanting to create change and a develop a new future for your organisation. You may understand the importance of strategic planning, but does the rest of your leadership team? If you’re talking to someone who has never done […]
How Often Should I do Strategy Planning?
I often encounter questions about the frequency that businesses should update their strategic plan, such as: how often should strategic planning be done or how often should we update our business strategy? The answer is: it depends! Each business operates within a system, influenced by both internal and external forces, including technological changes, industry disruptions, […]
Why plan for 2018?
Developing strategy, goals and a plan for 2018 will take time and resources. It requires the time and commitment of some of the most highly paid and highly experienced people in your company. So, if your team isn’t willing to invest what is needed, I recommend that you don’t do it. Poor planning is often […]
The Cost of Poor Planning
Annual and quarterly planning sessions can expensive. Let me illustrate: Based on their salaries, write down the hourly cost of having your executive team in a room together for 2 days. Calculate any travel expenses, meals, meeting spaces, etc involved in bringing the team together. Write this number down, too. If you use a facilitator […]
Have You Determined where your company wants to ‘play’?
Determining where you company wants to ‘play’ is a key part in developing your strategy that will have a huge impact on how successful and profitable your company will be. Let’s look at four questions to help you define where you want to ‘play’. What will you sell? This sounds like a pretty simple question, […]
How to get over obstacles…
The most important step in achieving any goals is identifying everything that’s standing in your way. Most people don’t seek out obstacles. It can be tough to get past them and daunting sometimes to even think about them. For many successful business leaders, though, obstacles are actually a necessity. They come up whenever they create […]
Planning for 2017
It is staggering to think that only 8% of UK businesses have a documented plan. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these businesses account for over 80% of all profits made by UK companies. There is a clear message here – if you plan you are more likely to succeed. It is at this time of year businesses start […]
How to develop your strategy
I often come across companies that make strategy much harder than it needs to be. For some, the problem is that they focus too much on the latest strategy tools: SWOT analysis, customer analysis, competitor analysis, financial modelling, etc. Other people struggle because they think it’s all about the broad, conceptual, big picture stuff but […]
Time to ask some great questions……
The key to business growth is rarely found in finding the “right” answer. Answers change as the business environment changes. Therefore, a good idea 5 years ago could be a bad idea today. And a fantastic idea today could be a terrible idea tomorrow. Look no further than how you could have made millions between […]
