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About a year ago, I posted an article about planning entitled, “We Are Going on a Trip but Don’t Start Your Car Yet” in which I explained the importance of first considering the Why, What and How of your plan, and warned against the tendency to start implementing before the planning was fully developed. Now, being January, my colleagues and I have just completed many months of helping our members develop their 2019 strategic plans.
Let me give you a little glimpse of how I approach the planning process.
In most cases, when working with these business owners and CEOs, we first review and address the gap of where they currently are, compared to their vision of where they want to be. We look at their culture, earnings, market position, etc. and determine where the gaps are, which gaps are biggest, and which gaps are the most important to hone in on and ultimately close right now.
We also review their Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) and identified which strengths to exploit, which weaknesses to minimized, which opportunities to capitalize on and which threats to protect themselves from.
From these two exercises, as well as conducting a good thorough review of what they did and did not accomplish last year, we are in an informed position to decide what to shoot for in 2019. Some business owners I work with are simply driven to increase revenue or hit profit targets, while others are seeking their organizations to become less dependent on them, improve their leadership skills and/or introduce new products. Many, like most businesses, want to improve their sales capabilities. They have learned that simply setting goals likely won’t get them there. They know that it is imperative they have strategies in place that they fully embrace and that they need to take specific actions in order to reach their objectives.
To reiterate my metaphor, I make certain that the business owners with whom I work know that if they are going on a trip, they better pull out that map and do some planning before they start the car. Nobody wants to miss their destination!
By Bob Dodge
