Strategic Planning for Small Business: Don’t Make this Common Mistake

depotgang · 06-13-2011, 11:25 AM

Your company is ready to move ahead and start planning for growth and expansion over the next two years or so. It’s time to create a strategic plan for your small business. You hire in a well-respected business analyst and plan a two day retreat for your senior staff and a half-day retreat at headquarters for all of the staff to go through stakeholder planning, and feedback exercises.

After working on your strategic plan for awhile, the consultant delivers the finished product and you roll it out at an all-staff meeting. Each department understands their role in executing the plan. Everyone knows their individual action steps and the milestones are clearly delineated. The marketing department even created some cool posters with the company’s 3 main goals and as you want through the offices you can see that every employee has these goals on their bulletin boards.

Flash forward six months later when the excitement about the new plan has died down and things have returned to normal. At first everyone was focused on implanting the new action plans, but then it began to get drowned out by the daily routing of running a business. All those ideas that were generated with such enthusiasm at the off-site planning retreat fell to the wayside as the staff returned to putting out the daily fires, trying to satisfy customers and keeping up with their email and voice mail.

The most common mistake that small businesses make with the strategic planning process is the failure to put just as much if not more emphasis on the implementation phase as they do on the visioning phase. Creating a new vision is sexy while trying to manage change while keeping the business humming along takes dedication and effort.

Part of the strategic planning process needs to take into consideration to impediments to implementing the new plan. Energy needs to be put into consistently applying the new strategy until it becomes second nature from the leadership on down to the receptionist.

Here are some tips for ensuring that the strategic plan that you put so much time and energy into actually gets implemented in your business and creates the results you are looking for:

· Make sure that the action steps required receive the budget support they require.
· Schedule follow-up meetings to report on interim progress towards implementing the strategic plan.
· Plan some kind of celebratory event when a major milestone is reached.
· Factor every employee’s individual goals into the company’s overall goals.

It’s also important to keep in mind that as you and your team focus in on accomplishing the goals set forth in the strategic plan, there are other things that will fall by the wayside. Be sure that you are clear on what to focus on and what you can afford to let go of because you can’t do everything at once.

Having a well-executed strategic plan can be a powerful motivator for a small business.

We’ve covered just one aspect of strategic planning for small business in this short article. For more information to help you grow your online business, visit, http://www.mcreasite.com/blog today.

06-13-2011, 11:25 AM	#1
depotgang Laser Traffic Pro War Room Member Join Date: Oct 2005 Location: San Diego, Ca , USA. Posts: 1,253 Thanks: 12 Thanked 154 Times in 69 Posts Contact Info	Strategic Planning for Small Business: Don’t Make this Common Mistake Your company is ready to move ahead and start planning for growth and expansion over the next two years or so. It’s time to create a strategic plan for your small business. You hire in a well-respected business analyst and plan a two day retreat for your senior staff and a half-day retreat at headquarters for all of the staff to go through stakeholder planning, and feedback exercises. After working on your strategic plan for awhile, the consultant delivers the finished product and you roll it out at an all-staff meeting. Each department understands their role in executing the plan. Everyone knows their individual action steps and the milestones are clearly delineated. The marketing department even created some cool posters with the company’s 3 main goals and as you want through the offices you can see that every employee has these goals on their bulletin boards. Flash forward six months later when the excitement about the new plan has died down and things have returned to normal. At first everyone was focused on implanting the new action plans, but then it began to get drowned out by the daily routing of running a business. All those ideas that were generated with such enthusiasm at the off-site planning retreat fell to the wayside as the staff returned to putting out the daily fires, trying to satisfy customers and keeping up with their email and voice mail. The most common mistake that small businesses make with the strategic planning process is the failure to put just as much if not more emphasis on the implementation phase as they do on the visioning phase. Creating a new vision is sexy while trying to manage change while keeping the business humming along takes dedication and effort. Part of the strategic planning process needs to take into consideration to impediments to implementing the new plan. Energy needs to be put into consistently applying the new strategy until it becomes second nature from the leadership on down to the receptionist. Here are some tips for ensuring that the strategic plan that you put so much time and energy into actually gets implemented in your business and creates the results you are looking for: · Make sure that the action steps required receive the budget support they require. · Schedule follow-up meetings to report on interim progress towards implementing the strategic plan. · Plan some kind of celebratory event when a major milestone is reached. · Factor every employee’s individual goals into the company’s overall goals. It’s also important to keep in mind that as you and your team focus in on accomplishing the goals set forth in the strategic plan, there are other things that will fall by the wayside. Be sure that you are clear on what to focus on and what you can afford to let go of because you can’t do everything at once. Having a well-executed strategic plan can be a powerful motivator for a small business. We’ve covered just one aspect of strategic planning for small business in this short article. For more information to help you grow your online business, visit, http://www.mcreasite.com/blog today.
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