By Cherry Hinkson
Director, CLR Management
& Training Consultancy

How often do you leave home and just start walking with no idea where you are going, how long it is going to take you, or when you will get there? Not very often I would imagine apart from when you were a young child or on holiday where time is on your side and getting lost is half the fun! Indeed, whether your chosen method is satellite navigation, an A to Z or following the stars, very few of us would set off to a new destination without some idea of our route and a few key landmarks so we knew we were heading in the right direction. Yet many entrepreneurs begin their journey in business without this basic information and are surprised and disappointed when they never reach their goal! A robust Strategic Plan is therefore an essential tool for business success. However, with more than 16 years experience traveling the world dealing with big challenges in big organizations with top c o n s u l t a n c i e s PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Accenture, and now as a Director of CLR Management & Training Consultancy – the Strategy and People Consultancy, I am still surprised at the number of businesses that do not have a strategic plan or worse, fail to follow it!

PLANNING YOUR BUSINESS JOURNEY

Strategic Planning determines where a business is going in the long term, usually over the next 5 or more years; how it's going to get there; and how it will know if it arrived. Strategic planning is an organisation's process of defining its strategy, or direction, and making decisions on allocating its resources to pursue this strategy, including its capital and people. Regardless of the size of business the focus of a strategic plan is usually the whole company. Both of these features make a strategic plan different from a business plan which tends to be for a shorter time period (around 1 to 4 years) and be focused on a department, product or service. Whilst a business plan provides the essential detail or tactics, the strategic plan provides the overview – the big picture. As Sun Tzu (Art of War) said “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”

A GOOD STRATEGIC PLAN

Will normally include some elements of each of the following:
• Vision
• Mission
• Values
• External and Market Environment
• Key Strategies
• Aims and Objectives
• Implementation
• Funding Plan
• Evaluation and Control

5 BENEFITS OF STRATEGIC PLANNING

The benefits of effective strategic planning are manifold. Get your planning right and it will help you to:
1. Clarify the overall purpose of the organisation
2. Establish appropriate aims and objectives to support the organisation’s purpose
3. Allocate resources (e.g. money, people, equipment) effectively to achieve the aims and objectives
4. Communicate to and get support from stakeholders (e.g. staff, customers, investors, suppliers etc)
5. Act as a benchmark for measuring performance, gauging your success and highlighting the need for change if aims and objectives are not being met.

THINKING + DOING = POSITIVE RESULTS

The bottom line is that every minute a business leader spends on planning their strategy, saves ten minutes of work in the execution (The 100 Absolutely Unbreakable Laws of Business Success). However, execution is paramount. Any plan is useless if it sits in a draw or on a shelf gathering dust! Whilst the process of planning is valuable in itself, putting this stuff into action is vital. As Henry Ford said, “Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.” To take your business from strength to strength, make sure you are one of the few!

GETTING HELP

The first step is the hardest but you don’t have to take it alone. Assistance with this and other areas of business development such as raising finance, is available from CLR Management & Training Consultancy. Contact Cherry on 0208 983 9300 or enquiry@clrconsultancy.co.u k; www.clrconsultancy.co.uk .