Refresh your approach to strengthen your planning
Many business leaders are now giving thought to their 2021 planning. Time for us to share some thoughts to help strengthen your planning for the new year:
- Assess this year before you start your plans for next. Ask yourself and your team, how did we do this past year in executing on our current plan? Certainly, COVID threw a severe wrench in to things but there may still be strategic initiatives your team worked on and you should assess progress. Not doing this could mean factors that inhibited progress this year may very well impede progress going forward. What we see in working with many businesses, most aren’t struggling from a lack of strategy, they are struggling from a weak culture in terms of being able to execute. Do an honest assessment of this in terms of what didn’t get done in 2020 that had more to do with culture than it did with COVID.
- Ask new questions, get new answers. Determine if you need to introduce new blood and new thinking in to your process. Now is the time to ask yourself whether the effectiveness of your planning and execution could be enabled by changing up the people helping you with your plan. Good leaders always look for new and broader perspectives.
- In God We Trust, All Others Bring Data – in advance of doing your strategic thinking and planning, consider what data you have available. Now is a great time to look at your sales data and your operating key performance indicators to evaluate what they are telling you. COVID has certainly impacted our businesses and your data might have an interesting story to tell you about your customer buying patterns. Ensure you include looking at your business data to underpin your thinking about your strategy for the new year.
- Disrupted versus Disrupter – every business leader needs to include in the strategic planning these days how technology is impacting their industry and business. If you don’t already include a review of new technologies being adopted into your industry, now is the time to start. As you do your strategic thinking, discuss with your team:1. Are we doing all we can to keep from being disrupted? 2. Are we looking for ways that we can be the disrupter in our industry?
- Are you preparing to excite a future acquirer or investor – as you conduct your strategic planning, ask yourself and your team this question. Are we identifying strategic initiatives that will help us attract future investors or acquirers? A strategic plan should bridge to building company value, or worth, and asking yourself this question is key.
Now more than ever business leaders need to have and build upon their competence of thinking, planning and execution. Especially with the impact of COVID and its remaining uncertainty, it’s our job as business leaders to ensure we are protecting and building the worth of our company. Use this strategic planning time of year to do just that.
