This is the time of year when many business owners are giving thought to their strategic direction and plan for the year(s) ahead. For many, they jump in to their planning, discussing and capturing ideas for new strategic initiatives to be addressed in the period ahead and setting off to implementation phase. In leading my businesses over the years, I learned first hand the benefit of beginning strategic planning by asking a simple question of myself and my team - "Do we have an effective organization and culture in place for both developing and implementing an effective strategic plan?" My advice to small and mid-size business owners is before jumping in to strategic planning mode, first do an honest assessment of this question. Putting all your efforts in to developing a potentially great plan and yet not having an effective organization and culture in place for successful implementation, will only utlimately lead to disappointment and frustration.
The next effective question to discuss with your team is - "How did we do this past year in implementing our current strategic plan?" Faciliate a dialog to do an honest assessment on where you may have had gaps in effective implementation of strategic plan initiatives. Failing to identify these gaps and reasons that kept some or all of your supporting initiatives from being implemented may very well be the basis for why your team will struggle going forward again even with a new plan. Discuss with your team tangible targets and metrics from the prior year and assess how you did in terms of the actual results. Invest the time to look closely at prior established key strategic iniatives your business identified last year for acting on and assess how you and your team actually did. Doing so can result in identifying organization and culture barriers that still exist and unless addressed, will hold back your results in the period ahead.