There’s No Such Thing As Strategic Planning
As an entrepreneur, you know you should do strategic planning. What you may not know is that most CEO’s don’t understand how to approach it.
What’s Strategic Planning
When people say “strategic planning” they are actually talking about Strategic Thinking and Execution Planning. These are two distinct activities and when we mix them together, our thinking and planning get muddled.
Strategic Thinking
Strategic Thinking is critical to growing your revenue. At least 4 times a year, and ideally much more often, you need to get away from the day to day whirlwind to think about your strategy, or at least address key questions. The core questions are: “Why do we exist?”, “What behaviors are mandatory here?” and “Where do we want to be in 10 years?” The strategic questions you could be addressing are too much for a short article. You could start with: “Who is our ideal customer?” and “What can our customers count on us for, guaranteed?”
Execution Planning
Execution Planning is about what numbers are we going to hit this year and/or this quarter. It is also about what are the activities we’re going to do that are going to get us there. Your execution plan is where you predict the future with answers to questions such as “What will our revenue be next year?” and “What will our customer retention rate be?” As we all know, the best way to predict the future is to create it. So pick those few (no more than 5, 3 is better) priorities that are critical to moving you toward those short-term numbers and the long-term strategy.
When you were just starting out, any kind of DIY process was probably enough. You sat at your desk and figured things out, or you got “strategic” and went out to lunch with a trusted colleague and bounced some ideas around. That worked fine to get you to this stage, but what about now? As Marshall Goldsmith tells us, “What got you here won’t get you there!” Some of your larger-company peers will tell you that you need to hire a coach, someone to guide your strategic planning process. While that sounds great and you’ll likely do that once you get a bit bigger and can afford it, what about now?
You’re too big to DIY and too small to hire a coach. What do you do? That’s where Velocity Circles comes in. We’ve created a 12-month program where you can learn and use some of the tools you’d get with a private coach, but you do it with peer CEOs, both face to face and online, so we can keep the fees affordable for your small business.
Call today to get a free organizational health checkup at 702-421-3212
