Six Good Reasons Why Every Business Must Have A Strategic Plan | Whether you are just starting your company or having an already established company with a significant market share, you may not have a strategic plan. However, you have probably heard stories about companies achieving the impossible. These companies may have rapidly gained market share, become well-known brands, and gathered a large loyal customer base. How did they do this? By developing a strategic business plan. Consider these reasons for developing your plan.
Clarifies Your Company’s Vision
Your strategic plan should use your company’s vision to create short- and long-term goals. It also clearly outlines your company’s vision, mission and values. As your vision is clarified, you and your teams learn how your actions and decisions affect the organisation and whether they move the firm closer to achieving that vision or move it away from your desired path.
This single-focused vision should be forward-looking so that all your stakeholders are aligned and fixated on achieving your company’s goals.
Remember that like the S Curve or the Sigmoid Curve, where business is a learning, growing, and declining cycle — your company will suffer if it lacks creativity, new ideas, and the ability to evolve.
Gives Management Something To Base Decisions On
If you don’t have a business strategic plan, challenges become more than mere bumps in the road. Your strategic plan guides you and your stakeholders during good times and bad. This focus on the company’s plan helps your management teams make decisions because they can base them on a solid foundation and future desires. For example, your vision becomes the roadmap, and your decisions become the route you take to get there and projections so that you make decisions and guide your company on the right path for now and the future.
Focuses Your Employees on a Common Goal
Strategic planning also directs your employees. When they understand the overall plan, they can identify how their work helps your company achieve its goals. Then, they direct their efforts in such a way that they promote the success of your company. Because they realise the importance of their actions, they are motivated to do their best. Focusing on the vision also helps your employees identify their strengths and weaknesses and encourages them to exploit these strengths and improve their weaknesses.
Including them in the organisation’s strategic plan gives them inherent value that they turn into great work. Open communication about your company’s goals allows each individual the opportunity to track their progress based on your plan and vision.
Tracks Progress Toward Goals
Your strategic plan helps you track your progress toward your goals. Each department should directly impact your company and help it move toward its vision. As each team learns more about the company’s vision and goals, it can direct its work. The management can track the key performance indicators of the team’s work and their effect on the organisation’s overall strategy and vision.
Breaking down the company’s goals into the team and departmental goals, even individual goals, creates an alignment within the company from the top down. An aligned company is a strategic company. However, flexibility should be built into your strategies because disruptions and challenges may present opportunities that you don’t expect.
Reveals Bias and Illogical Reasoning
Your strategic plan should make you question why you made certain decisions, especially those you made during your planning process. This exploration helps you identify inherent biases. For example, you may choose a path because you recently discussed it or was on your mind. You may decide because it was obvious rather than because it was the best choice for your company. In addition, you may make choices based on your desires, including how you feel or what you think about something. These are biases, and they can cause flaws in your reasoning, which may be detrimental to your plan and company’s future.
Your strategic plan moves your company forward through the execution of its vision. Your goals should be consistently improving your strategic planning skills and adapting your plan to align your company’s vision for your company’s future more closely. A great plan will move your organisation into a more successful, profitable future.
