Flawless Execution: What Strategic Planning Does for a Business

Most organizations have a vision for an imagined better future such as more revenue, retained clients and staff. But few invest the time to plan out ‘how’ they will achieve a better future. Dreams may not need a plan, but business goals do! That’s why now, more than ever, there’s a need for strategic planning in business. And today, we’re going to tell you what strategic planning does for a business, as well as the steps to follow for building your strategic plan.

What Strategic Planning Does for a Business

In today’s world of sudden and significant change, the race for innovation, and the need for nimbleness, many organizations struggle with their daily tasks. Work becomes scattered, unfocused and reactive, as opposed to proactive. Everything is a priority, and therefore nothing is a priority!

John Doerr, the recognized guru of Objectives and Key Results, points out that setting goals that align with your ambitions, passion and purpose set a clear and compelling sense of ‘why.’

This is where a Strategic Planning session facilitated by X5 Management can help you focus on your WHY that inspires and motivates your teams to create those difficult but achievable goals.

X5 provides tailored recommendations to prepare for a Strategic Planning session with your team. These sessions may be over one or two days, and you can learn more about what we offer here.

Once the planning session is concluded, we work with you to set an execution plan that brings the discipline you need to move those ideas forward. It’s also recommended that we have follow-up sessions with your team throughout the year where the X5 team serves as an Accountability Partner to ensure you stay on track.

(Besides what strategic planning does for a business, it’s also important to consider the importance of succession planning. Learn more about succession planning programs in this post)

Key Steps for Building a Robust Strategic Plan

What strategic planning does (or doesn’t do) for a business largely depends on the steps you follow while building your plan.

Here are some key steps that we focus on to help you build a robust strategic plan:

• First, schedule a complimentary Discovery Meeting with your Executive Team and X5 Management. That way, we can better understand your current challenges and concerns and where you want to take your business.
• Utilizing the services of X5 management, collect data from clients, employees, and suppliers on how they see your business. This helps you better understand how your stakeholders perceive you—what’s going well, where the blind spots are, and what opportunities are out there you might be missing.
• Once the data is collated and with the facilitation expertise of X5 management, we focus your strategic priorities on what will move the dial. It could be a new product/service development, expanding your territory, or improving efficiencies.

We also suggest you look to answer four key questions:

1. What are we doing well? Keep doing
2. What are we not doing well? Improve
3. What are we not doing that we should be doing?
4. What are we doing that we should not be doing?

(Looking for even more strategies for successful strategic planning? Visit this link next)

SMART Goal Setting

The most important element of your strategic plan is execution. Utilizing the SMART goal setting framework (Specific-Measurable-Achievable-Realistic-Time sensitive), the X5 team can get you laser-focused on who is leading the priority, what metrics will indicate success, by when, and what additional resources—human or financial—are necessary.

When you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Contact us to learn how we can work with your organization to get you to the next level: info@x5management.com

Did you learn a lot from this post about what strategic planning does for a business? Here are three more to read next:

• Organizational Growth: Is Executive Coaching Important?
• 5 Tips to Enhance Leadership Listening (and Why It Matters)
• Why Company Culture Deserves a Strategy