It seems to happen every year. Before you know it the year is

almost over and you need to plan for the next one. However,

you still have so many things to do to finish THIS year properly

and you don’t feel like you have enough time to both plan and

run your business properly. Instead of kicking the strategic

planning “can” down the road a bit further on the off chance

you will have more planning time later, there is an easier way.

The solution lies in understanding that there are different levels

to strategic planning and that it is not an all or nothing

proposition. In fact, there are some very simple steps that can

be taken to ensure the organization’s vision, goals and

objectives remain well understood and that your teams are

positioned for continued success. This executive summary will

outline a roadmap to properly deliver a “next year” business

plan all while enabling you to run your business today.

It Starts With Vision:

If someone were to ask 10 different members in your

organization what you do, would you get 10 different answers?

Do you often feel like you have too many projects going on at

the same time without a clear understanding of how they

interact to make your business better? Are you having high

employee turnover because they aren’t satisfied and don’t feel

empowered to get their job done? If the answer is yes to any or

all of these, then you likely do not have a well-defined and

understood vision statement for your organization.

A vision statement, by definition, is a statement about what you

ultimately envision the business to be (the business

destination). There exists a tremendous amount of material on

what a vision statement is and how to develop one, so I am not

going to go into that here. Instead, I will focus on how,

specifically, a vision statement helps you run your business

more effectively and aids you in quickly building a cohesive

business plan.

The Example:

Let’s say you want to run a technology company that allows

users to buy goods and services from each other over the

internet.

Delivering Financial Management Results

in order to create focus around what gets done in the following

year. In the above example major work needs to be done to

(among other things):

1) Continue expansion into global markets.

2) Support additional and/or newly introduced

devices.

3) Expand IT infrastructure necessary to support

the growing needs of the online marketplace.

4) Develop new features and functions necessary

to provide a superior solution to users of the

online marketplace.

All of these are critical to achieving your vision as drafted,

however, not everything can be done at once. This is where the

focus comes into play. With a solid understanding of where you

want to be in 3 years, you can pick the right projects to invest in

at the right time. All with an eye toward how these important

initiatives fit with your multi-year plans.

To further support and complement these newly established

primary goals and objectives for the coming year you will need

to work with your teams to develop the appropriate sales and

marketing objectives, the human resource objectives (including

well defined incentive and compensation plans), the financial

objectives, etc. These more detailed plans will support your

financial budgets for the coming year and, in concert with your

strategic goals and objectives, give your teams the context on

which they can effectively solve business problems that arise

during the year.

The Conclusion:

Remember, at the end of the day, your employees work for

more than a paycheck. They want to be part of doing something

special and they want to brag to their friends about how they

are changing the world (even if it is in a small way). The work

you do here, when done properly, will provide your employees a

clear understanding of what your business exists to do and how

their efforts are directly connected to the future direction and

success of the business. In short, you now have energized and

focused teams and a cohesive and functional business plan for

the “next year”, all done while running your business today.

Simple concept, but this can be difficult to deliver on. Right off the

bat you are going to have questions like:

Are we going to enable our services globally or locally?

What products services will we sell and what won’t we

sell?

Whom should we allow to buy goods and services?

Will the service be accessible on all devices, if not, which

ones?

Should the service be free and based on donations (as in

non-profit) or accessible for a fee?

Etc., etc.

A vision statement, properly done, can serve as the “north star” for

this business and provide the framework on which the business can

operate. In this example the vision statement might be:

“We exist to provide superior global software tools

designed to allow users to buy, sell or trade books and

movies on any device in the world’s largest online

marketplace.” Or,

“We intend to build the world’s largest online

marketplace for books and movies, enabling users to buy,

sell or trade via software tools that can be deployed on

any device.”

Although these statements might not be as inspiring as other

companies vision statements (something that could be remedied

with a bit more effort), they can be created quickly and serve to lay

out clearly and concisely what the organization exists to do and how

you plan to do it over the coming years. In this example we now

know the company is focused on the global expansion of software

based tools, whose purpose is to allow people to buy, sell or trade

books and movies over the internet through a large, connected

online marketplace accessible via any connected device.

The Business Plan:

Now that we have a cohesive vision statement that can guide you

for the next few years, we need to build the business plan around

this statement by setting the appropriate goals that will allow us to

get there. The tricky part will always be prioritizing the different

needs

Skie Consulting LLC 26054 Market Place Blvd, Box 307 Elko New Market, MN 55020-5307 jeff@skieconsulting.com 612-390-5507

Skie Consulting LLC provides this executive summary series as a service to small and medium sized businesses. The series delivers financial and strategic summaries designed to

give business owners additional insight into how to more effectively operate their business. If you want to learn more on a given topic, suggest additional topics or receive

guidance on how you can tailor it to better fit your specific business model, please contact Jeff Skie at jeff@skieconsulting.com