Whether your company is a start-up or one of the biggest players on the market, you’ve probably heard stories about how other companies thrived through well-thought-out strategic planning.
Now comes the question,
What is strategic planning?
Strategic planning is an ongoing organizational process that uses available knowledge to document the intended direction of an organization. This process is used to prioritize efforts, allocate resources effectively, align shareholders and employees with organizational goals, and ensure that those goals are supported by data and sound discussion.
It is important to emphasize that it is an ongoing process, not a one-off meeting. In an online course on disruptive strategy, Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen said in a study of HBS graduates who started a business, 93% of those with successful strategies evolved away from the original strategic plan, “Most people think of strategy as an event, but it’s not how the world works,” says Kristensen. “When we encounter unexpected opportunities or risks, we need to respond. Sometimes we respond well. Sometimes we don’t. But most strategies are developed through this process. Successful strategies often emerge through a 24-hour process in almost every industry”.
What is the importance of strategic planning?
A strategic business plan is a document that guides you through your business path. It sets goals for your company and explains why they are important. Strategic business plan processes can also help you find opportunities to improve performance.
For example, you can provide insights on how to rebuild your business and maximize its potential. Developing new products, expanding businesses, entering new market segments, and solving organizational problems-how to meet all types, shapes, and scales of opportunities and challenges with well-thought-out strategic plans as your business grows. It will be decided whether to correspond.
What are the benefits of Strategic planning?
Strategic planning requires time, effort, and constant reassessment. With proper care, it can get your business on the right track. The three benefits are:
1. Create a future-oriented vision
Strategies affect all employees and serve as a practical way to reach your organization’s goals. The main advantage of strategic values is to create a unified and positive vision that can unite the company and its shareholders. By letting everyone know your organization’s goals, how and why they were chosen, and what you can do to achieve them, you can create a stronger sense of ownership throughout your organization.
2. Pay attention to prejudices and misunderstandings
The decisions you make are inherently biased. By participating in the strategic planning process, you need to investigate and explain why you make each decision and back it up with data, predictions, or case studies to combat cognitive bias. Here are some examples of cognitive bias:
- Recent effect: Tendency to choose the last presented option because it is new in the mind.
- Occam’s razor bias: Tendency to take the most obvious decision as the best decision.
- Inertia bias: Tendency to choose options that allow you to think, feel and act familiarly.
3. Track progress based on strategic planning approach
Strategic planning allows you to track your progress towards your goals. Once all departments and teams understand the organization’s overall strategy, their progress directly impacts success and allows them to create top-down approaches to track key performance indicators (KPIs).
Bottom line
Planning the future of your business is the best way to succeed. Creating an initial plan and communicating that plan to your employees ensures that everyone is working towards the same goal.
Ready to grow your business? Speak to our growth experts and learn how to expand your customer base, drive revenue growth, and optimize your business operations.
