Strategic Planning For Dummies

Erica Olsen

• Publisher: For Dummies
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780470037164
• eBook ISBN: 9781118050569
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Strategy
• Index: Business

If you're starting a new business or planning your business's future, there are plenty of things you should take into account. Strategic Planning For Dummies covers everything you need to know to develop a plan for building and maintaining a competitive advantage — no matter what business you're in.

Written by Erica Olsen, founder and President of a business development firm that helps entrepreneurial-minded businesses plan for a successful future, this handy guide covers all the basics, including:

• How a strategic plan is different than a business plan
• Establishing a step-based planning process
• Planning for and encouraging growth
• Taking a long-view of your organization
• Evaluating past performance
• Defining and refining your mission, values, and vision
• Sizing up your current situation
• Examining your industry landscape
• Setting your strategic priorities
• Planning for unknown contingencies

If you're in business, you have to plan for everything — especially if you intend your business to grow. Whether you're planning for a small business, large conglomerate, nonprofit, or even a government agency, this book has the planning specifics you need for your organization. Step-by-step, you'll learn how to lay the foundations for a plan, understand how your plan will affect your business, form planning teams, discover what your strengths are, see where you are, and, finally, plan where you're going. And there's much more:

• Learn to analyze business trends that will determine your business's future
• Set measurable, realistic goals that you can plan for and achieve
• Make strategic planning a habitual part of the organization
• Prioritize multiple strategies that you can implement simultaneously
• Set a defining vision for the organization that guides all your planning and strategy

This friendly, simple guide puts the power of strategic planning in the palm of your hand. For small businesses that can't afford to hire strategic planning consultants, it's even more imperative. Careful, constant planning is the only way to handle an uncertain business future. With this book, you'll have all the step-by-step guidance you need to ensure you're ready for anything that comes.

Part I

Laying the Foundation for Your Strategic Plan

In this part . . .

H aving a strategic plan is the best way to bring focus and direction to your organization. The chapters in this part make you a strategic planning convert. In this part, you discover what strategic planning is and why it’s important. You also dive into the steps of the strategic planning process, including who should be involved along the way.

Chapter 1

What Is Strategic Planning Anyhow?

In This Chapter

Figuring out what a strategic plan is

Checking out the key parts of a strategic plan

Getting the most out of your strategic planning process

Heeding the warnings about your strategic planning process

What will your business be like in three years? Do you have a roadmap to get from today to your envisioned tomorrow? Will you be a few steps closer to realizing your vision by next year? No one can predict the future. But if you don’t change anything, the future won’t be any different than the past.

One sure-fire way to impact your company’s future (and profitability) is to dust off a timeless tool — the strategic plan — and intentionally drive your organization forward. No one strategic model fits all organizations, but the planning process includes certain basic elements that all businesses can use to explore their vision, goals, and next steps of an effective strategic plan. A good strategic plan achieves the following:

Reflects the values of the organization

Inspires change and revision in products and target markets

Clearly defines the criteria for achieving success

Assists everyone in daily decision making

No one can predict the future. But effective leaders aren’t sitting around and waiting for it to happen either. They’re anticipating what lies ahead. Managers and business owners aren’t waiting for their competitors to swoop in and put them out of business. Instead, they’re using their strategic plans to get ahead of the game. So it’s odd to think that many people avoid strategic planning because they consider it complex, costly, and time-intensive. Most of the time the plan is shelved before it’s implemented, even knowing the fact that some other company can invade your market!

But strategic planning doesn’t have to be mysterious, complicated, or time-consuming. In fact, it should be quick, simple, and easily executed. And strategic planning isn’t just something you cross of your list of to-dos — you must create a culture of strategic thinking, so your strategic planning doesn’t become an annual retreat but, instead, a part of daily decision making.

Clearing Up the Confusion about Strategic Planning

Many people are confused by the terms strategy, strategic plan, and strategic planning. Well, I am here to help you get a clear picture. For the moment, forget what you’ve heard about this subject. I promise that strategic planning makes a huge difference to your organization both tangibly and intangibly, so keep reading!

What is strategy?

Strategy means consciously choosing to be clear about your company’s direction in relation to what’s happening in the dynamic environment. With this knowledge, you’re in a much better position to respond proactively to the changing environment.

The fine points of strategy are as follows:

Establishes unique value proposition compared to your competitors

Executed through operations that provide different and tailored value to customers

Identifies clear tradeoffs and clarifies what not to do

Focuses on activities that fit together and reinforce each other

Drives continual improvement within the organization and moves it toward its vision

Knowing what strategy is can also be explained by looking at what strategy is not. Dr. Michael Porter, the leading strategy guru and professor at Harvard, had this to say at the 2006 World Business Forum in Chicago. Strategy is not

Best practice improvement

Execution

Aspirations

A vision

Learning

Agility

Flexibility

Innovation

The Internet (or any...

Table of contents

• Title
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part I : Laying the Foundation for Your Strategic Plan
• Chapter 1: What Is Strategic Planning Anyhow?
• Chapter 2: Why Strategic Planning Impacts Your Growth
• Chapter 3: Getting Set Up for Successful Planning
• Part II : Looking Backward to Move Forward
• Chapter 4: Taking Lessons from the Past
• Chapter 5: Focusing on What You Do Best
• Chapter 6: Refining Your Mission, Vision, and Values
• Part III : Sizing Up Your Current Situation
• Chapter 7: Assessing Your Business and Its Capabilities
• Chapter 8: Seeing Your Business Through Your Customers’ Eyes
• Chapter 9: Assessing Your Strategic Position in a Dynamic Environment
• Part IV : Moving Your Organization into the Future
• Chapter 10: Growth: It’s Not Just for Kids Anymore
• Chapter 11: Finding New Customers
• Chapter 12: Establishing Your Strategic Priorities
• Part V : Creating and Making the Most of Your Plan
• Chapter 13: Putting Your Plan Together
• Chapter 14: Putting Your Plan to Work
• Chapter 15: Contingency Planning: Your Plan B
• Chapter 16: Planning Considerations for Entrepreneurs and Department Managers
• Chapter 17: Planning for the Social Sectors
• Part VI : The Part of Tens
• Chapter 18: Ten Ways to Keep Your Strategic Plan from Hitting the Shelf
• Chapter 19: Ten Ways to Ruin Your Strategic Planning Meeting
• Chapter 20: Ten Shortcuts to Getting Your Plan Done