Archive for the ‘Strategic Planning’ Category
Thursday, October 20th, 2011
 If you search Google for “why businesses fail” you will get about 3.7 million results. Many of those articles will talk about the pitfalls and untold reasons why organizations go out of business. Our stance is, instead of focusing on what went wrong, focus on planning and building for success. Outcomes that are focused on are typically the outcomes that are generated. If you want to build a successful business you need to focus on success.
We can learn a great deal from businesses that fail and apply that knowledge to action steps that propel a business toward success and away from failure. Here are some important elements of a successful business to consider:
- Develop a plan. You can get where you are going much faster if you have a road map. Developing a plan for your business that includes a vision, objectives, and critical success factors creates a road map. Evaluating potential problems and challenges before they happen often eliminates crises. Reviewing financial, equipment, and employee needs creates preparation. Developing a plan for marketing, advertising, and customer growth ensures focusing on the right activities. Develop a plan and revisit it frequently.
- Execution is key. Developing a plan is the first step to executing your plan. Daily action steps are what make it come to fruition. Do you and your team members know what they need to do, focus on, and accomplish in order to make the business goals a reality? Frequent and consistent communication with your team will help ensure that everyone is working towards the right outcomes.
Know your customers. Who are your customers, and why do they buy from you? What makes your product or service different or better? Creating and growing a loyal customer base is the key to business sustainability. If asked, customers will tell you exactly what they need. Ask frequently and listen intently. As the world changes so do customers’ requirements of your products or services. - Evaluate competition. Who is your competition and how do you compare? Competitive research is well worth the time and effort. Know what your business is up against. Understand competitors’ products and services and how potential customers compare those products or services to your company. This knowledge is vital as it allows you to make well-informed advertising and marketing decisions.
- Be able to adapt. Business environments and customers change. The ability to adapt to the ever-changing face of business is just as important as planning. Your plan provides the roadmap but occasionally there will be obstacles located in the middle of the road which will necessitate a course correction. Being able to adapt quickly will allow the course correction to be as seamless as possible.
- Maintain focus. Know where you going and what you want to achieve at all times. Distractions can mean death to a business. It becomes very easy to lose sight of the big picture when a distraction presents itself. Distractions have a bad habit of allowing us to race down blind alleys and take our eyes off of the real objectives. Again, count on your plan to provide the roadmap and make goal-oriented decisions.
Creating a successful and sustainable business is not always easy; however, the rewards often outweigh the challenges. Put yourself in a position to win at business by giving yourself all of the advantages listed above, and the results you desire will follow!
Tammy A.S. Kohl is President of Resource Associates Corporation. RAC is the first choice among business professional for assistance in creating, building and expanding a successful consulting or coaching practice. RAC trained consultants and coaches specialize in helping businesses and individuals achieve high levels of excellence and success. Learn how by visiting our website or contact RAC directly at 800.799.6227.
Tags: Business Success, Coach, competition, consultant, customers, planning, Sustainability, sustainable business, why businesses fail
Posted in Coaching, Consulting, Strategic Planning, Sustainability | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, April 27th, 2011
Of the many issues with which we wrestle each day, one certain truth is: the future will not look like the present. Global competition, technology, and innovation will define the future. Yet many leaders continue to lead, manage, and operate as they have in the past.
There is a story by Price Pritchett in which he recounts his experience of viewing firsthand a life and death struggle that occurred just a few feet away from where he was sitting. He was watching a fly burn out the last of its short life’s energy in a futile attempt to fly through the glass of a windowpane. The frenzied effort of the fly gave no hope for survival. Ironically, had the fly just flown in another direction, it could have easily escaped through an open door.
All too often, we are like the fly. We try harder doing the same things, when instead we need to do different things. We must break the shackles of conformity, challenge the routine, and break out of existing paradigms. At the core of succeeding in today’s competitive environment is the ability to constantly improve and reinvent the way we do business. The key to working smarter is knowing the difference between motion and direction, between activity and focused action.
To lead, we must be adept at balancing what must stay constant with what must change. Nurture a culture in which people are encouraged to seek new and better methods, while feeling secure in the familiar and in the future success of their organization. Align all resources and strategies toward the realization of the vision and goals.
Alignment is the balanced harmony between people, processes, resources, and departments. It is a matter of aligning your vision with people, strategy, structure, and processes with focus on the customer and a foundation of core values. Because they are interdependent, they must be congruent. When all five critical components are aligned, results will continue to improve. If there is conflict between any two issues, there can be dissolution of the whole. If people have the knowledge necessary to create positive change, but your processes make it too difficult for them to do so, motivation will wane and maintaining the status quo remains easier. If you are able through a shared vision to raise the level of motivation that exists in your organization, but your structure restricts innovation or high levels of productivity, the improvement will be temporary at best. All of the parts are important to the whole. Everyone becomes focused on doing the right things right, which results in organizational health, accelerated positive change, and strategic growth. Encourage people to be responsible for their own performance. When all five critical organizational components are aligned with a focus on the customer, results will continue to improve.
“I am enthusiastic over humanity’s extraordinary and sometimes very timely ingenuity. If you are in a shipwreck and all the boats are gone, a piano top buoyant enough to keep you afloat may come along and make a fortuitous life preserver. This is not to say, though, that the best way to design a life preserver is in the form of a piano top. I think that we are clinging to a great many piano tops in accepting yesterday’s fortuitous contrivings as constituting the only means for solving a given problem.” R. Buckminster Fuller (July 12, 1895 – July 1, 1983) was an American engineer, author, designer, inventor, and futurist.
Tammy A.S. Kohl is President of Resource Associates Corporation. For over 30 years, RAC has specialized in helping businesses achieve sustainable results through management consulting, strategic planning, leadership development, executive coaching and youth leadership. For information on creating a leadership succession plan visit www.resourceassociatescorp.com or contact RAC directly at 800.799.6227.
Tags: alignment, Change, global competition, Price Pritchett, processes, R. Buckminster Fuller, strategy
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Friday, January 21st, 2011
A recent survey published by Boston Consulting Group and MIT revealed that there is no single, established definition for sustainability. Some companies engaged in sustainability focus solely on environmental issues while others include economic, stakeholder, and governmental issues. The study also revealed that although companies differ in their definition, sustainability is a force to be reckoned with and is a concept that is here to stay. (The Business of Sustainability, 2009, Boston Consulting Group)
In our research, sustainability emerged out of the concept of “going green.” Because of outside pressure from the community and special interest groups and in an effort to meet new regulatory requirements, some industries were forced to change how their processes and products impacted the environment and people. Even through the last 18 months of economic challenges, sustainability has not gone away. Companies have been forced to remain in compliance while figuring out how to make progress with less capital and resources. Therefore, we can assume sustainability is more than just going green … although being green is a big part of it.
 To senior management the question is, what does sustainability mean to your business? Leadership teams often lack a full understanding of how to apply the concepts of sustainability to the context of their strategic plan, their operating processes, their employees’ attitudes and skills, and their stakeholders concerns. In our experience, the successful implementation of sustainability will have a measurable and positive impact on the planet, through their people, and the result is improved profitability. Therefore, it is highly likely that sustainability will be defined conceptually as a megatrend, which applies equally to all types of organizations. Organizations that have defined what sustainability means to their business and who have a successful implementation model are seeing significant benefits. Based on the success of early adaptors, sustainability has proven to provide a sound business case of creating value through innovation and employee involvement.
Most organizations need to be presented with measurable reasons why embracing or incorporating a new strategy like sustainability makes sense. Early adaptors like WalMart, IBM, Nike, and GE are measuring value in key business areas. It is our experience that similar outcomes are just as possible in the small and mid-size markets.
The benefits have been shown to include:
- A Stronger Brand
- Greater Pricing Power
- Greater Operational Efficiencies
- More Efficient Use of Resources
- Supply Chain Optimization
- Enhanced Ability to Enter New Markets
- Enhanced Ability to Attract, Retain, and Motivate Employees
- Increased Customer Loyalty
- Reduced Environmental Impact
- Improved Innovation
In our experience, an organization should not tackle sustainability overnight without first understanding its strategic intent and developing a sustainability implementation plan. It’s not difficult, but an organization needs to understand what it is doing, why it’s doing it, and how it’s going to measure it. Most importantly what sustainability requires is, first and foremost, commitment from the leadership of the organization. “You cannot implement these kinds of programs bottom-up, it’s impossible. It’s always top-down, always. Because it is a cultural change, you cannot do it organically.” George Kern, CEO, IWC
After commitment is established, sustainability needs to be defined for your organization. What outcomes do you want to accomplish in what time frame? How will you measure the outcomes? How will you communicate your plan and establish buy-in with your employees and other stakeholders? These questions are important and need to be addressed before implementation begins. The answers to these questions need to be laid over the existing strategic plan. Do these new objectives require any course corrections? If your organization does not have an existing strategic plan, it will be critical to develop one that includes sustainability, as sustainability is not a strategic plan in of itself. Another often over-looked requirement is structure. Since many of the sustainability initiatives require interdepartmental cooperation there needs to be a systems linkage in both innovation and tactical implementation.
As evidenced by the research, sustainability is not going away. If your organization recognizes this fact and positions itself as a sustainable organization you will have a sizeable competitive advantage while also improving our planet.
Tammy A.S. Kohl is President of Resource Associates Corporation. For over 30 years, RAC has specialized in helping businesses achieve high levels of excellence through sustainability. Learn how at www.resourceassociatescorp.com or contact RAC directly at 800.799.6227.
Tags: environmental issues, GE, IBM, innovation, MIT, RAC, regulation, Resource Associates Corporation, strategy, Sustainability, WalMart
Posted in Strategic Planning, Sustainability | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, January 12th, 2011
Over the years, businesses have embraced the fact that defining and having a strategic plan is an important component to long-term success. If you do not plan your direction, you cannot take control of your future. Many businesses are starting to be more aggressive in their strategic timetables. In addition to looking ahead three to five years and deciding where the organization needs and wants to be, more and more companies are becoming very aggressive in their short-term strategic analysis and review. With all the economic changes and uncontrollable outside distractions looking through the short-term strategic lens more frequently is required.
Your business’ strategic plan is a living and fluid document. It needs to be visited and revisited in order to create the flexibility necessary to make required course corrections while achieving organizational goals. A strong strategic plan identifies critical success factors, and when implemented, those critical success factors will create organizational alignment, surface challenges before they become fires, and be the catalyst for breakthrough performance.
A must have for successful strategic planning is an operational dashboard. Just engaging in the strategic planning thought process and laying out the plan is not enough. The management team needs an operational dashboard to measure and evaluate current outcomes and data by which decisions can be made on a daily basis. A strategic plan that sits in a drawer or on a bookshelf to be revisited a year or two down the road is virtually useless. Taking the critical success factors from the plan and creating a dashboard gives management the business intelligence necessary to make solid decisions and to manage course corrections when they are required.
As important as it is for management to have this working document, it is also important that a version of the dashboard be shared and communicated to all employees. Every contributor in the organization has an interest in the progress and success of the company. The more they know about the organization’s objectives and feel part of the big picture, the more they will take their contribution to the success of the plan seriously. With rare exception, most people want to be part of the solution and not part of the problem.
Communicating the strategy and creating alignment in your organization is one of the most important things you can do beyond formulating the plan. Linking organizational goals with employee goals creates a driving force towards results. Alignment will make it much easier for you to push the organization in the right direction.
Creating alignment is significantly linked to employee’s buy-in to the plan. Spending time to help your employees see how the future success of the organization impacts their career path and their personal success is critical. Communicate the details of the plan in a way that is easy to understand and reinforce your message often. Positive traction towards results is accomplished by frequently communicating and reinforcing the plan. The daily contributions of your employees will actually make the strategic plan a reality. Let them know where you want the organization to go so they can help take it there!
Tammy A.S. Kohl is President of Resource Associates Corporation. For over 30 years, RAC has specialized in business and management consulting, strategic planning, leadership development, executive coaching and youth leadership. For more information visit http://www.resourceassociatescorp.com or contact RAC directly at 800.799.6227.
Tags: course corrections, critical success factors, employee involvement, organizational goals, RAC, Resource Associates Corporation, strategic dash board, Strategic Planning
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Wednesday, December 15th, 2010
“Economists say that the great recession, the longest and deepest since World War II, ended 18 months ago and the US economy is growing again. Growth is relative. That doesn’t mean sit and wait for things to improve. Rather retool for the economy that exists today.” – Rosalind Resnick, Entrepreneur Magazine, December 2010
As you review your company’s strategic plan and forecast for 2011, what can you do to ensure that your company will meet those objectives and goals? Ms. Resnick’s comment is absolutely on target, you can sit around and react to your environment, or you can retool your business objectives and take a proactive approach to success for 2011.
There are a number of strategic areas that may be worth focusing more time and effort on in your business as you begin to think about retooling:
- First and foremost, revisit your strategic plan. It is appropriate to focus on the 3-5 year horizon because you need to identify what you want to grow into. However, it is critical to focus on what your business needs to accomplish in the next 12 months. What are the critical success factors that your business needs to focus on in order to accomplish your forecast? Do your employees know what the 12-month plan looks like and do they know what they need to contribute in order for the plan to be successful? If you cannot answer ‘yes’ to any of these three questions, you are not ready for 2011.
- Second, identify what is really working and set a plan in motion to maximize it. Capitalize on your strengths. What product or service is your top seller, and how do you get customers to buy more of it? How do you grow your customer base for that product or service? Knowing your core business strengths allows your organization to maximize on existing opportunities where your company is already excellent.
- Third, try new and different things. After you have identified the core products and/or services of your business, look for new, out-of-the-box opportunities. Outside and uncontrollable distractions often cause us to pull the reins in and focus on what we have always done. Use these changing times to your benefit. Challenge yourself and your employees to look at every process, product line, service, and customer for new opportunities. You will be surprised what your team may find and suggest. At first blush an idea might seem outrageous, but outrageous could mean the difference between status quo and a new level of success.
The last thought to consider is leveraging your uniqueness. The business marketplace is becoming a sea of similarity. Your brand should communicate the value you bring to your customer from the eyes of the customer. Your brand is not really about what you think you do. The brand you should be leveraging is what value your customers say you bring to the table. Find out what your customers really think and start spreading that unique message.
If you did not like the results you generated in 2010, you have two choices. You can continue on your current path and hope for different results, or you can set your goals, maximize your strengths, honestly look for new opportunities, and incessantly market your brand with a voice that is meaningful to your customer. Hope is never a successful strategy, but focused action is … what will make 2011 a successful year for your company?
Tammy A.S. Kohl is President of Resource Associates Corporation. For over 30 years, RAC has specialized in helping businesses and individuals achieve high levels of excellence and success. Learn how at www.resourceassociatescorp.com or contact RAC directly at 800.799.6227.
Tags: 2011, branding, Business Success, Customer Loyalty, entrepreneur magazine, RAC, Resource Associates Corporation, strategic plan, world war II
Posted in Customer Loyalty, Strategic Planning | No Comments »
Wednesday, March 10th, 2010
It has been said, “We’d better pay attention to the future because that’s where we’re going to spend the rest of our lives.”
Success in any business is a clear picture of where the business is going and even though there is technically no “end,” What will the end result look like? The propensity of most management teams right now is to focus on the present, to put out fires, and manage by crisis. With all of the changes in the business environment of the last 24 months, that propensity is understandable; however, crisis management doesn’t prepare your organization for future growth and opportunity. Planning your business’s future is no longer a discretionary decision. If you want to control the destiny of your business then you need to create it!
The preparation of a strategic plan is a multi-step process encompassing vision, mission, objectives, values, goals, and specific action steps. The process we use successfully with clients can be boiled down into these stages:
Stage 1. Visioning
A company’s vision is a statement of potential. A vision statement is a description of what your organization wants to become.
Stage 2. Strategic Thinking and Planning
The term strategic thinking can be defined as the process that determines the future direction of the organization. This process addresses all aspects of your business and its resources. Its foundation is a strategic thinking process and its conclusion is a logical and well thought out plan that when implemented will ensure the organization’s success.
Stage 3. Business Planning
Business planning is the process that actualizes the strategic plan. During the business planning process, your mission is crystallized into specific goal categories. These categories then become actionable through goals and actions steps. If there are multiple departments each will have a mission and business plan which is their contribution to the organization’s mission. The progressive achievement of the mission or all of the departmental missions will propel the entire organization toward the realization of its vision.
Stage 4. Implementing the Plan
The real key to the success of this process is action. Vision alone does not ensure success. Even the most comprehensive plan will not ensure success without action steps and measurement. Without action steps, time frames, and accountability the process is just a mental exercise that, while it may be stimulating is meaningless or a waste of time and energy.
Stage 5. Review and Continuous Improvement
Without measurement, it is difficult to see progress, and it is impossible to manage a business. Creating a dashboard for the communication of goals and objectives is critical for measurement. Everything relies on execution. Success requires continued learning and improvement. There is always something you can do to gain control over any situation. There is always something we can learn to become better!
Take a moment and be honest. Do you have an actionable strategic plan for your business? Do you know where you want to take your business one year from now, five years from now? Do you want to learn how to better manage the inevitable fires while focusing on growth opportunities? Make the commitment with your management team to develop a strategic plan now as your future results depend on it!
Tammy A.S. Kohl is President of Resource Associates Corporation. For over 30 years, RAC has specialized in helping businesses achieve sustainable results through management consulting, strategic planning, leadership development, executive coaching, and youth leadership. For information on creating an actionable strategic plan visit www.resourceassociatescorp.com or contact RAC directly at 800.799.6227.
Tags: action steps, business planning, continuous improvement, crisis management, goals, Management, measurable results, mission, RAC, resource associates, Resource Associates Corporation, strategic plan, Values, Vision
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Wednesday, August 26th, 2009
Is your business drifting in the waters of economic challenge and uncertainty?
Don’t be embarrassed if the answer is yes as many companies of all sizes are “managing through” the current challenges before them. Managing through the daily turmoil starts out as a great strategy. Everyone within your organization “hunkers down” and starts to focus on what needs to be done on a daily basis to manage resources. Each decision is critical to the success of the next day, the next week and so on. But, the hunkering down syndrome (managing through it) is a great short-term strategy at best. As a long-term strategy, hunkering down is drifting with no particular destination in mind. As you drift, your competitors take advantage of new market opportunities and market possibilities that you could have capitalized on for business growth had you not been drifting.
Stop drifting! Continue to make the right and necessary decisions today but do not lose sight of where you want your company to be one year from now, three years from now, and ten years from now. The strategic decisions you make or don’t make today will have an exponential impact on the future of your business. Continue to take the time to review your strategic objectives, critical success factors, and necessary action steps. Current circumstances may force you to change course, but making a course correction today will ensure you end up at the right destination tomorrow.
“If you want to achieve success, make today the day you stop drifting.” – Napoleon Hill
Tags: business growth, drifting, market opportunities, market possibilities, Napoleon Hill, strategic thinking, strategy, Success
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Tuesday, August 18th, 2009
Building your business and developing yourself are both growth processes that will occur over time. Building a business implies having to develop your skills and/or manage other people who can build the necessary processes to perform necessary business functions. While many people equate success with working, truly successful people attribute their success to working smart. In the beginning, you will need to do both. And if you do both, in the end you will find you have built something that will endure.
The value of your business lies not in what it can do with you, but in what it can do without you. If no one else can do what you can do, then you don’t have a business that will endure. You have a business that is restricted by its inability to use its creative juices and expand into something bigger and more successful. Business is and should be a systematic series of processes linked to the overall goals of the organization disciplined to exceed internal and external customer expectations. Each aspect of your business should be process mapped, so that in theory, other people could perform it. These functions and processes should be crystallized in writing.
When activities can be accomplished by others or the process is systematic, then your creativity can be utilized for continuous improvement, increased sales, improved market share, and new business development. Recognizing an opportunity and being in position to take action is one of the keys to success. If you are busy doing, you may be too busy to take advantage of opportunities, and chances are you working harder and not smarter.
The benefits of planning are many. Planning helps to prioritize your activities. You already know you will be wearing several hats and the functions you will perform under each hat are different. Planning helps you to see beyond the immediate issues and remain focused on the desired outcomes. This will help to ensure that day-to-day activities are in line with your long-range objectives and vision. It will help you avoid getting involved in seemingly endless crises, and even prevent crisis-stimulated activities that seem to be important and necessary but in fact may be neither. With this understanding you are better able to focus your energies on getting where you want to go. A comprehensive plan is the important tool you can utilize to build a successful business.
Tammy A.S. Kohl is President of Resource Associates Corporation. For over 30 years, RAC has specialized in business and management consulting, leadership development, executive coaching and youth leadership. For more information visit www.resourceassociatescorp.com or contact RAC directly at 800.799.6227.
Tags: Building, business, develop, goals, manage, plan, skills, smart, Success
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Tuesday, August 18th, 2009
As we enter the second half of 2009 it is time to reflect on where your business is going and how are you going to achieve those objectives. A number of significant events have taken place in our global environment that may be forcing you to look at your business much differently than you did a year ago. Take some time to reflect on the following questions and honestly evaluate where you are, where you are going, and how you plan to get there.
Are you on target to achieve your 2009 business objectives?
Have you already achieved your 2009 goal?
If you have not achieved your 2009 business goals, what is standing in the way?
Are your marketing activities generating the necessary results?
Are you working with enough clients to achieve your goals?
Do you enjoy working with the clients you have?
What are your goals and key objectives for 2010?
Are you looking to expand into any new markets? Why or why not?
However, business is not just about numbers, activities, strategic plans, objectives, and revenue. All of these things are important and in many cases critical to build a sustainable business, but they are only one-half of the equation. The other half of the equation is you. Your personal ability to grow requires honest reflection. Look at yourself and your experiences this year with as much objectivity as you can. Reflect on you and your contribution to the success of your business.
What did I learn – new skills, knowledge, insights, etc? (List them all.)
How have my newly acquired skills, knowledge, and insights contributed to the success of my business?
What did I accomplish? (List all your wins and achievements.)
How did those wins or accomplishments impact the success of my business?
What would I have done differently and why? (Be specific and honest with yourself.)
What were the most significant events of the year thus far? (List the top three.)
What did I do right?
What do I feel particularly good about?
What was my greatest contribution?
What were the fun things I did?
What were the not so fun things I did?
What were my biggest challenges, roadblocks, or difficulties? (Be specific.)
How am I different this year than last?
What will I do differently as 2009 draws to a close? (Be specific.)
For what am I particularly grateful?
Feel free to add additional questions that may provide meaning for you.
As you can see, it is very difficult to ignore the power of the I’s and the my’s in those questions. You are a critical component to the success of your business and an honest, objective evaluation of where you are could be the difference between success and failure. Your ability to achieve your desired goals and build a sustainable business begins and ends with you. There will always be outside forces generating obstacles or pushing and pulling your business in different directions. The most powerful asset you have is you. Make a commitment to honestly evaluate your contribution as a business asset and make the commitment to reinvest in yourself and grow. The success of your business depends on it!
Tammy A.S. Kohl is President of Resource Associates Corporation. For over 30 years, RAC has specialized in business and management consulting, leadership development, executive coaching and youth leadership. For more information visit www.resourceassociatescorp.com or contact RAC directly at 800.799.6227.
Tags: business, Economy, evaluate, how to get there, plan, questions, reflet
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