Before You Launch Your Business

A compilation of various concepts

Businesses start in the heart with passion and anticipation and spread to the mind where the business is conceived, researched, developed and launched. Before the launch of a new business, a myriad of actions, plans and concepts must be carefully planned, tested and, in many cases, transferred to a website.

To do less, increases the chance of failure or simply abandoning the idea. In my ventures, I do extensive research using all types of media, networking and communicating with the experts and potential clients/customers. Taking all together, the dynamics of these functions is called planning. There are many ways to plan but the most important is Strategic Planning. I define a strategic plan as a document used to communicate with the organization, the organization's goals, the actions needed to achieve those goals and all of the other critical elements developed during the planning exercise. The strategic planning exercise is the activity that is used to set priorities, focus energy and resources, strengthen operations, ensure that employees and other stakeholders are working toward common goals, establish agreement around intended outcomes/results, and assess and adjust the organization's direction in response to a changing environment. It is a disciplined effort that produces fundamental decisions and actions that shape and guide what an organization is, who it serves, what it does, and why it does it, with a focus on the future. Effective strategic planning articulates not only where an organization is going and the actions needed to make progress, but also how it will know if it is successful. 

To succeed at strategic planning, the actors must use strategic management. Strategic management is the comprehensive collection of ongoing activities and processes that are used to systematically coordinate and align resources and actions with mission, vision and strategy throughout an organization. Strategic management activities transform the static plan into a system that provides strategic performance feedback to decision making and enables the plan to evolve and grow as requirements and other circumstances change. Strategy Execution is basically synonymous with Strategy Management and amounts to the systematic implementation of a strategy.

A significant part of the plan is developing  mission, vision and value statements. Without these three statements there is no focus, development or execution. Each statement may be part of the strategic planning process but have a different objective. These statements should be written as a collaborative effort and agreed upon by the entire team.

A mission statement is a concise explanation of the organization's reason for existence. It describes the organization's purpose and its overall intention. The mission statement supports the vision and serves to communicate purpose and direction to employees, customers, vendors and other stakeholders. Questions to consider when drafting mission statements could include: 

• What is our organization's purpose?
• Why does our organization exist?  
• A vision statement looks forward and creates a mental image of the ideal state that the organization wishes to achieve. It is inspirational and aspirational and should challenge employees. Questions to consider when drafting vision statements might include:
• What problem are we seeking to solve?
• Where are we headed?
• If we achieved all strategic goals, what would we look like 10 years from now?

A values statement lists the core principles that guide and direct the organization and its culture. In a values-led organization, the values create a moral compass for the organization and its employees. It guides decision-making and establishes a standard against which actions can be assessed. These core values are an internalized framework that is shared and acted on by leadership. When drafting values statements, questions to consider might include:

• What values are unique to our organization?
• What values should guide the operations of our company?
• What conduct should our employees uphold?

In conjunction with a values statement, a code of ethics puts those values into practice. It outlines the procedures in place to ensure the organization's values are upheld. Questions to consider when creating codes of ethics might include:

• What are common ethical issues in our industry?
• What should someone do if he or she sees a violation of our values?

Developing these statements are crucial to the planning process and require total agreement before continuing with the strategic planning framework. There are many different frameworks and methodologies for strategic planning and management. While there are no absolute rules regarding the right framework, most follow a similar pattern and have common attributes. Many frameworks cycle through some variation on some very basic phases: 1) analysis or assessment, where an understanding of the current internal and external environments is developed, 2) strategy formulation, where high level strategy is developed and a basic organization level strategic plan is documented 3) strategy execution, where the high level plan is translated into more operational planning and action items, and 4) evaluation or sustainment / management phase, where ongoing refinement and evaluation of performance, culture, communications, data reporting, and other strategic management issues occurs. None of these are possible unless the participants have thoroughly developed, defined and agreed to the three basic statements.

Once the plan is developed, tested, refined and completed, the execution will establish the framework of the organization, defining the marketing, operations, administration and culture of the business. These are tested using Strategic Analysis. Each part of the organization must be analyzed for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. The framework is to list the stages of an organization by priority. If the first stage fails the analysis, the project is usually dropped; if it passes, proceed to the next stage and so forth until each stage passes its analysis. If the mission, vision and values statements are strong and the strategic planning framework is properly developed, the strategic analysis will cause each stage to pass.

In the final stage and before the launch,  I write an analysis. The analysis also provides a written record of the company's progress over time and includes:

1.   Conduct variance analysis;

2.   Explain the most significant variance

3.   Review key metrics

4.   Review progress towards operational goals

5.   Decide if changes are warranted