Strategic Planning for Difficult Times

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, you may have felt like your business has been in a tailspin. You’ve tried to move your workforce to a remote footing, stay engaged with your customers and find new ways to market products and services to a population that’s staying at home more and spending less.

But you must keep looking to the future and have your plans ready for a strong launch into 2021. Next year, you need to be off and running before the competition even realizes the bell has rung.

Once you know where you are and where you want to be, your strategic plan will drive the specific steps you’ll take to get there. This must include crystal clear and important objectives (goals) and clearly defined actions that your team will take to accomplish those objectives.

This plan looks at all the assets and tools you have at your disposal now, as well as the challenges you’re facing. It also focuses on where you want your business to be at the end of a certain period. And when you run into unexpected challenges – a global pandemic, for instance – your strategic plan can serve as a framework to effectively respond to the crisis.

Set your company vision.

You start with “why.” Why are you doing all this work, taking all this risk? What do you want the end result to be when it’s time to hang up your spurs? What is your vision for your company five, 10, 15 years out?

Take time to decide what you want your business to be. Start with more abstract, broader concepts. Maybe you want your business to become an industry leader, find cures that help people get over diseases like COVID-19 or be able to support initiatives in your community.

Once you’ve got a broad ideal pinned down, start getting more specific. What kind of company culture do you want, and how do you want to interact with your customers? What sort of atmosphere do you want your business to have, and what legacy do you want to leave?

Complete a SWOT analysis.

How the pandemic has changed your business is an example of just one threat (and opportunity) that you must take into account. Do this by conducting a SWOT analysis. A SWOT analysis examines the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats your business faces.

Take a look at what strengths have helped your business through the course of the pandemic, as well as the areas where it has faltered and been weaker. Explore what sort of opportunities the new market offers your business. Be sure to work out what sort of threats — pandemic aside — your business will face short and longer term.

It’s not all doom and gloom. Every threat is also an opportunity. Consider how you can turn a problem to your advantage. Can you invest in building employee skills or improve your sales team by training or replacing low performers with highly skilled salespeople who may have been let go by another company?

Create a plan that everyone lives by — and can use.

This is a process of deconstructing the year’s key objectives into successively smaller objectives for divisions, groups, departments, teams, and sometimes even individuals. Part of making this successful is that it is an incredibly open process so everyone understands how they fit in.

That means you absolutely must involve all your key staff and top managers in developing and implementing “our” plan. You’ll find better solutions than you ever could have alone when you take advantage of the knowledge of those closest to your customers. Amazingly, you’ll come up with great ways to cut costs, be more effective and have happier, more engaged employees in the process.

Track your progress.

When your strategic plan is complete, it may feel like the work is done. But in fact, it’s only just beginning. Now you will need to implement it in your day-to-day operations and keep track of your progress.

Build in procedures to check your progress during your daily operations. Set up reporting, establish helpful metrics and make plans to check on your goals on a regular basis.

This is an article from my monthly newsletter. I can help to coach you on these methods or I can help lead the efforts within your organization. Contact me at [email protected]