Your Company's Strategic Plan

As the leader, you drive the future of your company. Having plans in place for your company will help you feel more confident and clear as an owner, as well as help you experience less overwhelm. Do you have a plan for your company? Your vision is a glimpse into your company's future, but it's not a plan. The vision is the cause-- it's something to be pursued. The mission statement of your company, according to Businessdictionary.com, is the effect-- it's something to be accomplished; it's the direction of your company.

Strategic Planning: (as defined by businessdictionary.com) 
A systematic process of envisioning a desired future, and translating this vision into broadly defined goals or objectives and a sequence of steps to achieve them. This differs from a long term plan, which begins with the current status and lays down a path to meet estimated future needs. A strategic plan isn't necessarily a long-term plan, it's strategically designed to create a desired end and then worked backwards. Let's say your company is currently creating widget A but your strategic plan says you want to create widget A and B. A long-term plan would be, "I want to keep doing A and here's how we keep doing A and how we maintain that." But a strategic plan helps to either differentiate you in the market or take you to a specific end result and helps you work backward.

I define a strategic plan as a plan with a series of directives that you want the organization to do to get you moving toward future goals and that fulfills your mission and vision. A well-crafted strategic plan focuses the business both for you the management and the employees. It gives everyone involved a place to launch and to build their projects in order to reach the goal of the mission and vision. You can have employees who create long-term plans for their segment inside your business; those should be compared against the mission and vision so that they aren't creating a direction inside the business that's separate from the original vision. This method clearly communicates the message throughout your company.

Vision, missions statement, strategic plan, long-term plan

Look at your mission statement and your company's current activities and ask yourself whether the current company activities fit the mission statement. If you've started to go off course you may need to readjust the company's focus. Create a map of what needs to be done to make your vision true. Use level 1 and 2 of my nine elements to inform you on categories you need to create in forming this map (Level 1: Products, Systems, and Customer Service. Level 2: Marketing, Finance, and Team). Then decide where you want your business to be.

The following questions and guidelines are by Erica Olsen of www.mystrategicplan.com. What are the long-term projects that need to happen to get your business to where you want it to be? What does your team, branding, sales, and marketing look like in the long-term? What size is your company financially in 20 years? Remember, this isn't a to-do list, this is a list of long-term objectives. Do the objectives speak to the vision and mission of who you and your company are? Do they help you to differentiate yourselves from others in the marketplace? Do they grow the business? Make 1-3 goals for each element. 

Now you have a strategic plan that guides where your business is going and tells employees their role within the plan.

Do Your Business, That's Your Purpose