Check it out what you will find on this article about strategic planning process:
- Outline Company Goals and Expectations
- Verify the Business Context of the Strategic Planning Process
- Assess Capabilities Among Your Staff
- Set Objectives
- Establish a Data-Based Action Plan
- Put Your Strategy Down on the Page
- Communicate the Plan Across the Company
- Keep the Plan Alive by Investing in the Right Tools
- How Workflow Management Software Helps Reach Objectives
When running a company or a department, managers and executives need to be able to develop goals and plans that align sufficiently with the company’s strategies. In order to do so, it is problematic to dive head first without first following some straightforward protocols. There are specific steps that you, as a leader at your place of business, can take to adhere to a strategic planning process.
Within this guideline, you will learn about the steps you need to follow to define your organization’s strategy and move forward with reaching company goals. You will first need to outline business goals and expectations.
Outline Company Goals and Expectations
The strategic planning process needs to incorporate a general knowledge about the purpose of your company, according to an Inc. article. You and your employees need to understand the objectives and the reason for pursuing such goals and expectations. Your first step will be outlining the goals of your company. You’ll also need to know the numbers behind your strategy, which means you’ll want greater understanding of the key performance indicators (KPIs). Some of the possible KPIs a manager needs to remember include:
- Lifetime customer value (LTV)
- Cost per lead (CPL) of your top campaigns
- Cost of acquisition of your customer (CAC)
When it comes to KPIs such as the lifetime customer value, you’ll need to look toward measuring your customer’s happiness.
“As your company grows and you bring on more new business, it’s important to remain steadfast in your focus on existing customer happiness,” explained Ryan Wilson from FiveFifty. “We monitor this through tracking net promoter score and customer retention. This metric gives us a good indicator of whether the business is scaling appropriately or needs, for instance, a technology to deal with its growth.”
When outlining company goals and employee expectations, you’ll need to articulate your vision including the purpose, mission, and company values, reports the publication Small Business Trends. If you’ve never considered the purpose of your department or business, you’ll need to take time to outline why you’re at work every day and the purpose of your organization. This will greatly help your strategic planning process.
Essentially, you’ll want to answer the what and the why behind the objectives you want to accomplish, according to the Harvard Business Review. Next, you’ll want to verify the business context of your strategies and strategic planning process.
Verify the Business Context of the Strategic Planning Process
This step may seem confusing or complex but it is simpler than you think. Verifying the business context essentially means you’ll want to ensure the environment your employees work in aligns with the strategies you want to put in place.
The Entrepreneur outlined in an article five of the best work environments that can lead to greater success. This list includes:
- The Open Skeptic Environment
- The Individual-Focused Environment
- The No-Walls Environment
- The Mutual-Feedback Environment
- The Unified Environment
In an open skeptic workplace, every idea is questioned and asking questions is advised. If someone has a new plan or project to change older processes, another employee should feel free to ask why the plan would work better than the current system.
In an individual-focused atmosphere, employees have the opportunity to customize their working styles based on their needs. There is greater flexibility including the ability to work from home or potentially choose the hours one can work at the office. In a no-walls environment, the staff is more able to work together and it keeps the team more unified. Communication moves freely across a room, which boosts cooperation.
The mutual-feedback atmosphere requires employees and managers to provide honest feedback, which means employees know when they need to improve and managers learn when their approach isn’t working. Lastly, the unified workplace helps people succeed as a team but operate individually.
If your business environment feels unpredictable, you’ll need to ensure your employees are able to adapt to change quickly. You’ll need to make sure that your workers understand what is expected of them and how they can accomplish the objectives you set out for them, according to the Small Business Trends article.
You’ll need to better articulate what is valued in both the managers and the employees in terms of accomplishing key strategies. Lastly, the characteristics you want your customers to see needs to be explained clearly to your staff. Next, you’ll need to analyze the capabilities of your team.
Assess Capabilities Among Your Staff
Another important part of your strategic planning process is to assess the capabilities of your employees and see whether they can achieve the objectives you require of them. This can come down to the numbers and whether you see the results you need from your workers.
For instance, how many customers or website visitors does their work lead to? How many sales have they made or played a part in? Are they making their quotas and meeting deadlines? These numbers will play a major part in assessing the ability of your team members. You can utilize project management software to help with determining these values.
“When you’re making money, everyone’s work seems to be good and getting the job done,” said Rahim Charania from American Fueling Systems. “But sometimes what seems like ‘getting the job done’ is actually a market run that overlooks mistakes. Those same mistakes can come back to haunt you when that market slows unless you have consistently worked with your team to ensure that they are always operating at their best. This can be done through regular performance evaluations.”
Set Objectives
The next step toward following through on your strategic planning process is to set objectives. However, when you are setting up a guideline on your strategic objectives, be sure to create a waiting list for some of your objectives since you won’t be able to achieve all the outcomes you desire immediately. Some goals are more important than others, so you’ll need a waiting list on the rest.
You’ll need to coordinate among your team members to ensure everyone is playing a part in meeting the objectives, according to the publication Inc. Every part of the process needs to be moving forward in the same direction, which can help your company better compete in the market.
When setting objectives, you’ll want to analyze the strengths of your team members to ensure every individual can accomplish their part of the goal. Focus on anywhere from three to five strengths among each employee. This can help you set up three to five objectives for every worker based on their strengths, according to Small Business Trends.
Establish a Data-Based Action Plan
The next step you should take in your strategic planning process is establishing an action plan that includes metrics and measurements related to employee and company performance. Once you have set up your goals and objectives, you’ll need to set your measures. Do you know what measures you’ll need to focus on to reach those objectives? These metrics might be market share, costs, or time to accomplish your goals.
You can add the specific metrics you want to achieve under each objective. For example, you may want to increase sales of a particular product by 20 percent. You could look to accomplish a big project by the end of the summer or your team could seek to boost website visits by 50 percent within the year. Including a project management software product with a dashboard full of metrics can be very helpful for your company.
Put Your Strategy Down on the Page
When it comes to communicating your strategy and really putting the strategic planning process on a page, you’ll want to keep your message simple but meaningful, states one piece from the Harvard Business Review. Since most companies have a deeper meaning for their existence, which can be their mission statement, your employees will need to be well versed with this meaning in order to adhere to the strategy you’re setting up.
By establishing the relevance of your mission statement, your employees will care more about their job. You’ll also want to produce employee behavior that is based on market and customer insights.
Communicate the Plan Across the Company
You will need to communicate your strategy-based plan across your department and across the company. Be sure to articulate objectives and the strategy among all team members based on each function your employees are responsible for.
The framework for your communication can be revolved around, first, inspiring your team and, then, educating them on the requirements. Lastly, you’ll need to reinforce the information. Inspiring messages will need to show how your strategy benefits customers and shows progress across the company.
When educating your team, provide job-specific tools and data that employees can incorporate in their daily responsibilities. Reinforcing that information essentially means repeating the message until your team is meeting all objectives.
Keep the Plan Alive by Investing in the Right Tools
Lastly, you’ll need to keep your strategy and plan alive in order to meet your objectives. This can be done by making the right investments. You’ll need to make the necessary investments in your team by funding internal communication campaigns as well as collaboration tools, which will keep everyone on the same page and help your employees reach their objectives. Project management systems with relevant metrics will help you achieve your goals as well.
In addition, remember that there is no one perfect way to compete in the market. There is no one perfect winning formula, so feel free to be creative when determining how to meet your objectives.
How Workflow Management Software Helps Reach Objectives
You will find that the right workflow management software such as Runrun.it may assist you with keeping your team motivated and reaching goals. This collaboration tool ensures communication across departments is more transparent and your workflow is more streamlined with fewer bottlenecks.
To find out if Runrun.it software is the right tool for your company, click here for a free trial.
