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MANY business owners resist the concept of planning, using excuses from "I don't have time," to "planning is a waste of time," to "planning is too restrictive to my business," to "I'm doing well so why do I need to change?"
This is unfortunate because all businesses, even successful ones, can benefit from strategic planning. A carefully constructed strategic plan can help any business do a better job. Periodic assessments to re-examine roles and responsibilities help focus efforts, leverage resources, reduce organizational redundancy and ensure accountability within a business.
Even if only held annually, strategic planning meetings can stimulate creative thinking that can help generate new business, streamline production, create awareness of business hurdles, identify opportunities in the marketplace, and move a company forward in achieving goals.
Whether with your trusted business advisers (CPA, attorney, business consultant) or with your key employees, discussing what you want your business to do in the upcoming year, how you think it can get there and what's going to stand in the way is critical to your company's long-term success.
Financial preparations
Strategic planning will also help identify those areas and times when the business will need a capital infusion or may need to restructure its current financing arrangement. Understanding capital requirements in advance of actual needs will afford you the time required to explore and evaluate all available financing options.
The bottom line is that your business can benefit a great deal from the process and from having a detailed, written blueprint for achieving your goals.
The first step is to understand the dynamics of pl ...