Business

Make a strategic plan for business growth: connect the plan

Once your company’s strategic plan has been completed and a “growth map” has been established, it is time to execute it. But sadly, the reality of business, with all its pressing concerns, can cause plan execution to decline rapidly. The answer is not to try harder or to make the plan an urgent priority. Instead, the solution is to integrate the plan into the ongoing activities of the business so that execution takes place as part of the normal course of business.

The most common and deadly enemy of strategic plan execution begins the moment a company’s long and complicated planning process ends. When executives finally turn their full attention to running the company, there is often a pent-up demand on their time. Customers have problems, suppliers bring challenges, and shareholders want immediate results. And that doesn’t include regulatory demands, legal considerations, human resource needs, etc. The list goes on and unfortunately the “dust accumulation” process for the strategic plan often begins before the ink dries.

Even when executives take the time to execute their plan, initiatives can fail as part of the company’s “project list.” The problem is that when projects are prioritized, strategic plan initiatives are almost always labeled “important” rather than “urgent.” And urgent projects, such as those awaiting customers and those that will increase cash flow, tend to be implemented first. So as the year progresses, strategic initiatives often lag behind and executives must be content to report the reasons. At the end of the year, it can be embarrassing for a company’s executive team to realize how little its strategic plan has actually been implemented.

Rather than trying to keep the plan in focus or putting its execution ahead of the pressing issues facing the business, the permanent solution is to integrate the plan into the normal operations of the business. In this way, the plan’s initiatives will not be seen simply as additional projects.

The first step to effective plan integration is to separate each initiative in the plan into “action plans.” For example, suppose there is an initiative called “Develop a Marketing Program for Small Businesses.” This initiative can be divided into 5 separate action plans, as follows:

1. Identify the products and solutions that will be required.

2. Develop custom presentation materials

3. Prepare advertising and promotion plans.

4. Initiate relationships with appropriate business organizations.

5. Create a list of sales targets, with contact information.

Once the action plans have been established, the next step is to assign responsibility for each of them. Although the company’s marketing executive is likely responsible for the overall initiative in the example above, each of the 5 action plans must be assigned to an appropriate team of employees. For example, the customer service team can be responsible for action plan 1, the promotion team can handle action plans 2 and 3, the sales team can initiate relationships with business organizations in action plan 4 and the sales support team can create the target list. in the action plan 5.

At this point, the initiative has been driven deep within the company. But an even further step toward integration is making the timely completion of the action plan a part of employee compensation. For example, when teams reach their goals for the quarter, which should include completing assigned action plans, members of those teams would receive a performance pay in addition to their regular pay. Similarly, the completion of the overall initiative may be one of the components of executive team compensation.

With this level of integration, it will probably be rare that initiatives are not completed on time. And yet, execution is not imposed or placed ahead of other urgent projects. Instead, it is spread throughout the company and connected to routine employee compensation. While developing a powerful and insightful strategic plan is essential, execution by the entire company can make all the difference!

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