BUSINESS PLANNING SERIES – Part 4

At this point you have gathered a skilled supportive team around you, the situational analysis has been done and you know where you want to go. You now have the impetus for ACTION. Hopefully there is not too much corporate dysfunction to be addressed but all of the following ‘silos’ will have to be addressed with specific strategies to get to your goals:

• Financial goals
• Marketing goals
• People/HR goals
• Production/product goals
• Organizational structure goals

Within each of these categories there is a myriad of sub-groups that could be ‘the elephant in the room’ that has to be examined in much more detail.

The ‘glue’ that binds people, divisions and businesses together is COMMUNICATION.

You must find KPI’s worth talking about, you must find ways of telling the stories that will influence performance, behaviors will have to change and keep changing, you have to recruit and reward people appropriately, there will be on going adjustments as you get blown off course but if the vision is clear enough you can always see where you should be going and pull the appropriate levers to get back on course. Often minor tactical adjustments bring about profound changes so look for those ‘markers’ that will allow you to find your bearings in such chaos.

This economic game we are playing has some rules underpinning it which need to be acknowledged and understood:

Free cash flows, return on investment, exit strategies, working ON the business not in it, systemization, debt leverage, busy fool syndrome, tax efficacy, failing at what matters, everything you need to unlearn, your business needs to be theoretically ‘for sale’ every day of its existence, the power of e-commerce and change, networking and marketing, innovate or die…..