Strategic Planning

I realize that to most business owners the concept of Strategic Planning has long been looked at as only for the Fortune 500 companies and those who have money to burn trying to figure out what to put their time into next because they don’t have enough to do right now. The problem with this thinking is that the Fortune 500 companies got to where they are because they took Strategic Planning very seriously and took the time to figure out what their next moves needed to be to be as successful as possible and not waste any time or money doing it.

The biggest value of Strategic Planning is that you get an outside perspective of your business and the strengths and weaknesses of it that can be maximized and tightened up to not only make you more profitable, but give you much more time as well, which is more valuable than profit in my opinion.

After sitting down with numerous business owners I realized a pattern in all of them that resembled a ‘Bottleneck’ that kept them from achieving tremendous breakthrough. These Bottlenecks were major sticking points that the owner didn’t see and were keeping their business from achieving the next milestone in its’ life cycle, whether that was achieving profitability for a startup or taking the owners profits to the six figure range or giving the owner an extra day or two off every week without reducing profits.

Because of this Bottleneck situation, I developed the Bottleneck Breakthrough Process that does exactly that. First, we identify THE Bottleneck in your business that is holding everything else back. There may be many issues that arise, but one of them stands head and shoulders above the rest in regard to keeping your company from breaking through to the next level. The others will be dealt with, but the primary issue identified must be dealt with and eradicated completely before we can move on to any other issues.

The process is then the same once the first issue is dealt with in that we simply move on to the next Bottleneck and blow it out of the way and so on. It is quite possible to simply take one issue at a time and develop a solution and systems around it to be followed by key staff and then move on to the next and end up with a thriving and growing company because of it. Ideally, you would create a Strategic Objective in the process that would state where you wanted to take the company to so that all plans and strategies can be held up against it to make sure they are in line with that focus and bringing you closer to it with each one.

The Strategic Objective development is also part of the Strategic Planning Solution I go over with every client I work with.

If you feel that taking the time to look at your business Strategically with my perspective and insight is needed, simply go to the Contact page and enter ‘Strategic’ in the subject line along with your contact info and a brief synopsis of your current situation and I’ll follow up in the next day to schedule a time to meet.