4 tips to ensure your business strategy will be achievedPosted by Nicole CoyneOn May 31, 2023

How do I know my business strategy will be achieved?

If you have created unrealistic and unattainable targets, you will not achieve your desired goals.

But let’s say that your plan is sound. You have done all the right due diligence, checks and balances around your goals, and there is a demand for your product or service in the market in which you operate.

Now what?

What I want to focus on is what happens after you have built the plan. Where “the rubber meets the road”.

During the planning phase you have highlighted areas within your business that need attention and areas that can be leveraged. You’ve also seen the sense of urgency behind getting on top of these issues sooner rather than later.

This is all well and good in the planning session, when you are focused on the business and there aren’t other distractions. There is a high sense of clarity at this time, which is excellent. However, if that sense of clarity, focus and sense of urgency is not adopted outside of the planning phase when you are back in the “real world”, your desire to achieve your plan will be fraught.

Your role as a business owner/operator is to drive the plan. It comes from you. By expressing its importance, by making it come “alive” in your business, it will. Where you place your attention is what will get noticed. If you place emphasis on key actions and activities, your team will see these as essential and important and when they need to prioritise their work, they will naturally put the strategic plan’s priorities first.

If you fail to emphasise your plan, well, we all know what happens to it. It lands up in file 13 on the dusty shelf, never to be seen again.

When you step out of a strategy session, there will be a need to shift and change in some things. It may be priorities, people, or resources. The more you delay the implementation phase the more impetus you lose, and the more difficult it will be to get your change process started. Timing is everything.

In your planning phase your SWOT analysis can highlight a number of areas which need attention. These are then built into the plan. One question which comes up often at this stage is “Is there a budget for these changes?” In certain instances some changes may not need any form of funding or additional resource, it may just be a habit change or an internal shift of a current resource. However, there are times where money needs to be invested on an additional human being or a new system. Make sure that your plan isn’t hindered by the lack of budget. Sounds silly, but unfortunately this happens often.

This may sound obvious and most people would assume that during a planning session all parties will be in agreement on the way forward. There is no place for hidden agendas or personal agendas when building a plan. The success of a plan is based on everyone believing that the chosen path is the best option for the business and by working together and focusing on one vision, it can and will be achieved. People going rogue after a planning session defeats the whole purpose of a strategy session. What’s the point if no one actually believes in the finalised goals?

Hopefully with these key tips, your planning session will flow successfully into your implementation and action phase. Best of luck!