Ask the Advisors – Keeping My Business’ Strategic Plan Relevant

Q. What can I do to help keep our strategic plan useful and relevant to my business?

David Ritter, CVA, MBA Shareholder, Strategic Advisory Group

More often than not, businesses will go through the grueling strategic planning process only to allow their plan to become static as soon as it’s developed.

A strategic plan, the roadmap for your business’ success, first and foremost needs to align business goals with resources. Goals should be achievable with the business’ resources. Keeping your plan visible to your management team can help to prioritize projects and resources to make sure they align with goals laid out. Maintaining transparency with the strategic plan will help establish accountability, track progress and follow intended strategies.

Make sure you set up a systematic monitoring system to continually gauge whether your plan remains relevant and effective. This can be as simple as informal progress reports or as complex as company-wide statistical analysis software to spot areas of concern.

Q How often should we be sitting down for strategic planning sessions?

Although you should be regularly monitoring the efforts to carry out your short-term strategic plan, formally re-evaluate long-term plans annually and check how it stands up against the competition since you last looked at the plan.

Consider setting up a performance metric dashboard to align quantitative goals to actual performance. If the organization begins to go off track, be proactive and discuss with your management team if another strategic planning session is needed before reactive measures are required.

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David Ritter, CVA, MBA is a Shareholder in Doeren Mayhew’s Strategic Advisory Group and can be reached at 248.244.3380. For more information on developing a strategic plan, contact our strategic advisors today.