How To Apply Strategic Planning Models

Writing a strategic planning model may seem difficult, but it's actually fairly easy to do when setting up your business. The more difficult task--and a critical one--is to actually apply your strategic planning model to the operation of your business. Making sure that you are working in accordance with your strategic plans will be critical to the success of your business.

Suggestions

1. Draft a mission statement. A mission statement is a general statement about the purpose of your company, why it exists, and what services you provide. For example, a mission statement for a tax-preparation company might be "TaxCo provides taxpayers with assistance in preparing their tax returns, offering a painless process that results in a more accurate return."
2. Break your mission statement down into goals. Goals are things that your company needs to accomplish, either to succeed in your general mission statement, or to stay afloat as a company. For example, you might have goals like "Be profitable within five years" or "Have at least a 95% customer satisfaction rate".
3. Develop strategies to help you reach each of your goals. For example, your strategy for profitability might be "Spend heavily to increase market penetration for three years, then push a profitable product on our wide customer base."
4. Develop action plans for each strategy. This involves writing down all the specific steps necessary to achieve each part of the strategy. For example, "increasing market penetration" might involve having your graphics team design a new logo, your advertising team design ads using that logo, your marketing team offering free premiums through those ads, and your database manager gather the names and email addresses of everyone who uses those premiums.
5. Apply the above four steps to your daily business operations. This is the hardest part of a strategic planning model, but it is essential. Planning works best when you follow your plans, so keep a list of your goals, strategies, and action plans close at hand. Check in every week to make sure you are still forwarding your overall strategic plan.

Tips

• Post your action plan in your office, where you and other senior employees can constantly refer to it.
• Don't be tied to your original plan if it isn't working. Feel free to come up with a new strategic plan, and follow that one instead.

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