How To Hone Your Strategic Thinking Skills To Plan For The New Business Year, According To Your Strategic Thinking Business Coach By: J. Glenn Ebersole, Jr., Chief Executive of J. G. Ebersole Associates and The Renaissance Group ™
Strategic thinking is always important. The initiation of planning for the new business year is an especially important time for strategic thinking. In businesses where strategic thinking, planning and actions drive the company, the business owners and management team need to hone their strategic thinking skills to begin the planning for the new business year. Here are ten (10) recommended ways to hone your strategic thinking skills, according to your strategic thinking business coach.
1. Brainstorm a list of questions concerning where the business has been, where it is and where it needs to go.
2. Perform an updated SWOT analysis of the business. Make sure to solicit employee input in this exercise. Develop a plan to address take strategic advantage of your findings.
3. Examine the market environment, economic forces, technological influences, and governmental/legal variables to guide your thinking with a view to the future.
4. Conduct customer satisfaction surveys or focus groups to gain insight from the customer viewpoint and incorporate the findings into your future plans.
5. Review the company’s vision, mission and core values to determine if any revisions are warranted.
6. Develop new ways of looking at things, new ways of doing things, and new things to do. Encourage risk-taking and constant innovation within management and throughout the organization to create exponential growth.
7. Synthesize information about challenges, issues and opportunities that can be used to develop policies and set priorities.
8. Conduct a “what if” exercise to help anticipate and plan for the unexpected.
9. Select no more than three goals from the strategic action plan that are the top priority for your business and advocate an understanding of the need for strategic focus on those priorities.
10. Determine how your team can add value to your business and then articulate and recognize the importance of the team's value-added efforts.
Strategic thinking is an art and it has the power when it is properly used to lead the development of a well-crafted strategically focused vision that stretches the business, raises the sense of urgency to take strategic actions, and proposes to change anything that might impede performance and growth.
Your strategic thinking business coach challenges business owners and their management teams to commit to honing their strategic thinking skills to support their vision and mission and develop their strategic action plans. If you want to learn more about how to sharpen your strategic thinking skills and how a strategic thinking business coach can facilitate and guide you in that endeavor, please contact Glenn Ebersole today through his website at www.businesscoach4u.com or by email at jgecoach@aol.com
To learn more about this author, visit Glenn Ebersole's Website.
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