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Five Resounding Reasons to Review Your Strategic Plan

Guest post by: Tom Lemanski

Article Overview: Events of the past three years have rendered many business plans either partially or completely obsolete. Here are five quick potential wake-up calls to help you determine if one of your most important leadership tools is in need of repair.

Five Resounding Reasons to Review Your Strategic Plan

Events of the past three years have rendered many business plans either partially or completely obsolete. Here are five quick potential wake-up calls to help you determine if one of your most important leadership tools is in need of repair.

1- Your vision no longer inspires either hope or enthusiasm There is a Japanese proverb that best describes this scenario: Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare. In the absence of a meaningful destination, how do you effectively lead? Your organization is living a nightmare.

2- Marketplace Changes Have Invalidated Your Plan's Key Assumptions

If your assumptions are no longer true, you need a new plan. Without a planned response to marketplace changes, what will happen to your ability to grow and innovate? You can be the best typewriter repair shop in your market, but your growth opportunities are limited.

3- Value proposition no longer resonates in the minds of prospective customers

While requests for price concessions are escalating today, it's still not a good sign when your sales people hearing those five dreaded words: "Your Price is Too High".

4- Innovation and new opportunities have waned

An effective strategic thinking process will stimulate new ideas for meeting current and future customer needs. There is an important distinction between innovation and creativity. Innovation involves applying a creative idea to a business challenge. Without clarity of direction, innovation wanes.

5- New threats have surfaced and you are not prepared to respond

Is there anyone out there who, if they allocated their resources, could put you out of business within the next year? Is there a better reason to take another re-address your strategic plan?

Do-It Yourself Strategic Planning?

I admit to being guilty of mixing metaphors. But sometimes they're too good to resist. It's been said that doing your own strategic plan is like a dentist who tries to drill his own tooth. So consider delegating to a trained conductor who will help your orchestra to engage in a successful symphony and develop a plan that remedies these five issues and more. More on facilitated Strategic Thinking and Business Planning.

There are, of course, more reasons than these five, just as there are many reasons for planning procrastination. What are yours?

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Article Tags: business strategy, leadership, strategic planning



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Business Innovation - Hi Simon If you can finish off the Business Plan and think about your strategic direction or how you are going to use your product to convince people it's a great idea, it will set the foundation for your programming project. You see, when you are looking for funding you will need a Business Plan and Strategic Plan that will convince companies to invest into your new idea. Has anyone achieved this idea before using another industry besides health and fitness that you know of? You should also design some mockups as a "preview" for your programming project. This will also help reduce your programming costs as everyone will know exactly what you want if you have detailed mockups already completed including any functionality you require. Starting mockups for websites and software applications on paper is the best way if you're not a guru in graphic editing software.
Different Hats - CEO Sales & Marketing & Leadership Development Company Strategic Vision 10 Alliances & Growth Strategies 10 Hiring & Managing People 8 Mentoring 8-9 Strategic Planning for Clients 10 Execution of Marketing Campaigns 9-10 (i have great people who do the nitty gritty) Financial Management 9 Bookkeeping 3 (outsourced as I really hate the fine details like GST0 Administrative Follow Up 6-7 (again have great staff) Writing & Publishing 9 (getting better all the time!) Speaking 10 (so I have been told) Self Promotion 9-10 Web development & Promotion 6-7 (learning more and have brought on players who are 10+) Babysitting Employees (1 - wont do it, that's why I work so hard to hire and motivate the people I have) Great topic Kevin!! Jude
Re: 10 Reasons Who Startups Fail & Book Recommendations - Great post,but please edit the headline. I presume it is "10 Reasons Why Startups Fail & Book Recommendation
Re: Essential Leadership skills - Vision Values Mission Strategic Thinking Decision Making Communication Team Bonding People Development Coaching / Mentoring / Guiding / Grooming Presentation Thanks Robert
Re: NEW VIDEO - How to improve your business plan - Ask Evan - Thanks Evan, great intro into how the VC's see business plan. I will take a look, but hope that this video as number 1 in a series. It is unfortunate that these types of errors, the most basic of errors as you point out here are common to too many business plans, having reviewed a few hundred myself from both a development and funding perspective. As a mentor and workshop facilitator for Business Plan development for a number of start-up IT and multimedia companies, your presentation help support and show how the VC's see and evaluate a plan Shameful, that too many don't take the time to learn how to properly prepare, present and defend their plans. Over the years, I have enjoyed Business Plan competitions, and help re-work some of the winning proposals


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