10 Tips for Year-End Strategic Planning
What is Strategic Planning?
Strategic planning is essentially making the tough decisions on where to invest your business’s resources (money, staff time, staff focus, customer attention, etc.)—and where you won’t invest your business’s resources. Here are ten tips to do it better:
1) What is your single biggest “limiting factor” inside your business?
In other words, what one limitation is currently doing the most to limit the growth and success of your business? Getting clear on your limiting factor is one of your top leverage points inside your business.
2) What are 10 potential ways to push back or make your limiting factors less limiting?
This is the challenge worth solving. When you do solve it, you automatically grow your business in a leveraged way!
3) Identify the “low hanging fruit.”
Go through your list of 10 solutions and mark the ones that are either easy to implement or have a high likelihood of working.
4) Identify the “home runs.”
Mark the solutions that, if they work, offer a BIG payoff.
5) Determine your “sweet spots.”
Circle the solutions that are both low hanging fruit and home runs. These are your sweet spots—high leverage, high return opportunities where you should allocate your best resources.
6) Clarify the business you are trying to build.
Describe in writing what your ideal business looks like in 3–5 years. Include quantitative elements (sales, margins, client size) and qualitative elements (brand identity, niche, ideal customers, team culture).
7) Work backwards from your target.
Reverse-engineer your 5-year goal. What milestones must you hit each year? What actions will help you meet those benchmarks?
8) If you’re unsure how to reach your subgoals, brainstorm.
Create a list of at least 10 ideas. Then apply the sweet spot filter to identify your best leverage points to act on first.
9) Assign responsibilities clearly.
Clarify who is doing what, by when, and to what standard. Accountability starts with clarity.
10) Leverage the power of THREE.
Focus on your top three strategic results each quarter. More than three priorities leads to overwhelm—and overwhelm leads to inaction. Be realistic about your quarterly capacity, but disciplined in creating and executing your action plan.
I hope these ideas help you take what you’ve accomplished so far and invest it into making your next year even better.
