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Strategic Plans Don't Work - Strategic Businesses Do!
These days I am almost contemptuous of business owners who don't have a current business plan, or more importantly, a strategic plan. Without planning, businesses may survive, but they rarely climb to great heights.
Typically small businesses that don't have plans stay small in every way: small size, small goals, small thinking and small profits. The only big thing about them is the huge stress levels that seem to impact heavily on both the owners and the employees.
On the other hand, I can almost empathise with business owners who think that writing a business plan is a waste of time and effort. I have seen too many plans that weren't worth the trouble it took to write them and those that become useless documents that simply gather dust on someone's shelf after they have been glanced through a single time.
The Discipline of Planning is Not at Fault
The reality is that most strategic plans don't work. It's not because the discipline of planning is at fault. It is because the plan is written simply for the sake of having a plan, not for it to be a guiding instrument for business strategy and direction. Most business plans for small business are actually written for the bank manager, not for the business owner and the personnel.
Most plans are written to justify someone's concept and to justify a level of funding to be granted, not to be a driver of business philosophy and direction.
The structure and content headings of both successful strategic plans and useless planning documents are often identical. It's not the documentation that is at fault. The fatal flaw in strategic planning comes from not following a successful and systematic approach of analysis, research and strategy development and often, even if these stages have been performed adequately, the strategies are not broken down into specific actionable projects at a tactical level.
Intention Plus Action Leads to Execution
Many planning documents are full of grand vision statements and esoteric mission statements with pie-in-the-sky objectives, but nothing ever changes in the business after the plans are written.
Failure to implement is the result of poorly defined strategies that are not shaped into achieveable or actionable development projects. Plans that stop at "what we will do" and don't include "how we will do it" and "who is responsible for doing it" will never get it done.
Far too many plans don't get to this level. They may make for a good read for the bank manager or the board of directors, but they are useless in the hands of managers and operational personnel. In many situations, employees are branded as being only operational in their work, but without their support, strategic intent will remain a good intention.
The input and cooperation of people at all levels of an organisation is vital to the effective execution of strategic development.
People do not change their behaviour at a conceptional level. Plans that introduce new concepts and new thinking may have a sound basis behind them. But if they don't describe in minute detail how those new ideas and concepts will be introduced into the daily work habits of the leaders and operators in the business, nothing will change.
This is all too often the issue with strategic plans that don't work. A plan that doesn't lead to effective change is not worth the effort.
Now please don't take my criticism of the majority of strategic plans and business plans as your excuse to avoid planning in your business. The answer to poor execution is not "no point in even trying." The answer, of course, is proper execution. The reality is that strategic plans don't work. But strategic businesses identify effective strategies and implement effective tactics that work.
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