Business: The Tenth Eleventh Item

The eighth agenda item is to define appropriate strategies for our business to pursue in the next five to ten years in order to take advantage of the opportunities available. The strategies must build on our strengths and shore-up our weaknesses.
The ninth agenda item is to define and document departmental (functional area) goals and objectives required to support the strategies including time phased schedules for capital investment and manning/staffing requirements. This step is key because it is the action required to accomplish the plan.
The tenth agenda item is to “blue-sky” no holds barred brainstorm and document the potential business opportunities given unlimited resources. Respond to the question “what would/could we do?” Document

The strategic plan should be made current and updated annually by the original group of people. The second, third and fourth times around, become much less painful. Amazingly, the more we forecast the better we get.
A super side benefit of the process of strategic planning in this fashion is the building of a team committed to making the plan come alive! The valuable clock-time this group spends together on this project builds a team better than our competitor’s.
Confidentiality must be stressed throughout this seminar. This information in our competitor’s hands cannot be tolerated. However, within the organization everyone from the lowest organizational level upwards must know what is expected of them concerning the future implementation of the plan.
Annual Planning and Implementation:
Annual planning in our experience base has taken many names. Such as, formal profit planning, annual planning, current profit planning, annual budgeting, medium planning, etc. Most successful firms do this intermediate form of planning. It is inconceivable that any firm regardless of size would just let the future happen to them without some form of medium range planning. By medium range we mean one to two years.

Under these circumstances the strategic plan is reviewed and the annual plan is dove-tailed with same. The annual plan “bites off” the first year or two of the strategic plan then through sequential steps of review, analysis, forecasting, elbow grease and documentation. The firm’s staff hammers out and molds the annual plan into a semi-solid workable tool.
Steps of the process may consist of the following:
1. Review of the sales forecast for the one to two year period.
2. Obtain the latest input from the outside/inside sales force regarding the next one to two year period.
3. Review and analyze the latest economic information regarding markets served.
4. Review, if any exists, leading indicators that may correlate with our markets and sales areas.
5. Nail down via staff consensus, the annual and monthly sales forecast including anticipated market share and actions required to maintain or increase share. A. Breakdown the sales forecast into dollars by product/product line. B. Breakdown the sales forecast into units by product/product