“If you don’t know where you are or where you wish to go, then any road will take you there, but you won’t know that you have arrived.” ~Anonymous
Planning should be a process, not an event. Too often a family-owned business handles strategic planning as a single “feel-good” exercise or just doesn’t plan at all. In this article, a 12-month planning model template is provided.
Not only will the model help you chart your family owned business course, working with it can be a valuable exercise that will encourage your family-owned business to assess goals and strengths (and weaknesses) and find ways to support your success in achieving those goals.
The seven-step Strategic Planning Calendar will provide the frame for the development and implementation of your strategic plan. It is presented here in a September-to-August model. Of course, you will need to adjust for your group’s annual calendar.
The Strategic Planning Calendar should proceed as follows.
Step 1 (September)
Create your Strategic Planning Committee (SPC). This committee can be drawn from current board members, advisers and officers of the organization, as well as representatives from middle management. A good thinker and decision maker can serve as the Strategic Planning chair.
The committee should meet for orientation and team-building for the project, assign and accept responsibility for coordinating the audits, review the audit topics and agree on the time line. The SPC would also review the existing plan and agree on plan development objectives.
Step 2 (October/November)
The SPC should designate and oversee three three-person teams to coordinate the development and implementation of the purpose audit, the marketing audit and the organizational audit.
Review the preliminary audit results. The CEO can add her or his concerns, ideas and suggestions to all audits as part of this step.
Step 3 (December/January)
Review the final audit reports. Plan parameters should be developed reflecting the results of the audits. Goals can be reviewed and objectives set.
Input should be solicited from employees and customers. This can be gathered online, via website, email or blog, or by phone conferences if an in-person meeting is not convenient.
Step 4 (February/March)
Review the budgets reflecting revenue expected from the draft plan services and programming plus an expense budget that takes into account the results of all three audits (purpose, marketing and organization). The treasurer and chief financial officer should be involved for this step.
Step 5 (April/May)
The Strategic Planning Committee, together with the officers and key staff, review the new plan, finalize the budget, and discuss, modify and approve them.
Step 6 (June/July)
The Strategic Planning Committee-approved plan and budget should then be circulated and presented to the entire board and family business leadership for discussion and approval.
Step 7 (August)
The approved plan and budget are integrated into the organization’s communications. Then the new plan is widely distributed to the officers, board, executive, middle and line management and, as appropriate, customers, suppliers and the community. This step is key for gathering support and momentum for the plan, and it will have a sizable impact on the plan’s success.
The Strategic Planning Process is an ongoing process and not a single event. To support and encourage longer-range thinking and planning, consider the adoption of a “rolling” three-year plan. As each year passes, and the plans become actions, that year of planning expires, and a new third year out is added.
This provides the organization with a three-year look ahead at all times and tends to protect the organization from sudden, unanticipated changes, but because the SPC is meeting regularly during the year, it can still deal with emergencies.
The result of this approach should generate an excellent understanding of where the organization is, where it intends to go and how it plans to get there with a solid road map to guide your successful trip into the future.
