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. What are yours?

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For a more discrete discussion I suggest a…