Are you ready for a strategic plan for your business?  Do you know where to start?  Defining and implementing a strategy is an exciting step for any organisation.  Perhaps you have a great idea that has exploded beyond the capacity of your start-up group.  Or maybe you have all the skills and resources but, especially in the current economic conditions, you just are not getting the attention from the market that should be beating a path to your door.  Is it time to take all that you have and create a foundation of clarity from which to step forward?

A clear strategic plan is powerful tool for success.  When your team have a clear picture of what you do and how you work and where you are headed this can bring great relief and energy.  And when you are all clear on who should do what, there can be no stopping you.  Furthermore, when you all know specifically what you are NOT going to do, you can avoid energy, resource and time draining pitfalls and red-herrings.

Success in goal setting begins with an understanding of the strategic planning process.  It is easy to think that setting strategy is for large corporates, supported by the big five consultancies.  And the jargon itself can be off-putting.  A brief reading of the index in any strategy publication can be quite disheartening.  Perhaps this is not the first time you have considered this approach but, because you have not found out how to start, you have dropped the issue and decided to push on with what you know.

The strategy process begins with a conversation.  A conversation supported by frameworks to raise the right questions.  You know you must do something.  But where are you now and what big issues do you face?  What does the future hold and what do you have to bring you success?  When I help teams with planning conversations I use a structure to cover:

  • your offer and how you are perceived in your market
  • your processes and what you do to deliver your offer
  • the resources you muster to deliver these processes right
  • the financial targets they will use to measure success  

This questions form the heart of the strategic plan.  And the plan is guided by a conversation about the purpose of your organisation, where you want to get to (your vision) and how you work together (your values).

Stephen Quirke (that’s me) has been helping clients gain clarity on their plans through coaching and facilitation for more than ten years.  If you would like to find out more about the models I use in conversations to set strategy please have a look at this site.  I can help you through coaching your leadership and by facilitating conversations within in your teams.  To find out more about how you can bring clarity to your current situation and how you can focus the energy of your team on clear goals you can also visit my StrategyWorks website.