The Extra Mile: Being Strategic All Year

As a growth strategist I work with all sizes of organizations and I run into common mistakes across business sizes and locations. The most critical mistake I see is the inability to think strategic, even when they have a "strategic planning" document.

Having a binder of graphs, fancy worded mission statements, and goal projections does not constitute being strategic. Go the extra mile and do you due diligence.
What to open a new restaurant? What kind of food do you have the demographics to support? What location has the best traffic patterns for your type of customers? What depth of financing can you have to cover the cash flow pit falls of a start up restaurant? These are just a few of the thousands of questions need to be accurately answered strategically before taking on the venture.

The restaurant questions are no different than the type of questions all businesses need to be making every year. Forget buffing up the strategic plan from last year. Forget bumping goals 10% across the board because it is easy. Forget limiting your strategic planning process to a weekend a year. Every year you need to approach your strategic thinking with the mindset of starting a business.

The good news with an established business you should have a good capital base, a good customer base, and solid industry information to base growth on instead of starting from scratch.

However, good is the enemy of great, and if you are good at something you are more apt to leave it alone than totally revamp it to be great. Strategically you must think of every product and service you offer and rethink how to better position its place in the market.

It doesn't matter if you make meals, computers, cars or offer services; rethinking everything from scratch is the only way to fully embrace a strategic approach to fit the rapidly changing landscape of business.

Being strategic in a leader's mindset is a 12-month job. The faster you start thinking strategically the fast you become proactive instead of reactive to the industry changes. Take charge of your strategies and shape your industry as a leader of new innovation and drive.

Extra mile: Instead of blowing the dust off of last year's strategic planning document that you’ve not looked at in a year, ask me about my Fast Forward strategic planning process and how it can help you go the extra mile in your organizations growth.