Tag Archives: plans

 

Responding to Challenge #1:

Strategic Leadership & Management Effectiveness

Keep your Balance

balanceIt is easy for owner-managers to get pre-occupied by the daily demands for attention – chasing opportunities, resolving customer complaints, managing employee performance, satisfying business partners, governments and the bank.  Stepping back to look at the big picture and assessing performance against the original strategic plan is easily neglected.

That remains the entrepreneur’s No.1 Challenge: balancing the need for strategic leadership with the demands for operational effectiveness.

Too busy fighting fires to work on fire prevention?

To succeed in building a long-term sustainable business, it is essential that owner-managers find the appropriate balance in applying time, effort and resources to both strategic leadership and operations management.

Two issues, three steps to success

My approach to managing that balance is to apply the same three steps to each issue.

Strategic Leadership

1. Assess performance

Continuously assess market conditions, customer feedback and the competitive landscape. Check that your intended strategic positioning, branding and corporate culture are in line with current customer and employee perceptions.  Confirm that you are correctly matching your strategic and competitive advantage to market opportunities

2. Revise the plan

Review and revise, if necessary, your strategy, concept and business model.  Update your Business Plan and marketing communications strategy.

3. Make improvements

Launch the new plan internally and provide strategic direction and support to the management team. Prepare new marketing communications and sales tools and take them to market.

Management Effectiveness

1. Assess performance

 Regularly assess operating and financial performance by monitoring key indicators against your plan, industry averages and the best performers in your business.Survey employees and customers for satisfaction levels and feedback on areas for improvement.  Maintain current and effective employee performance reviews for management and staff.

2. Revise the plan

Identify deficiencies and set new objectives for performance improvements. Update the Business Plan and internal performance objectives for management and staff.

3. Make improvements

Define and develop improvement projects and provide necessary management support and resources to achieve the objectives.

A simple process, but not easy. Achieving balance in managing business strategy and effective operations is still a challenge.

But worth continuous attention.

Your Uncle Ralph, Del Chatterson

Read more Learning Entrepreneurship Blogs. 

 

Join our mailing list for more ideas, information and inspiration for entrepreneurs.

Click Here to check out Uncle Ralph’s books, "Don't Do It the Hard Way" and "The Complete Do-It-Yourself Guide to Business Plans" Both are available online or at your favourite bookstore in hard cover, paperback or e-book.

 

Forget forecasts

They're useless.

CrudeOilPriceForecastsChart

It is that time of year when everyone seems compelled to make forecasts. The experts insist on giving us their version and they decide either to be safe and predict more of the same or to be outrageous and predict something extreme - Canadian dollar at US$0.59 or oil back to $100!

We should ignore them all; they're useless. I have worked on many; in plans and projections for my own businesses and for clients.

It is useful to remember before starting that they are all part of the fiction we are writing to convince ourselves or someone else what we hope will happen. It would be better to describe them as "reasonable expectations." All we know for sure is that the forecasts will be wrong. We just do not know by how much or in which direction.

So if we cannot predict the future, what can we do?

Our primary objective should be to understand our business environment - the competitive landscape and the economic conditions. The real issues to understand are the trends, the causes and effects, the alternative scenarios we need to be prepared for and the most likely ones to occur.

Then we have something we can work with.

Happy forecasting!

Your Uncle Ralph, Del ChattersonDon't Do It the Hard Way

Visit also: LearningEntrepreneurship.com:

And check out two new books by Uncle Ralph, "Don't Do It the Hard Way" and "The Complete Do-It-Yourself Guide to Business Plans." available online or at your favourite bookstore. To learn more or buy a copy: Click here