Successful Strategic Planning

Developing a strategic plan will allow you to determine your goals for the future of your business and then decide how you’ll go about achieving them. In a small business, it’s often difficult to find ‘thinking time’ and put time aside for strategic planning when you’re constantly caught up in the running of day to day operations. However, this is an important exercise, especially if you want to grow your business. Things may be ticking over nicely, or not as the case may be, but either way setting out your expectations and aspirations and deciding what’s realistic over the next year or so will prevent you from falling into the trap of keeping things as they are because that’s the easy option.

John Telfer, Managing Director of INSPIRING, comments: “Setting the strategic direction of the business is only part of the job. Clarity and clear line of sight for all staff is just as important to ensure cohesion”.

For a small business, the strategic planning process doesn’t have to be complicated and to prove this, we’ve put together some of our best tips for developing an effective plan.

Start with your mission, vision and values

You’ve probably already determined these, but if you haven’t here are some pointers. A vision statement should challenge and inspire both your organisation and individual team members to achieve your business goals. A mission statement describes the “what” and “why” of your business and identifies your organisation to its customers and the outside world. If you have these already, revisit and redefine them because as your business changes so should your mission and vision. Your values are the only thing that should be constant, as they define how you conduct your business and how you expect your people to interact with others.

Make sure you get the right people involved in the strategic planning process

You should have input from team members across all areas of your business, which may include finance, customer services, human resources, quality management, sales and marketing. As a leader, you’ll have in mind your own overall business goals, but listen to your team and remain open to their ideas and suggestions as they’ll each bring valuable operational knowledge to the table.

Give your strategic plan the time and attention it deserves

What’s worked well for own business, and many of the organisations we’ve worked with over the years, is taking time away from the usual workplace and spending a few hours or a day in a room somewhere, away from distractions of phones and emails. In fact, you could even switch your mobiles off for a while and revert back to a good old flipchart!

Time is valuable so plan your meeting effectively

Brainstorming is great and gives us a chance to explore different ideas, but make sure you don’t all go off on a tangent. Put together an outline of all the aspects of your business that you want your plan to cover and appoint a chairperson to keep time and to make sure you address them all within the meeting. You could ask your team to consider a number of questions before the meeting and come prepared, for example: ‘What’s working and what’s not?’; ‘Are our customers getting the best service?’ or ‘Are our employees engaged and productive?’

Make sure your plan is achievable and visible

When you’ve discussed and agreed your goals, spend time developing them into SMART objectives (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely in case you’d forgotten!).  Place an agreed level of importance to each of your goals and objectives so that you can set deadlines and plan how and when you’re going focus on them throughout the year (or whatever period you’re plan is for). Include monthly initiatives which will help keep your plan active and moving in the right direction. Don’t let all your time and effort go to waste by letting it fall by the wayside when you get back to your daily business.

TEAM UP WITH INSPIRING…

INSPIRING Business Performance provides practical advice, business information tools and training programmes for organisations who want to improve employee engagement, develop their leaders and managers or look at organisational development. If you would like to speak to us about strategic planning or any other area of business development, call us on 0800 612 3098 or get in touch using the enquiry form on the left. We would be happy arrange for one of our consultants to meet up with you for an informal chat.

5 New Years Resolutions that will have a positive impact on your business

Limit out of hours communications

Just about everyone is contactable all of the time these days. Often it’s hard to ignore those emails and messages when they come in, even if it can wait until Monday morning. As an employer or manager, think about how sending emails out of hours might affect the recipient. If you don’t require an immediate response but just want to tick it off your ‘things to do’ list, consider setting up a time delay or create a draft to send early the next working day instead. Employers who make a point of limiting intrusions into employees’ personal time will have a greater chance of attracting and retaining good employees who want to be able to leave their jobs at the office.

Encourage your people to take time off

Many employees don’t use up all their annual leave entitlement. This may be because a heavy workload makes it difficult for them to take time off, or because their manager or workplace culture implies that taking leave is a problem. Having a positive culture of work-life balance together with happy, refreshed employees is more productive and will prevent stress, so you’ll be more likely to have a stronger, motivated staff in the long run.

Increase your training and development budget

When budgets are cut, it’s often training and development that takes a hit. If this applies to your organisation, it will inevitably impact on the ability of your employees to produce results and stay up to date with industry and business progress if they’re not getting the training and professional development they need. Make 2016 a year in which you invest in your employees and you will receive return on that investment in the long-term.

Look at your reward and recognition policies

If your reward and recognition policy is not perceived to be transparent and/or fair, it won’t attract, retain and engage employees. In particular, research shows that bonus and salary rewards are strongly related to employee attitudes including job satisfaction and intention to move jobs as well as impacting on behaviour such as absenteeism and individual performance. Make a point of examining how perks and benefits are distributed and consider separating pay and performance rewards in peoples’ minds by communicating to your team throughout the year for their good performance and recognising and rewarding them appropriately in the moment.

Tackle performance issues effectively

Leaders and Managers are often tempted to take credit for what their top performers achieve, but the real measure is how they handle people who aren’t performing so well. As a manager, you should measure your own performance by the lowest performer on your team. Many managers are scared of having tough conversations with their team, often through lack of proper management training. Developing people through coaching and creating accountability within your team is crucial to managing a high-performing team.

TEAM UP WITH INSPIRING…

INSPIRING Business Performance provides practical advice, business information tools and training programmes for organisations who want to improve employee engagement, develop their leaders and managers or look at organisational development. For more information or to arrange a free consultation, call us on 0800 612 3098 or get in touch using the enquiry form on the left.

Why people are leaving your organisation (and what you can do about it)

If people are leaving your business, it will usually be for one or more of the following reasons:

Lack of manager support…

Unsupportive managers are a key reason for people leaving. It’s a common saying that people leave their manager, not their job.
The skills and behaviours required for leaders and managers are different. An Inspiring Leader has a clear and compelling vision for the organisation. They can engage their team and encourage increased productivity. An Inspiring Manager will be able to set objectives and communicate effectively to their team, helping your employees to pull together and achieve your business goals.
INSPIRING can help you diagnose problem areas and provide tailored development through our Inspiring Leadership programmes.

Not such a great place to work…

Culture, physical working environment and operating policies all factor highly in ensuring a healthy, engaged and productive workforce.
The culture within your organisation impacts the happiness and satisfaction of your employees. It also strengthens, or weakens, employee retention and affects how your business attracts new talent. Conducting a culture survey will pinpoint what’s needed to create and maintain a positive culture: i.e. valuing, recognising and supporting individuals contribution to the company, both from the perspective of the employer and employee.
You could also look into having a wellbeing survey , which measures the physical, emotional and social wellbeing of your employees, as well as identifying areas where you can improve wellbeing within the workplace.

Career progression…

You will have a better chance of holding on to your employees if you have plans in place for talent management, succession planning and learning and development.
Spotting employees with leadership potential and helping them to develop their skills and behaviours will reap big rewards for both the individual and your organisation. Have a look at our recent article ‘How to identify future leaders in your organisation’ for more about this.
As well as offering learning and development solutions, INSPIRING can help with design and implementation of a tailored performance management system to ensure that your team is set relevant KPIs / objectives that not only reflect your business needs, but also correlate to their personal development.

Not feeling valued…

Employees will leave if they are disengaged and don’t feel appreciated. Reward and recognition isn’t always about money. Everyone would like to get paid more for what they do, but other important factors for job satisfaction include opportunities to:
• grow and learn new skills;
• to progress their career;
• to work on challenging and stimulating projects;
• to be acknowledged and praised for their efforts; and
• to feel that they are an important a part of the overall business.

The best way to find out why your people are leaving is to ask them!

Conducting Exit Surveys will help you understand why employees leave, enabling you to identify any problem areas. INSPIRING’s bespoke exit surveys, with reports tailored to your business, will help you to understand and reduce staff turnover.