Spring Training- Practice Makes Perfect

Similar to baseball teams’ spring training to prepare for the regular season, the successful business needs to prepare for success through strategic planning exercises. A comprehensive strategic plan is your business’s game plan and should contain measurable actions that can be scheduled, practiced, observed, coached, and perfected.

This article is the second in a 3 –part series on strategic planning. Last month, with help from inspirational quotes by Paul “Bear” Bryant and Yogi Bera, the importance of strategic planning for your business was stressed. This month will focus on general guidance on how to create a plan. Next month’s article will demonstrate another correlation to baseball: businesses require not only the right plan but the right team and proper execution to win the game.

Batter Up. To get in the game, remind yourself of the purpose for which your company was founded, why it exists from the customers point of view, and then formulate a mission statement e.g.“We are committed to creating life time relationships with our clients that are based on mutual trust, respect, and the best customer service.” From the context of this overarching purpose formulate core values and beliefs of your business– the philosophy that guides your interactions and decisions as you carry out your mission.

First Base: After determining your mission, the first step in creating a strategic plan is to take a critical look at your business and determine exactly where you are as related to long-range goals and aspirations for the business. Yogi Bera comes through again with his own brand of brilliance regarding first steps. He said, “You can observe a lot by watching”. How true! An assessment of the current environment (market, competition, employees, and most importantly customer needs) serves as the foundation or starting point of the plan. A tool known as a S.W.O.T. analysis provides a simple formula to help identify business strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Don’t make assumptions; instead, watch staff and customer interaction, seek input from staff, ask clients what concerns them about your product and what is most important in making decisions about purchasing your services, understand your competitors and what differentiates you from them, seek information. Once data is collected, document your S.W.O.T. findings to prepare for the next step –goal setting.

Second Base: Envision the future – set a course for where you are going in order to plot the best route for success. Yogi suggested that, “The future ain’t what it used to be.” Obvious? Perhaps for the future to really change, our notion of the future must change. The bigger the dream for what could lie ahead, the bigger the potential for what can actually be accomplished. Define specific growth, performance and financial milestones to be achieved along with dates for accomplishment. Understand the resources required to achieve the goals. Leverage the things that differentiate your business and make you desirable in clients’ eyes.

Third Base: Determine how you will get there. Review the S.W.O.T. analysis and set priorities in order to give form to a manageable execution schedule. Translate the priorities to logical short term goals. Create specific action steps including start and end dates, personnel responsible and a scorecard to track plan progress. Strategic planning consultant, Peter Drucker said, “What gets tracked and measured gets done.” In essence, the strategic plan is much like spring training – it needs to be scheduled, practiced, observed, coached, and then it will be perfected.

Spring is a time of new beginnings. Get into training now to strategically plan a successful future for your business.

Bring it HOME: Next month we will bring it home with the execution plan – the final step of readiness to “Play Ball”.