Successfully Sailing through Rough Seas
Betsi Bixby

Just as getting a boat to the shore in windy, rough waters takes an exceptional, competent captain, today’s turbulent fuel market demands strong executive strategy to maintain profit.  From a study on successful company leadership, I found that in the top 5% U.S. companies, leaders spent over 60% of their actual work time on strategic planning. At the other 95%, company leaders spent an average of 7%. Clearly, time spent in strategic planning is one of the keys to profits no matter what the economic climate.

So at this point, please ask yourself this question, “Am I and the other members of my management team too busy putting out fires each day to devote time solely to strategic planning?” If you feel too busy, too strung out with daily challenges, you are not alone. However, since planning is proven to increase profits, making a regular time commitment to the planning process with key team members is one of the healthiest things you can do.

Get prepared by posing a series of questions to be completed by key, knowledgeable managerial and non-managerial employees.   At Meridian, we find using a traditional SWOT (strength, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis as a good starting point for planning. The SWOT analysis should address both internal and external components of business.   We find it useful to conduct the SWOT analysis in categories such as Products, Customers, Marketing, Suppliers, Competitors and Internal Systems. You could begin by picking and choosing from the following list of questions we developed over the years from various clients and resource materials.   Add or subtract questions as you see fit.

Products: What are we currently selling? (Note: this is a key question – get beyond the obvious, tangible-goods answer.) Should we be selling anything different?  What could change about our products in the future that could impact our sales? (Does 6:00 p.m. huge fuel price swings hit a nerve?)  What changes would that mean for our business? What are our product strengths? What are our product weaknesses?

Customers: Who are our customers today? Why do those customers buy from us? Why have we lost customers in the past year? How will today’s economic environment impact our current customers.  How will our customers change in the next 5 years? What satisfies our customers? How are we doing at satisfying them? How can we add more value to our customers?

Marketing: How do we presently reach those customers? Will that change in the next five years? How do our customers want to be reached? Will that change in the next 5 years? What effective ways to reach more customers are we possibly missing?

Suppliers: Who are our present key suppliers? Will we need to add or subtract suppliers over the next 5 years? (See product answers). How do our suppliers see us? (You may want to involve suppliers directly in this process.) How can we be better customers for our suppliers?   What resources can our suppliers provide us that we are not presently utilizing? What weaknesses do our present suppliers have that could negatively impact us?

Competitors: Who are our top five competitors presently? What is each competitor’s strengths and weaknesses? Who will be our top competitors 5 years from now? What presently makes us unique and different from our competitors? In what areas do our competitors presently excel beyond our performance or capabilities?

Internal Systems: What are our system strengths? What are our system weaknesses? Do our present business systems ensure our viability 5 years from now? What changes would need to occur in our present systems to support our products and marketing 5 years from now? Are we spending our money on the right things? How are we measuring our system effectiveness? How should we measure system effectiveness? Do we have the right people doing the right work? If no, explain. Are our employees satisfied with their jobs? If no, explain. In what areas could our internal communication be improved? How could our management improve its depth, expertise and effectiveness?

Once each individual on the team has completed these questions, have a competent admin assistant compile all of the answers into one document.  Once the SWOT question responses are compiled, your next step is to choose a diverse team to come together and create action plans.  We’ve found teams of no greater than 11 members are most effective no matter how large the company and recommend the team include customer-contact level personnel.   

With our planning process, we take these teams off-site and sequester them for two days using a customized and slightly modified version of traditional Japanese planning called “Hoshin.”   Unlike traditional planning methods, this planning technique ensures that the actions steps developed are put in a perfectly logical and efficient sequence for execution. Most of the companies we have worked with have really been surprised by not only their steps, but also their sequence. Many times the items they thought were top priorities were quite far down the list!

So when you get your team together, your goal is to digest the feedback and develop a concrete action plan.  The final plan should include each action item or goal, steps to completion including interim measurable milestones, potential obstacles, the task finish date, and the person responsible for ultimate execution of each step. 

Next comes the hardest part – actual execution!  As your staff proceeds with action steps, keep the strategic team informed about progress (or lack of it!) Although you want smooth seamless execution, remember that Rome wasn’t built in a day!  Regular checkups with the team are necessary to keep momentum and make strategic adjustments as necessary when things don’t work the way you thought they would.   With diligence, however, you will complete a good portion of your plan and reach the majority of your goals.  Then, you celebrate and simply start the process all over again.

As you proceed, remember it’s not always the destination that counts, it’s the journey.  The business climate and outside forces change rapidly.  No matter how good a plan, flexibility and the courage to foresee and adjust the sails as the winds change are vital.  As one marketer said to me, “We are plagued with these new fuel price challenges but we realize all we need to do is figure out how to use all of that price flux to our competitive advantage.”  Now that’s smart leadership and the entrepreneurial  can-do attitude that has fueled American businesses to success through even the worst of economic times.

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