|
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.
Reproduction without permission is strictly prohibited. Reprint or excerpt permission must be obtained to avoid copyright
violation.
|
