Monitoring Your Strategic Plan

Sure, you know having a strategic plan is important. You wrote one about four (or was it five) years ago. It's in that big, dusty binder in the back room - or is it in the storage box in the basement? Anyway, you wrote a plan. Isn't that good enough?

You probably know the answer to that. NO !!!! Of course not. Would you like your pilot to file a flight plan and then decide to improvise once he reached 33,000 feet and not bother to keep in touch with the air traffic controller? Do you want your child's teacher to write lesson plans and then toss them aside before he enters the classroom and just decide to talk about whatever comes to his mind? As a business owner, you need to DEVELOP, IMPLEMENT and MONITOR your strategic plan.

I am certainly not advocating that a plan is to be developed and then followed without any deviation. I am saying that it is useless to develop a plan and then leave it on the shelf.

As a business owner, you need to not only be disciplined enough to develop the plan, but you also need to be disciplined enough to implement the plan and monitor the progress. I believe that requires help. If you are the owner, I usually recommend outside help. I recommend outside help so you become ACCOUNTABLE to someone else. It is all too
easy to put the task aside if there is no one to ask you about it. With someone else monitoring progress, there is someone to ask you questions. Even though you are the boss, you have to provide explanations.

The two most common ways to have an outsider monitor progress are to hire a consultant or to "trade" with another business person. By trading, I am referring to you acting as the monitoring person for another business owner and that business owner acting as the monitoring person for you. Naturally, hiring the consultant is more expensive. However, it sometimes takes an investment in order for the business owner to "get serious" about the process. If he has paid a fee, he is more likely to continue. Nevertheless, trading can be a good option if the two owners are disciplined enough to follow through with the practice.

Either way, a strict timetable for monitoring needs to be established. You should have progress milestones set so you can measure against those milestones. You can then make adjustments to the plan as needed.

Remember, developing the strategic plan is only part of the job. The plan needs to be implemented, monitored and adjusted as needed.

Your comments are always appreciated. Thanks for reading The Business Adviser.