BY FRED VICTOR.
It would be unbelievable if any successful enterprise nowadays
could succeed without a plan, in my opinion. For instance, if you were managing
a football team like Manchester United, you would need a strategic plan to win.
Ask yourself if you were to win a match play over Chelsea, would you need a
focus strategy for the 1st half of the match? What about your game
plan A? Plan B and substitution plan?
Having had grown plenty startups and turned around numerous money-losing
enterprises myself, I personally believe that strategic plan is essential, be
it for a startup or small-and-medium enterprise (SME). It plans, it directs,
and it calculates; more importantly, it helps you to determine major actions your
company could do within a set of well-established objectives, initiatives, key
performance indicators (KPI) and so on, thus enabling you to run your business energy-efficiently,
timely.
You may have read many management books, success story books
and/or attended plenty seminars dedicated to this topic. None the less, would
you still wonder how should approach a practicable and realistic strategic
planning? Preparing a strategic plan might sound like a lengthy process, it is
pretty easy to handle if you break it down. I have shared here an easy 4 steps
to formulate your strategic plan for impeccable organizational strategy and structure.
STEP 1: Determine Your
Company’s Direction
It represents a bigger picture of your business where you
will need to determine your company’s vision and focus of the year (refer
PLANNING section for example).
STEP 2: Determine the
Authority and Accountability
You should determine the divisions and departments which
considered key, with sets of key objectives which require direct attention from
the defined teams (refer LEADING section for example).
STEP 3: Determine
Your Departmental Goals
You are required to define and unify the desired goals (derived
from KPIs) for each department in order to address each initiative set (refer ORGANIZING
section for example).
STEP 4: Review Your Activities & Results
The regularly scheduled review sessions should be carried
out to ensure that your plan performs accordingly by month, by department. (refer CONTROLLING section for example).
Performance review is an extreme important thing here, years
ago I managed to turnaround a money-losing company with consistently losing multi-million
dollar yearly in just one year by reviewing and adjusting my action plans every
day, including Sundays.
**About GE Consult
GE Consult is a Malaysian-based marketing consulting
firm headquartered in Kuala Lumpur. Since inception in 2003, the company has
been pioneering professional business plan and company profile services in
Malaysia, and has assisted many local and overseas SMEs, large corporations and
government agencies to grow business. For more info, please contact +603 4031 1683 or +6017 330 8077 and/or email info@geconsult.org today.
