Strategic Planning Best Practices

The 7 Steps To Achieving Business Excellence

The Critical Nature Of Planning And Executing What Counts
By Sheri Taber

Are you ready to make 2009 your lifetime best year?  By following our seven steps to achieving business excellence, you can create successive years of lifetime bests!

Business excellence occurs when a business relentlessly and consistently executes effective and strategic action steps that lead to goal achievement.

Execution is the systematic, accountability driven, measurable way of effecting concrete action steps that are driven by strategy.  Execution is fundamental to strategy and must be taken into account during the strategy development phase.

A business’ success is dependent on the leader understanding what strategy and execution is, how they balance one another, and how to navigate them through the obstacles and surprises that show up in the course of business.  Balancing execution and strategy is the key to business excellence and it is a lifelong journey for every organization.

All of this probably sounds kind of mystical and perhaps, rather “corporate America” for the business leader who has never truly sat down and developed his company’s mission, vision, goals, and strategic plan. We have developed an easy-to-follow, seven-step formula to achieving excellence.

Would it be worth a couple of hours each week planning and measuring results if you could increase revenue and profitability while reducing the number of hours you have to work in a week? Yes? Then you will want to develop a strategic plan as soon as possible.

This is vitally important for every company – even solo-preneurs – who wants to achieve business success and excellence.  Therefore, creating time for planning is a must.  Another alternative to going it alone is to work with a strategy expert who possesses the knowledge to support you in developing the most comprehensive, objective, strategic plan possible.

Seven-Step Strategy to Business Excellence

1.      Develop your company’s Mission Statement.

The Mission Statement speaks to the “Why” of the organization.  Why does it exist? 

2.      Develop your company’s Vision Statement.

The Vision Statement speaks to the “Where.”  Where does the organization want to see itself in the future?

3.      Develop your company’s Value Statement.

The Value Statement speaks to the “What” of the company.  What is the character or personality of the organization?  What are its values and principles? 

These first three steps are important because they direct how everything gets done.  They provide the “soul” of the company.  When a company isn’t sure what to do in a given situation, they can turn to their Mission, Vision, and Value statements to determine exactly the right thing to do.

4.      Set Goals. 

The more vivid and concrete the longer-term goals are, the better the organization will do at aligning the near-term goals effectively.  A one-year goal is always determined by the 3 – 5 year goals.

Quarterly objectives are derived from the annual goals.  These quarterly objectives now frame the activity that must be accomplished each quarter to achieve the annual goals.

5.      Create Alignment. 

Transferring strategic activities to the appropriate people is the first step in achieving effective execution.

As you might expect, communication throughout all levels of your company is critical to business success.  If you fail to communicate your plan to all players, no one will have a clue what it takes to succeed.  Your people need to be intimately familiar with your Mission, Vision, Values, and your Strategic Plan if you are serious about achieving success and excellence.

6.      Execute. 

Managing the timely execution of the strategic activities is one of the most profitable tasks a leader can undertake. If you have more than one person or one unit in your company, the strategic action steps must be delegated to all departments and all of the people who are best suited to execute them. It is a waste of time to complete the previous steps if you don’t execute on the plan.

7.      Measure. 

Measuring outcomes against objectives is important.  It provides information to course correct in a timely manner or to adjust goals for acceleration.

A Strategic Plan is a living, dynamic document.  It drives your business and must be integrated into every aspect of your organization. Achieving business excellence is not automatic, but it can be fun and it is a worthy goal.  If you aren’t playing to win, you might want to rethink what you are doing.

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Sheri’ Taber, a strategy expert, provides her clients with more than 25 years of organizational development and performance improvement experience.  She is the founder and CEO of The Peak Performance Group, a global management-consulting firm.  Contact Sheri’ to learn how you can achieve competitive advantage and successive lifetime best years!

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