Strategic planning should incorporate a healthy amount of risk taking and is intended to ensure that businesses set the right organisational goals to fulfil the organisation’s purpose. There are many factors involved in strategic planning, from coming up with a process to ensure that plans are made and met to developing an organisation-wide system that ensures that plans are being carried out across every level of a business.
Unfortunately, one of the biggest problems that organisations face is a lack of understanding when it comes to just how important it is to ensure that all decision makers within a company understand their goals and how to plan strategically in alignment with the organisation’s purpose. This is where strategic planning consultants such as Bryan Whitefield, a thought leader in the industry, can help.
Developing a Strategic Planning System
A strategic planning process involves numerous different decisions that must be made throughout different levels of an organisation. It is important that certain factors in strategic planning are universal - for example, the risk appetite an organisation has when making strategic decisions. Strategic planning consultants can help with the development of a process in addition to its implementation at all levels of an organisation, which in turn can increase its efficiency.
The process of strategic planning begins with understanding where a company is at the beginning of that process. By taking into account various factors such as KPIs and a business's current risk appetite, a consultant can help business leaders to better understand their current situation as well as projected outcomes for various measures that may be undertaken during the strategic planning process.
From there, business leaders can come up with reasonable and actionable goals and objectives with the help of consultants. Apart from being measurable in some way, these goals should reflect the needs of the organisation as a whole. While most businesses know that there are downsides to overreaching by setting unrealistic objectives, it can be just as important to stretch targets to test the organisation’s ability to grow capability.
How Consultants Can Help With the Strategic Planning Process
Consultants do far more than provide businesses with information about best practices regarding strategic decision making. In addition to helping source information they can use in their decision making efforts, consultants such as Bryan Whitefield can help businesses understand the organisation’s current capability and the KPIs that matter the most to their business to build a better strategic planning and capability monitoring system.
Regardless of where a business is when it comes to strategic planning - whether they are currently looking to construct a new strategic planning process from the ground up or they are looking to revitalise an existing process - a consultant such as Bryan can help. Contact him for more information about what he can do for your business.