The Energy in Your Plan
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The Energy in Your Plan
Strategies are actions taken to achieve objectives. Your plan is just a document unless it contains strategies to be carried out. Strategies bring action to the plan.
Long term strategies lay out the actions required to achieve the direction you've decided on for your business. Tactics are short term action strategies -- the to-do list for the coming year, and may have their own set of objectives. Here are some important long term strategic topics to address in a challenging market:
~Strategies to increase your current market ~Strategies for developing new markets ~Strategies to keep your market share ~Strategies for positioning your company and its products or services
The Small Business Administration: "Strategic planning is matching the strengths of your business to available opportunities."
Nolo: "A strategic plan identifies your nonprofit's goals for a certain time period (generally one to three years) and outlines how you will achieve those goals. Though your nonprofit will undoubtedly engage in future planning for specific activities, think of the strategic plan as the "master plan" for your organization."
Wikipedia: "Strategic planning is an organization's process of defining its strategy, or direction, and making decisions on allocating its resources to pursue this strategy, including its capital and people."
Random House: "1. In military usage, a distinction is made between strategy and tactics. Strategy is the utilization, during both peace and war, of all of a nation's forces, through large-scale, long-range planning and development, to ensure security or victory. Tactics deals with the use and deployment of troops in actual combat."
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Tactical strategies are what many employees carry out and are responsible for. When you develop your strategies, consider these issues:
~Which people are associated with what specific strategy (and objective)?
~Will they do a better job by knowing the larger strategy? Or is knowing their own objectives enough?
~How will you communicate with your employees about their strategies and objectives? Exactly what do they need to "get"?
~What policies might be implemented to insure that people carry out your strategic plan (for example, reporting or tracking policies; communications policies)
~In what ways do people with different objectives need to work together to "connect" sub-strategies? In what ways must they collaborate?
~In what cases will incentives tied to objectives work?
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