Main Idea
Does the idea of strategic planning scare you? Do you have to be able to see into the future? Is it even necessary? When was the last time you took some time to adequately plan for the future for your business? When was the last time you planned for your family? Do you know your partner’s goals? What about your spouse or your team member’s goals?
Expansion of Idea
My son, Mark, was able to go surfing this year and explained to me the whole concept of riptides. This was not something that I had thought a lot about since they don’t generally occur in Ellisville Missouri. Basically, they can be very beneficial if you find the riptide and ride the riptide out with your surfboard. But many people drown in riptides because they try to swim into the face of the riptide instead of swimming parallel and getting out of the flow. This is just a matter of planning and understanding the environment that you are in.
The business world is the same. Strategic planning is often viewed as worrying about the future. In a few isolated instances with technology, that is correct. However, for most of us strategic planning is understanding the world as it exists today. Your business for the next five years is to a large extent already determined by inventions, patterns and world climate as it currently exists. But most of us do not take the time to adequately assess our businesses, our lives and the world to put a plan in place that will help us not only survive but thrive in the future. We are just trying to get back to the shoreline and safety.
Area to Start
Talk to the key people in your business and your lives
Assess your business and personal goals
Ask yourself the key questions, “Do you have a good direction of where you are going and are you on track to get there?”