Strategic Planning with a Small Business

Situation Analysis:

The client has been in business for 13 years with steadily growing sales.  He was happy with his performance, but knew that it was capable of achieving better results.  His goal was to double his revenue in 3 years and to improve his life balance.  He was spending most of his time managing the day-to-day operations of the business, leaving little time for anything else, including thinking about his business more objectively and strategically.

Solution:

By utilizing the Executive Strategic Planning process, we created a strategic plan for his business with a series of one-on-one meetings over a 10-week period.  The plan included a vision, mission and values to guide the company, an assessment of the strengths, limitations, opportunities and threats facing the company from an internal and external perspective, critical goals and an action plan to accomplish the goals and finally a dashboard of measures to guide the achievement of his goals.  Once the plan was created, monthly meetings were held with the client for the remaining 12-month period to review progress in achieving the actions and overcoming barriers to goal achievement.  During these meetings the focus was on coaching the client to determine ways to address the challenges and to cheer the successes as he implemented the plan.

Results:

By examining all the factors to influence his results, the client was able to achieve a sales growth of 21% from 2006 to 2007.  With many infrastructure changes accomplished during 2007, he is positioned to grow over 25% in 2008.  All of this growth has been accomplished with just a small addition to his staff.  As importantly, by bringing an experienced relative into the business in a critical operations role, he was able to achieve this growth and hand off many of the key infrastructure elements to free up more of his time.