Developing a Strategic Plan

Coming up with an idea—say, starting a note-taking business—is a good start, but it’s only a start. Planning for it is a step forward. Planning begins at the highest level and works its way down through the organization. Step one is usually called strategic planningProcess of establishing an overall plan or course of action for an organization., which is the process of establishing an overall course of action. To begin this process, you should ask yourself a couple of very basic questions: Why, for example, does the organization exist? What value does it create? Sam Walton posed these questions in the process of founding Wal-Mart: his new chain of stores would exist to offer customers the lowest prices with the best possible service.Lee Scott, “Three Basic Beliefs,” About Wal-Mart, http://www.walmartstores.com/GlobalWMStoresWeb/navigate.do?catg=252 (accessed May 3, 2006).

After you’ve identified the purpose of your company, you’re ready to take the remaining steps in the strategic-planning process:

• Write a mission statement that tells customers, employees, and others why your organization exists.
• Identify core values or beliefs that will guide the behavior of members of the organization.
• Assess the company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
• Establish goals and objectives, or performance targets, to direct all the activities that you’ll perform to achieve your mission.
• Develop and implement tactical and operational plans to achieve goals and objectives.

In the next few sections, we’ll examine these components of the strategic-planning process.

Mission Statement

As we saw in an earlier chapter, the mission statement describes the purpose of your organization—the reason for its existence. It tells the reader what the organization is committed to doing. It can be very concise, like the one from Mary Kay Inc. (the cosmetics company): “To enrich the lives of women around the world.”Mary Kay Inc. Web site, Employment at Mary Kay section, http://www.marykay.com/company/jobsatmarykay/default.aspx (accessed September 21, 2011). Or it can be as detailed as the one from Harley-Davidson: “We fulfill dreams inspired by the many roads of the world by providing extraordinary motorcycles and customer experiences. We fuel the passion for freedom in our customers to express their own individuality.”Harley-Davidson Web site, Company/Student Center section, http://www.harley-davidson.com/en_GB/Content/Pages/Company/company.html?locale=en_GB&bmLocale=enGB (accessed September 21, 2011).

Figure 6.2

Harley-Davidson has a very focused mission statement—it’s all about the motorcycles.

© 2010 Jupiterimages Corporation

What about Notes-4-You? What should your mission statement say? A simple, concise mission statement for your enterprise could be the following: “To provide high-quality class notes to college students.” On the other hand, you could prepare a more detailed statement that explains what the company is committed to doing, who its customers are, what its focus is, what goods or services it provides, and how it serves its customers. In that case, your mission statement might be the following:

Core Values

Having defined your mission, your next step is to ask, what does this organization stand for? What values will define it? What principles should guide our actions as we build and operate the business? In Chapter 2 "Business Ethics and Social Responsibility", we explained that the small set of guiding principles that you identify as crucial to your company are known as core values—fundamental beliefs about what’s important and what is and isn’t appropriate in conducting company activities. Core values affect the overall planning processes and operations. At Volvo, for example, three core values—safety, quality, and environmental care—define the firm’s “approach to product development, design and production.”Volvo Group Global, http://www.volvogroup.com/group/global/en-gb/volvo%20group/our_brand/volvo/Pages/volvo.aspx (accessed September 21, 2011). Core values should also guide the behavior of every individual in the organization. Coca-Cola, for instance, reports that its stated core values—leadership, collaboration, integrity, accountability, passion, diversity and quality—tell employees exactly what behaviors are acceptable.The Coca-Cola Company, “Code of Business Conduct,” http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/ourcompany/mission_vision_values.html (accessed September 21, 2011). How do companies communicate core values to employees and hold them accountable for putting those values into practice? They link core values to performance evaluations and compensation.

In choosing core values for Notes-4-You, you’re determined not to fall back on some list of the world’s most popular core values: ethics/integrity, accountability, respect for others, and open communication.“Most Executives Say Ethics, Integrity Are Among Core Corporate Values,” allBusiness, http://www.allbusiness.com/reports-reviews-sections/polls-surveys/11427605-1.html (accessed October 9, 2011). You want yours to be unique to Notes-4-You. After some thought, you settle on teamwork, trust, and dependability. Why these three? As you plan your business, you realize that it will need a workforce that functions as a team, trusts each other, and can be depended on to satisfy customers. In building your workforce, you’ll seek employees who’ll embrace these values.

Conduct a SWOT Analysis

The next step in the strategic-planning process is to assess your company’s fit with its environment. A common approach to environmental analysis is matching the strengths of your business with the opportunities available to it. It’s called SWOT analysisApproach used to assess a company’s fit with its environment by analyzing its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. because it calls for analyzing an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. It begins with an examination of external factors that could influence the company in either a positive or a negative way. These could include economic conditions, competition, emerging technologies, laws and regulations, and customers’ expectations.

One purpose of assessing the external environment is to identify both opportunities that could benefit the company and threats to its success. For example, a company that manufactures children’s bicycle helmets would view a change in federal law requiring all children to wear helmets as an opportunity. The news that two large sports-equipment companies were coming out with bicycle helmets would be a threat.

The next step is to evaluate the company’s strengths and weaknesses. Strengths might include a motivated workforce, state-of-the-art technology, impressive managerial talent, or a desirable location. The opposite of any of these strengths (poor workforce, obsolete technology, incompetent management, or poor location) could signal a potential weakness. Armed with a good idea of external opportunities and threats, as well as internal strengths and weaknesses, managers want to capitalize on opportunities by taking advantage of organizational strengths. Likewise, they want to protect the organization from both external threats and internal weaknesses.

Let’s start with our strengths. Now that we know what they are, how do we match them with our available opportunities (while also protecting ourselves from our threats and overcoming our weaknesses)? Here’s a possibility: By providing excellent service and price while we’re still small (with few customers and low costs), we can solidify our position on campus. When the market grows (as it will, because of the increase in the number of classes—especially those at 8:00 a.m.—and increases in student enrollment), we’ll have built a strong reputation and will put ourselves in a position to grow. So even if a competitor comes to campus (a threat), we’ll be the preferred supplier of class notes. This strategy will work only if we make sure that our notetakers are dependable and that we don’t alienate the faculty or administration.

Set Goals and Objectives

Your mission statement affirms what your organization is generally committed to doing, but it doesn’t tell you how to do it. So the next step in the strategic-planning process is establishing goals and objectives. GoalsMajor accomplishments that a company wants to achieve over a long period of time. are major accomplishments that the company wants to achieve over a long period (say, five years). ObjectivesIntermediate-term performance targets that direct the activities of an organization toward the attainment of a goal. are shorter-term performance targets that direct the activities of the organization toward the attainment of a goal. They should be clearly stated, attainable, and measurable: they should give target dates for the completion of tasks and stipulate who’s responsible for taking necessary actions.Scott Safranski and Ik-Whan Kwon, “Strategic Planning for the Growing Business” (1991), U.S. Small Business Administration, http://www.sbaonline.sba.gov/idc/groups/public/documents/sba_homepage/serv_pubs_eb_pdf_eb6.pdf (accessed October 9, 2011).

An organization will have a number of goals and related objectives. Some will focus on financial measures, such as profit maximization and sales growth. Others will target operational efficiency or quality control. Still others will govern the company’s relationships with its employees, its community, its environment, or all three.

Finally, goals and objectives change over time. As a firm reassesses its place in its business environment, it rethinks not only its mission but also its approach to fulfilling it. The reality of change was a major theme when the late McDonald’s CEO Jim Cantalupo explained his goal to revitalize the company:

This change in focus was accompanied by specific performance objectives—annual sales growth of 3 to 5 percent and income growth of 6 to 7 percent at existing restaurants, plus a five-point improvement (based on customer surveys) in speed of service, friendliness, and food quality.

In setting strategic goals and performance objectives for Notes-4-You, you should keep things simple. Because you know you need to make money to stay in business, you could include a financial goal (and related objectives). Your mission statement promises “high-quality, dependable, competitively priced class notes,” so you could focus on the quality of the class notes that you’ll be taking and distributing. Finally, because your mission is to serve students, one goal could be customer oriented. When all’s said and done, your list of goals and objectives might look like this:

• Goal 1: Achieve a 10 percent return on profits in your first five years.

  • Objective: Sales of $20,000 and profit of $2,000 for the first twelve months of operations.

• Goal 2: Produce a high-quality product.

  • Objective: First-year satisfaction scores of 90 percent or higher on quality of notes (based on survey responses to three measures—understandability, readability, and completeness).

• Goal 3: Attain 98 percent customer satisfaction by the end of your fifth year.

  • Objective: Making notes available within two days after class, 95 percent of the time.

Develop Tactical and Operational Plans

The planning process begins at the top of the organization, where upper-level managers create a strategic plan, but it doesn’t end there. The execution of the strategic plan involves managers at all levels.

Plan for Contingencies and Crises

Even with great planning, things don’t always turn out the way they’re supposed to. Perhaps your plans were flawed, or maybe you had great plans but something in the environment shifted unexpectedly. Successful managers anticipate and plan for the unexpected. Dealing with uncertainty requires contingency planning and crisis management.