Should Your Organization Invest in Strategic Planning?
This is a common question that agribusiness leadership teams face as they manage the complexities of their business. Strategic planning can be challenging, but when done well, it can serve as a productive tool that leads to long-term success. Here are five related reasons why your business should invest in strategic planning:
- Direction and Priority– Business teams must have goals, direction and priorities in order to create value. The more uncertain the times, the more critical these are. Members of your team should understand what they are working to achieve and how to prioritize their actions.
- Continuity– Continuity ensures that business goals and priorities are in alignment with the mission of the company. These priorities should not change frequently. They reinforce, to customers, what the business brand stands for.
- Simplified Decision Making– A well-developed strategic plan simplifies all the decisions that take place in an organization across all levels of management. The plan is the framework that leads the decision-making process.
- Communications– Strategic plans should not reside solely with leadership teams. They should be cascaded to all employees and serve as the basis for all communication that takes place. There is power in starting communications from a strategic perspective that links the employee to a well-established plan.
- Alignment– The output of a strategic plan is not just a set of lofty sounding statements. It structures the organization to work on strategic growth drivers and initiatives. It establishes metrics and specific goals to measure progress against.
Strategic planning works best when it follows an established framework of guiding steps. At BluEarth, we partner with leadership teams to ensure that strategy development stays on track and the critical questions are explored.
