Why do so many Strategic Plans fail to attain targets? Consider my article Key Questions for your Strategic Plan’s Bottom Line, which The CEO Magazine (article link below) has allowed me to share.
Today’s economy is a perfect storm of rapid change, risk, opportunity, and uncertainty. By working with the key questions outlined here, your company can develop a fiscal vision which grounds your strategic plan in reality. A strategy that is driven by the company’s financial performance and goals is a strategy that will separate the victors from the victims.
Most strategic plans are blue sky and detached from bottom line performance, however a fiscal vision makes your strategic game plan measurable so at any point in time you and your executive team can ascertain if and how your company is achieving its strategic goals in accordance with your financial objectives. To this end, I apply the fiscal vision to what I think are the four most critical drivers of any business – risk, opportunity, change, and uncertainty. (In fact, I’d go as far as to say that these four drivers are the DNA of modern business.) The first two aspects (risk and opportunity) focus on the internal forces that determine a company’s gestalt (that is, its business orientation and management mindset); the latter two aspects (change and uncertainty) focus on how a company responds or reacts to the external forces (i.e., the economic environment) in which it operates.
By Gary W Patterson
The full article is available below:
http://tinyurl.com/d4allk6