Five Tips for Long Term Strategizing

It is a great time to start your own business, largely thanks to the recovery of the economy and the large number of supports available to start-ups. While starting a business for the first time can be very exciting, it nevertheless involves risk and long term strategy.

All successful businesses have a clear business strategy that makes what they do more effective. Strategic planning is simply the decisions you need to make so that your business objectives can be achieved and give you a competitive advantage. At RIKON, our business strategists have compiled five top strategy planning tips from hundreds of engagements so that you can put your own strategic plan together.

Know Your Business

• It is critical that you understand the current situation of where your business is now as it will allow you to make more informed decisions on where the business is going. Conduct a SWOT analysis on the strengths and weakness of the organisation within the context of external opportunities and threats. This will provide a solid foundation and context for developing strategy

Visualise Your Destination

• You need to develop a vision statement that details the aspirational vision of where the company is headed? and what the company will look like in the future? If you do not know the answer to these questions, then you have some more thinking to do! Think and Dream big.

Be SMART with Your Objectives

• Establish long term strategic objectives that will achieve the overarching vision and short-term goals that detail how you’re going to achieve strategic objectives. Objectives need to be S.M.A.R.T. (Specific. Measurable. Actionable. Reasonable. Timely). Knowing your business will allow you to understand the resources you have at your disposal to realistically achieve objectives.

Plan How You Will Get There

• Once you know where you’ve come from and where you are going, you now need to figure out the ‘HOW’ of getting there and closing the gap between these two destination points. The ‘HOW’ part of Strategic planning is the most time consuming and probably the most difficult aspect of strategic planning because this is where you have to choose one course of action over another.

Continuously Evaluate and Adapt

• It is important to evaluate and be accountable for the delivery of actions in the plan. It is also equally important to realise the need for adaptability and change and to be able to capitalise on opportunities as they arise.