Strategic Planning for 2021

In this very inter­est­ing year, many com­pa­nies are thriv­ing while oth­ers are hurt­ing – and every­one is won­der­ing what the heck will hap­pen in 2021.

Hav­ing a great plan for your busi­ness for short, long and medi­um term is always impor­tant, and most com­pa­nies we work with are appre­ci­at­ing their plans, more than ever. But as one CEO recent­ly said, as we look for­ward, we need to make sure we look at our busi­ness with fresh eyes and blank-page think­ing, so that we don’t get lost in the log­ic of past plans.

We need eyes-wide-open think­ing from 30,000 feet, to be pre­pared for what­ev­er 2021, 2022 and 2023 bring.

Look from Dif­fer­ent Perspectives

One of the most impor­tant activ­i­ties in strate­gic plan­ning is to go back and spend time on the strate­gic part of plan­ning. One of our clients, in anoth­er part of the world, has asked us to do a series of three-hour work­shops on dif­fer­ent strate­gic frame­works, so they can think through and crys­tal­lize what mat­ters most, from dif­fer­ent perspectives.

Some peo­ple like to con­sid­er strate­gic ques­tions that we can brain­storm around. Oth­ers like to use mod­els like Porter’s 5 Forces, Collins’ Fly­wheel, Blue Ocean Strat­e­gy or Strat­e­gy Map. The key is to have a set of tools that you use to frame your strate­gic medi­um- to long-term think­ing about how you’re going to win in your mar­ket. And you need to treat them as prin­ci­ples to guide short­er-term think­ing, which then guides the indi­vid­ual goals and activ­i­ties of all your team mem­bers, on a month­ly, week­ly and dai­ly basis.

Take the Time

The chal­lenge is that most lead­ers are so caught up in the day-to-day, they nev­er seem to get to work­ing on strat­e­gy – when they know they need to.

One CEO has time with his strate­gic thought part­ner, every week, but they always get stuck in short-term oper­a­tional issues. He’s now going to set aside time, out of the office for a cou­ple hours at a time, to real­ly soak into the strate­gic think­ing and looking-ahead.

The Chal­lenge

• What do you need to do to carve out strate­gic plan­ning time for you and your team?
• What do you need to get clar­i­ty a deci­sion on before the New Year?
• What are you going to con­tin­ue to spend time on this through­out the year?

Do you want expert help?

We have four expe­ri­enced core team mem­bers — all com­pe­tent in strate­gic think­ing and exe­cu­tion plan­ning frame­works — and a net­work of oth­er great advi­sors, around the world.

This is what we do all day, almost every day, and so if you are look­ing for:

• A strate­gic thought part­ner or
• Some­one to guide you and your team through the strate­gic think­ing and/​or exe­cu­tion plan­ning process or
• Some­one you can com­mit a block of time to, who knows frame­works, so can ensure you make this a priority…

…let us know.

Addi­tion­al Resources Links:

• The Growth Whis­per­ers pod­cast about How to Get Your Team to Think Strategically
• A blog about Plan­ning for San­i­ty in the Mid­dle of Chaos.