Startups and small to mid-sized businesses in the US have much to gain from developing strategic planning and innovative practices early on. With an eye on strategy planning many SMBs can grow through difficult times and with an expansive view they can grow on demand. Unfortunately many startups and SMBs instead maintain for years at stagnate profits, breakeven, or simply close to sell or exit a failing business, but this does not have to be the case. After spending the past 9 years as an entrepreneur and now responsible for many growing companies, interviewing other entrepreneurs both that are successful and those that are not I’ve come to realize that there are key components to planning that most successful companies develop in their processes that make them successful.
In addition, consulting in strategy and knowledge of psychology and behavior for many years has led me to the insights and experiences I have with private and government organizations and how I’ve learned why many companies perform optimally and others poorly. For many companies that desired performance is usually business growth, growth in profits or increased ROI’s. For many reasons optimizing a business strategy or innovating without these results or creating an opportunity that leads to these results is truly a waste of time and effort. One of the main reasons startups and SMBs fail is because they fail to implement some very necessary activities that would allow them success along the way to market that would propel them to success. At MMM we believe the combination of strategic planning and innovative growth practices are a major part of the foundation for business success. Formulating such an approach to align a business with the desired rate of return on investment really rests on these two approaches in management and the idea that the market must value the products and services being offered. Value must be realized for customers in conjunction with these components and vital for a long term growth plan not just from the onset but even more evidenced, is the realization that at any stage in a businesses life these activities can become critical to survival and or growth.
Having strategic management and innovation baked into the business process prepares a company to succeed as it strengthens business position based on valuable insights. It’s these insights that create high market value spurred from the best decisions and formulates lead generation leading to increases of value for customers/clients and sales for that organization.
Allow me to define these components. Strategy Planning is usually conducted under Strategic Management and that activity is comprised of 4 major elements:
1) Scanning the environment : This is an evaluation of a firm's own strengths, weaknesses opportunities and threats from both the internal and external environment, a view of the company as it relates to each of many variables and forces that a company weighs which ultimately becomes an overall analysis.
2) Preparing the strategy : Strategy Preparation is a very succinct and pragmatic delineation of the consideration of the analysis and the approach moving forward to meeting a firm's goals.
3) Implementing the Strategy : The action and actual business strategic goals and plan in motion is never static is has many continuous and moving parts that is the business itself.
4) Evaluating and controlling the Strategy: The consistent assessment, measuring, defining, and adjusting of activities is the constant active part of the strategic planning process that never ends.
In the article mentioned below we get a glimpse of why simple strategy plans don’t work (https://hbr.org/2016/06/strategic-plans-are-less-important-than-strategic-planning)
Our second component is innovation activity which is comprised of 3 major elements:
1) Creating the new: This is where a company takes its assessment of the resources, processes , values, behaviors, success, values in its internal and external world in providing value to its customers and then produces something new perhaps seen as a way of growth based on increased customer value, or new waves of customers for example. Typically this activity manifests itself as a new product, service or combination thereof.
2) Adaptation of the new: This process is about both a companies efforts to get customers to buy into the new creation, their response to it, through a series of stages of adoption.
3)Support the new: This process is about carefully crafting and creating, supporting or tweaking any of the impacting business systems, products and or activities that support, promote or strengthen the new creation based on the current resources or opportunity for resources. This can mean that additional processes or services are created for the success of that new innovation.
Here is why only one of these components either missing or non existent just doesn't work
Read this :
http://www.techrepublic.com/article/innovate-like-amazon-put-values-and-tactics-ahead-of-strategy/
Here at Malek Mia Management, we truly believe that setting up these 2 ingredients is a way to optimize a path for success. Startups and SMBs can foresee opportunities that they were once considered either unavailable or unattainable forging a new path to a dream realized ahead.
You can learn more about Malek Mia Management Strategic Planning Services and b2b sales consulting services Here:www.malekmiamanagement.com