As we approach the start of 2024, a year that promises both opportunities and uncertainties, the importance of strategic planning for businesses becomes increasingly crucial. Much like any well-thought-out trip, a business must have a plan—a roadmap to guide its course and ensure it not only survives but thrives in the face of challenges and opportunities. If you can’t rely on a plan to help you chart a course, why should you do it? Why waste the time? If you follow the definition of planning as your guide, you will see why the process is so critical to any business’s success.
"Planning always has a purpose”
You would never take a trip without at least knowing where you were going right? Planning for a business is much the same. Planning is a must if you have ideas of where your business should be or where you want your business to be. To plan means you have a purpose in mind. Tactics and strategies set to achieve your goals might change, but the PLAN, the foundation of what you want to accomplish shouldn’t.
Business planning has many characteristics which include; https://businessjargons.com/planning.html
Intellectual and Mental Exercise
Managerial Function
Goal Focus
Based on Continuous Improvement
Positive and Persuasive
Future Facing
Decision Oriented
At ActionCOACH, planning is central to everything we teach business owners to do. Whether at 1:1 sessions, group coaching sessions, or quarterly GrowthCLUB meetings, business owners are challenged to set actionable, attainable, realistic, and measurable goals that they can use to chart their progress.
GrowthCLUB is a Quarterly workshop that was created to help clients and their management team plan and prepare their 90-day plan. The day's purpose is to assess how far the business has come on its long-term plan in the last 90 days, and what needs to happen in the next 90 days to propel the business to achieve that plan. This is also an ideal workshop for other business owners and employees to attend, as it helps to increase learning and gives them a structure to plan growth in their business and personal lives.
Remember, tactics and strategies can change. You can deploy resources differently or allocate them in new ways to meet market conditions, but you should never abandon your plans of being bigger, better, and stronger. Only with a road map, a chart, and a course, can you stay on track and achieve the business goals you want in 2024.
Edited from the original article by ActionCOACH Carmen Gigar
https://www.actioncoach.com/blog/planning-why-its-critical-for-success/
December 12, 2023
