It would be unbelievable if any successful enterprise nowadays could succeed without a plan, in my opinion. For instance, if you were managing a football team like Manchester United, you would need a strategic plan to win. Ask yourself if you were to win a match play over Chelsea, would you need a focus strategy for the 1^st half of the match? What about your game plan A? Plan B and substitution plan?

Having had grown plenty startups and turned around numerous money-losing enterprises myself, I personally believe that strategic plan is essential, be it for a startup or small-and-medium enterprise (SME). It plans, it directs, and it calculates; more importantly, it helps you to determine major actions your company could do within a set of well-established objectives, initiatives, key performance indicators (KPI) and so on, thus enabling you to run your business energy-efficiently, timely.

You may have read many management books, success story books and/or attended plenty seminars dedicated to this topic. None the less, would you still wonder how should approach a practicable and realistic strategic planning? Preparing a strategic plan might sound like a lengthy process, it is pretty easy to handle if you break it down. I have shared here an easy 4 steps to formulate your strategic plan for impeccable organizational strategy and structure.

STEP 1: Determine Your Company’s Direction

It represents a bigger picture of your business where you will need to determine your company’s vision and focus of the year (refer PLANNING section for example).

STEP 2: Determine the Authority and Accountability

You should determine the divisions and departments which considered key, with sets of key objectives which require direct attention from the defined teams (refer LEADING section for example).

STEP 3: Determine Your Departmental Goals

You are required to define and unify the desired goals (derived from KPIs) for each department in order to address each initiative set (refer ORGANIZING section for example).

STEP 4: Review Your Activities & Results

The regularly scheduled review sessions should be carried out to ensure that your plan performs accordingly by month, by department.  (refer CONTROLLING section for example).

Performance review is an extreme important thing here, years ago I managed to turnaround a money-losing company with consistently losing multi-million dollar yearly in just one year by reviewing and adjusting my action plans every day, including Sundays.