Think strategically for a stellar strategic action plan!

Strategic planning and chunking out your strategic plan are critical to getting things done! Here are some suggested steps to creating your own strategic action plan:

  1. Make those goals SMART. By making goals SMART, you position yourself to be able to measure outcomes, chunk out smaller goals and set action items around the bigger picture.SMART_graphic
    • SPECIFIC.  Be as specific as possible: a highly honed, specific goal has a far better chance of being achieved. It will leave you feeling more accomplished than a general goal would. To make a goal specific, answer the six-“W”-questions: Why, what, where, when, which, & why.
    • MEASURABLE. Put a quantifiable number in your goal to be able to measure outcomes when the goal is achieved.
    • ATTAINABLE. Can you actually reach this goal with the resources and time you have? When you set a great goal for your business, you grow and expand to match it, thus becoming attainable.
    • REALISTIC. You should be willing and able to work towards this g oal. A high goal brings high motivational energy to you and your business, so aim high!
    • TIME-BOUND. Every goal needs to have time associated with it, grounded in reality, in a schedule, and in YOUR calendar.
  2. See the BIG picture. Your one year and five year goals should be big picture goals.  Focus and refocus on the forest vs the tree approach to your business.  The forest view could lead you to having a goal of “To have a sustainable accounting practice in the next five years,” but when you refocus on the details or “the trees,” it could be rephrased as, “To have a sustainable accounting practice with five employees, and 50 clients per year in order to bring value to small businesses in San Diego over the next five years.”
  3. Bucket your strategic alliances.  Your strategic alliances are those individuals or organizations that are in front of your target market right before you, or can recycle clients back to you.  When you organize those alliances into functional groups or buckets, you can reach out to them easier and not get so overwhelmed in your outreach efforts. For example, one of our Hera-Labs buckets is “professional women’s organizations” and within that bucket we list National Association of Women Business Owners, National Association of Women MBAs, Athena, etc. Then, one action item per month is to reach out to one of these organizations per week to achieve our annual goal of being the premier female business accelerator in San Diego to serve 50 female entrepreneurs outside of Hera Hub.
  4. Know the ebbs and flows of your business or industry.  When calendaring your action items, knowing the ups and downs of your workload or if you don’t know that, the demands throughout the year of your industry, will allow you to prioritize your work according to the amount and type of work load.
  5. Accountability is a key to success! Time-and-time-again, we’re reminded that the secret to entrepreneurial success is accountability. It can take place in a group or one-on-one with a business colleague—it just has to be an element in your strategic planning success. As entrepreneurs we get so heavily overwhelmed with the minutia, that we need someone to keep us accountable to the larger picture and the growth you envision your business to have.

These are the top 5 ways to start thinking of an actionable strategic plan for your business.  If you would like to get even more granular and get your strategic action plan DONE IN ONE DAY, please join us for our Strategic Planning Session 1.0 on Friday, May 9th from 9:30 a.m. – 6:30 p.m. We’ll cover:

  • 5 year and 1 year – Big Picture Goals
  • Top 10 annual SMART goals
  • Action steps to achieve goals
  • Refine Target Market
  • Refine Positioning
  • Top Strategic Alliance
  • Marketing Tactics
  • Sales Funnel
  • Pricing Matrix
  • Financial Projections
  • Annual Action Calendar
  • Weekly Calendar
  • Accountability Plan & Ongoing Accountability group

If you have already done a strategic plan and are in a growth phase for your business, please consider our Strategic Planning Session 2.0 the following Friday, May 16th from 9:30 a.m. – 6:30 p.m. Email our Hera LABs CEO, Silvia Mah for more 2.0 details, or to get on the waiting list.