The Importance of the Strategic Planning Process
A June 21, 2016, article in the “Harvard Business Review”, discusses the importance of the strategic planning process over the actual strategic plan.
I facilitate the strategic planning process for clients to realize that the strategic plan is always a work in progress and considers differentiating business products, processes and results for a “blue ocean strategy”.
How to Do Strategic Planning in Kansas City
Many small business owners have questions about how to do strategic planning in a small Kansas City company. For a Kansas City business to have a robust strategic plan with a framework and objectives for success, the Kansas City executive business team needs to first determine:
Distinguishing characteristics of the Kansas City business.
How to use the distinguishing characteristics to build innovative value for the Kansas City marketplace.
The cost – price – value points of the products and services offered by the Kansas City business.
How to execute the strategic plan.
Sustainability and renewability of the strategic plan.
Consideration of the above points makes a robust strategic plan for the Kansas City business and increases the odds of business success. A strategic planning process that is shared with employees creates a sense of striving together for a successful future and is an engaging outcome for everyone.
Why an Employee Engages and Wants to Stay
Kansas City employers want employees to be engaged and stay with the company. Kansas City employees tell me the reasons they stay at a company, other than pay, are because they like the work, the people are great to work with, management respects them and values the work that they do, they feel that they have a future at the company, or the work/life balance is good.
Central to building an engaged workforce that will stay with a Kansas City company is the need to build a company culture with strong, transparent and fair performance and talent management practices. Kansas City employees need to see a company strategy, work objectives and performance and talent management practices that engage them in the work that needs to be done, reward them for a job well done, bring success and stability to the business and the employees and support work/life balance for employees.
