The 90-Day Secret to Effective Strategic Planning
Successful businesses can grow with dedicated employees, loyal clients, and steady revenue and profitability. Yet inevitably, many see growth trajectory suddenly hit a wall they can’t seem to get over.
They’re not alone. Growing companies often reach a point at which they “outgrow” their approach to building their business. When this happens, a well-designed profit plan can give you a boost over that wall. More than a budget, a profit plan reflects and reinforces your company’s strategic mindset to help you make solid decisions even in uncertainty.
Last month’s blog discussed the importance of connecting financials to each aspect of your business for accurate, strategic planning. No matter the size of your business, strategic planning, in conjunction with the development of your profit plan, is essential to clarifying and attaining your goals.
Melding your strategic and profit planning processes helps you identify and prioritize your long-term objectives, facilitating a focus on the essential elements and resources that are foundational to your company’s success. This becomes your annual plan; its day-to-day execution is critical to achieving your long-term goals. That’s where many companies get stuck.
To combat this, I help clients take strategic planning a step further by breaking down the annual plan into rolling 90-day increments. Reviewing your position on a quarterly basis affords the ability to assess the effects of unexpected events, seasonal differences, or economic changes, and adapt by adjusting your plan as you move forward.
This rolling 90-day planning system provides you with more control, enabling you to be responsive rather than reactionary. Tasks not directly related to driving results are pushed aside for what really matters in the short-term.
To create your 90-day rolling planning system start by identifying the three to seven most important short-term priorities for your business – based on your long-term vision and annual goals – that can be accomplished in 90 days. These priorities should be:
- SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time-Based)
- Assigned to a specific person
- Documented and reviewed weekly to track progress
- Reviewed quarterly to address challenges and fine-tune goals for the next 90 days
- In stone once agreed upon – no changes, deletions or additions
Once your 90-day priorities are identified, each member of your leadership team and each employee must understand their own priorities for accomplishing these 90-day objectives. Sharing these common goals and a workable process to achieve them can have additional benefits to your business including improved communication, a greater sense of teamwork, and elevated performance, confidence, and success.
This 90-day structure keeps you on track, yet nimble enough to factor in new data. It will always be more accurate than a traditional, annual, calendar-year, profit plan because your true priorities are always up front. It allows you to break the cycle of trying to focus on too much at once, and clarifies what is immediately achievable.
Momentum and focus are sustained through weekly check-ins and quarterly reviews with your leadership team, to not only gauge and document progress but to share challenges or obstacles and fine-tune goals for the next 90 days.
As the former owner and CEO of a successful, multi-million-dollar construction company, I’m a CFO with a CEO perspective, which provides me with a unique understanding of how financials interface with all other aspects of your business. And I know well the personal investment you make in your business and the multitude of competing challenges business owners face.
I’d welcome the opportunity to help you transition to this invaluable planning tool, trading the exhaustive, and oftentimes inaccurate, process of annual planning for a more efficient, effective, and realistic strategy, structured in 90-day increments. There’s tremendous value in having the built-in ability to adjust and accurately forecast every quarter, while always looking one year out. Contact me for a complimentary consultation.
