A well-thought-through strategy will be the cornerstone for a business’ recovery – and growth – in the coming years, writes Peter Lee, MD of Instil training.
If you’re reading this, you’ve thankfully survived Covid-19 and its first effects. For many businesses, having the sales tap completely turned off in March was a massive shock to the system. You know better than anybody what happened next – in terms of understanding furloughing, claiming whatever you could to survive, and then, over the following weeks and months, reacting to the next directive from a Government that was learning its way through the problem.
For many of us, there was the cold realisation that we hadn’t planned or traded well enough to have sufficient cash to continue operating for 6-12 months. This was followed by the wakeup call that our online presence was lacking, and, in the subsequent weeks of tentative trading, that we’ve managed to do good business with only half of our team.
Lots of us will have found it very difficult deciding who exactly we wanted to bring back to face our customers, and who we preferred to leave on furlough!
The common thread in all of these issues is that very often you are spending all of your time working in the business, and not on it. This has meant not stepping back from the coalface to review, evaluate and analyse where you are at, and to look up and see where you are going.
Where will your business be in one, three, or 10 years? If your answer is “I don’t know” or “we’ll be lucky to be here”, you need a plan.
Here’s an example of an eight-step planning process (illustrated in this case across a three-year timescale) which has the potential to really boost your chances of success:
1. Vision
Where do I want the business to be in one, two and three years’ time? What problems do I want to stop occuring across that period (for example, cashflow). What do I want to be known for (building on existing strengths and specialisation, perhaps)?
2. Status quo
To look at internal, external threats and market movements (such as online trading, or physical shopping inspiration created by a fabulous-looking store).
3. Options
What can we do? Using greenlight thinking and involving your team when able, brainstorm as many options as possible to identify shortcuts, quick wins and low-hanging fruit.
4. Objectives
These should be SMARTC (Specific, Measurable and Motivational, Agreed and Achievable, Results Orientated, Time-related and Challenging). These objectives, when achieved, will be the realisation of your vision: long-term (for example, by the end of 2022, we will have increased our carpet department turnover by £1m), medium-term (say, by summer 2021 we will have increased our online sales by +25%), and short-term (for example, over the next 2-3 months we will have written our business plan and communicated and got buy-in from all the relevant team members).
5. Implications and investment
Having agreed a course of action, what are the likely problems and opportunities, and what investments of time and money will each action require?
6. People
Who will need to know about this plan, be involved in creating it, excluded from it, and essential in executing it, and what skills will they need to achieve this plan?
7. Communication
In what ways, both before and during, can we best communicate this plan (such as a declaration – “we are going to send a man to the moon”)?
8. Measuring progress
How are we doing to monitor and measure our progress? Agree on KRAs and KPIs.
The value of a well-written plan is clarity. Dave Brailsford, of British Cycling and Team Sky fame, calls it “mission clarity”, meaning we are all on a mission, and our objectives, roles and responsibilities are absolutely clear.
Everyone knows what is expected of them, when, and to an agreed standard. There are specific and measurable steps and actions to be taken, that will give us a gauge of where we’re up to at any stage in the plan, and also help create momentum by giving us a sense of achievement as we tick off these objectives.
Possibly one of the greatest takeaways from the successful implementation of a plan is the skills that you’ve acquired along the way, which then become tools to add to your toolbox, ready to be reused and repurposed to conquer new objectives in the future.
Peter is MD and founder of Instil training. He has devoted his life to "growing people to grow business", and has spent the last 35 years designing and delivering results-orientated training to some of the biggest names in retail.
