Plans Useful For Outlining Aims, Tactics

It has been said that if you want to give God a good laugh, tell him your plans.

True, planning does not always produce desired outcomes in this age of unpredictability. More often than ever before, “the best laid plans of mice and men” are going awry. But despite this unavoidable uncertainty, the odds of achieving a desired goal increase exponentially, if we use a plan to guide our actions.

Q. I’m in the throes of launching a business and am preparing a business plan as suggested by my accountant. Now I find that a strategic plan is recommended also. What’s the difference?

A. Both types of plans plot a course for your venture, but they embrace different perspectives and time horizons.

The “strategic plan” describes “WHAT” an enterprise is trying to do, while a business plan (which is often referred to as a “tactical plan”) describes the “HOWS” by which the strategic plan will be realized.

These HOWS are the specific, short-term actions by which an organization will accomplish its WHATS.

The business plan outlines the individual activities that the enterprise will undertake to achieve its goals; it specifies the human, financial and material resources that will be required; and it establishes a timetable that will be followed. This tactical guide provides clear and detailed direction for individual and collective action within a time frame, usually a year. It also establishes quantified standards for measurement and control. Accordingly, it facilitates quick and appropriate decision-making by the operators of the business.

The projects called for by a business plan help a firm’s managers and employees follow a consistent course of action and, if reviewed periodically, the plan will help measure progress and trigger consideration of changes in either the course being pursued or the plan being followed.

Importantly, the process by which the business plan is created each year can invite participation by all key employees. In this manner, your firm’s “implementers” will have an opportunity to contribute their experience, observations, and talents to the program that they will be charged with executing. Not only will this produce the best “prescription” for action, but it will create an informed, dedicated, and enthusiastic team that will make it all happen.

While the business plan provides the “blueprints and specs” for the job, the strategic plan offers the colorful “rendering” that portrays the “big picture” that is desired by a company’s founder or owner. It describes your vision for your firm.

A strategic plan focuses on long-term, macro issues that condition the nature and purpose of your enterprise. It should be a very personal statement of what you want your enterprise to become and the fundamental paths you will follow in achieving that end. It also establishes personal “lifetime targets” for the talents and energies you’ll invest in the business.

Astute entrepreneurs create this vision before they commence the start-up phase of their undertaking and harbor it deep in their creative psyches as they go about building their business. But it’s also important to commit this vision to paper - ideally, “for the whole world to see” - since visions tend to get distorted and discombobulated over time.

You have to be the primary author of the strategic plan since it must reflect your “dream.” It can be a short document that simply states what you want your enterprise to become; the special advantages, capacities, and talents that you will employ to get there; your assumptions concerning the future that you will be working in and the technology that you will have at your disposal; the probable nature of the competition you’ll face; the source of the capital that you’ll deploy and the personal policies that will guide your recruitment, organization and deployment of other people’s talents.

The strategic plan outlines the dream that your business plan will help you achieve on a day-to-day basis. Both are absolutely essential.

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The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Paul Willax The Spokesman-Review