The purpose of a strategic planning workshop is to set overall goals for your client’s business and to develop a plan and actions to achieve them. It involves stepping back from their day-to-day operations and asking where their business is headed and what its priorities should be.
Strategic planning workshops are a great way to engage clients and get strong realisable and timely actions in place as part of your firm’s business advisory services. From there a myriad of business advisory services can evolve as you take the client through the following process and beyond;
- Where are you today?
- Where do you want to be in the future?
- How do we get there?
- Who will do it?
- How long do you think it will take?
- When can we celebrate success?
To help get started here are 10 questions to ask your client (in any order you determine) as you prepare for their strategic planning workshops;
- Who will be attending the workshop? Just the business ownership team, or will you include different team members to get a wide range of views both positive and possibly negative?
- What level of commitment can you give to focus on the outcomes and future management of the strategic planning process?
- What is the culture of your organisation? If you want any significant change to happen, culture needs to lead the change. What are the attitudes of your people, and are your business values understood and shared by everyone?
- What are the success drivers of your business and what creates the biggest impact on your vision, mission and values?
- What does the future look like inside and outside of your business and what industry and technological trends do you think will emerge over the next 2 to 5 years?
- Where do you want your business to be in 12 months’ time and how can you measure that success?
- What key performance indicators are needed to keep you on track and who will monitor and manage them moving forward?
- What is your ideal customer, what can you do better for them and how do you currently know if they are satisfied with your products and services?
- Why does your business exist and what is its purpose when explaining this simply to a customer?
- If you could choose one key measure that would have the most impact on success in the future what would that be?
Successful strategic planning services are about helping the client make choices about where their business should be, and where it can succeed. It’s as much about choosing what to do as it is choosing what not to do. Follow up and accountability to the plan and actions are critical and must remain a constant focus point for both the advisor and the client.
Mark Holton is a respected consultant in taxation and business management, in particular, business advisory services implementation and delivery using key structured advisory systems and software. If you would like to book in for a complimentary 45-minute Business Advisory Readiness Assessment to know where your firm is today and what it needs to do to achieve success in the future, contact us to confirm a suitable time.
