If a year goes in, a year goes out and there is no evolution, you have a big problem. Stagnation is a cue for an avant-garde competitor to take your place in the market. Therefore, there must be a strategic planning to set assertive goals.
These goals are the “bigger something” that the company’s daily routine needs to be part of. As they lead the company to higher and higher levels, in this article you will better understand Strategic Planning and what it unfolds.
What is Strategic Planning
It is the organization of all the company needs to achieve a goal determined by the CEO or president. It usually has a minimum term of three years, directly reflects the company’s vision and, finally, is measured by what we call Strategic OKR.
OKR is the acronym for Objective and Key Results. It’s about a goal — for example, “opening a branch in Europe in 5 years” — and several indicators that show whether it’s getting closer or further away.
Strategic Planning is the backbone of the activities performed by the entire company during the respective period. It is very easy to set the goal of expanding the company, as exemplified in the previous paragraph, and stop there. The challenge is to make everything a process, properly interconnected.
As task assignments need to be very fluid, it is advisable to include WhatsApp in corporate communication, since are used by many. To get the most out of it, the recommendation is to use the Blueticks extension for Google Chrome, as it allows you to create and manage tasks, separating them by conversations.
Tactical Planning
Organizational structures whose tasks must result in the observance of the Strategic Planning. It’s like distributing tasks to all departments in the company.
Let’s look at an example so it gets easier to understand. Let’s go back to the branch opening in Europe goal. In this case, one of the structures of tactical planning would be something like:
- Analysis of the local culture and how they will react to the product/service;
- Full report on the main competitors in the desired country;
- Send a commercial representative to establish strategic partnerships;
- Observe the companies’ history from the same niche that failed in the country;
- Average cost survey during a year;
- Contact local companies to obtain market information.
All these categories are only part of the commercial or expansion sector – and at an early stage of the project. There are still accounting, finance, marketing and other departments to consider, as well as other phases of the project, with new observations.
Usually, Tactical Planning has a term of 1 year.
Operational Planning
Here begins the day to day part. In the Operational Planning, the teams define their assignments and weekly and monthly goals. The structures for the following of the To-Do are also elaborated, that is, the tasks that need to be done.
Any idea is only put into practice after the definition of the operational processes. There is no room for analyses, surveys, considerations and subjective information, as all these are left to the Strategic Planning. Therefore, Operational Planning exists to put Tactical Planning into practice, with action plans, deadlines, follow-ups and other factors.
As in the previous item, we are going to exemplify the Operational Planning with the same hypothetical situation of opening a branch in Europe. Now, the project is in an advanced situation, with all the necessary documentation and the company is free to start activities in the country. Look:
- Implement the new branch system;
- Search for an office computer outsourcing;
- Hire a local HR manager to initiate team building;
- Join corporate training services to implement our company’s organizational culture.
This list is huge, as there is still a lack of action plans for the product and sales team, for example. But notice that there is nothing analytical in the Operational Planning, because everything that needed to be thought about was already done in the previous Planning.
What is sought with Strategic Planning?
A Strategic Plan exists to light the way for companies in the coming years. Breaking it down into Tactical and Operational planning, we have the stone path to head where desired. At the end of this whole process, the result is a larger company, with more revenue and market value.
So, at the end of the day, is the goal always money? Not simply money in its limited perspective, but in the ability to generate it, as this will be the basis for the next Strategic Plan creation.
Where to start
The ideal is to follow the order shown in this article, defining the Strategic Planning first. Be very careful, because although a dose of ambition is beneficial to get out of the comfort zone, an unrealistic goal will cause stress and demotivation in all teams. This is very serious.
So make a history report, compare the company’s growth year by year, take a look at the market pace and define a plausible north for the organization’s reality. It is necessary for leaders to see the goal as a challenge, not a utopia.
Finally, follow all the steps and notice “bottlenecks” in the teams quickly, especially in Operational Planning. These obstacles must be reduced both in employees and in the way leaders interact with them, for example, managing tasks with Blueticks makes a lot easier. whenever the user receives a message requesting something, he can convert it into a task.
How Blueticks enhances team organization
The extension focus is to improve communication, not just facilitating it. Blueticks’ features in “Giving WhatsApp Web superpowers” aim to help people be more productive.
Just a practical example: John is the chief editor of the company and must send new briefings to the blog writer on Mondays. But he always forgets. So Lucas, his supervisor, has to remind him pretty much every time.
For John, the task management tool via WhatsApp will be essential; for Lucas, the automatic sending of the message “John, have you sent the briefing to the editor?” every Monday guarantees that John will not forget.
Interesting, isn’t it? But Blueticks still does much more. Then click here to find out.