As often the case, as good as business is, there is always room for improvement. It may be related to revenue, service, production or process. Whatever the case, determining what is needed during the good times as well as the challenging times is done through strategic planning and the execution of your plan.

A good place to start would be to define what a strategic plan is and what it isn’t. A good strategic plan is used as a tool to articulate specific goals and define action steps and resources needed to accomplish the plan. As a general rule, strategic plans must be reviewed and adjusted based on business needs or at minimum every three to five years.

There are four considerations to Strategic Plan development and Execution for small business and non-profits that are included.

• Strategic Accountability– What is the impact, assumptions or expectations expected from the elements of the plan? Who will be held responsible to see the plan through. What is the specific timeline of implementation of the plan by section and by whole?
  • What is the ultimate vision and who will benefit from the plan?
  • What specifically (outcomes, changes) will we be held accountable?
  • What activities will be needed to achieve the recommended results?
  • How will our current portfolio lead to the change expected?
• Ranking of Action Items – Determine the order of what specific actions agreed on will be related to the timeline of implementation.
  • Do our current programs/portfolio reflect and align with our mission and the intended impact of the strategic plan?
  • Has the organization identified the full costs (direct and indirect) in order to support each change?
  • What is the TCO (total cost of ownership) to see a positive result per action item outcome?
  • Will all recommended Strategic initiatives complement the small business or non-profits core business capabilities and expertise? Will the initiatives spread the small business or non-profit too thin?
  • How well is the expected change going to affect current competitiveness with peers?
  • What services should be monitored, identified, added and or changed to maximize impact?
• Resources – All strategic plans need to understand what resources (human, financial, organizational) are necessary to support the action items as mapped out in the plan.
  • Human Capital
    • Do we have the right people in place or identified for areas yet to be implemented?
    • Do we have the right organizational structure (including staff, skills and expertise) in place to complete the plan?
    • Given the people factor is ok, what is the bandwidth capacity of the personnel to handle the expected increase in work? Do we add staff or scale back our goals to execute a small plan?
    • If the people factor is not ok, what roles are needed to be filled and where is the pool to locate qualified candidates?
    • A realistic timeline is needed to properly on-board the people necessary to begin the plan.
  • Financial Capital
    • Will finance be able to manage the budget needed by human resources and infrastructure growth?
    • Will the increased budget affect the small business or non-profits culture? How?
    • What will the effect of the new cost per outcome look like?
    • What is the expectation of the reaction from the funding community? Can the money needed be raised? What are the roadblocks to achieving the target funds if any?
  • Performance Metrics – Implementation of Milestones (quantitative and qualitative) to measure the success of the strategic plan. The milestones should be noted along the timeline to implementation along with who is accountable to assess the metrics.
    • What does a milestone metric look like?
    • How do we implement a tracking system to evaluate the effectiveness of the strategic plan implementation?
    • What defines a financial milestone?
    • What defines an operational milestone?
    • How will we implement the permanent measurement metric to maintain regular checks on the financial and operational milestones once implementation is complete?

With the above strategic plan completed, your next step would be operational execution. Delivery of the strategic plan will rest with the operational plan.

The operational plan is a set of tasks that will be used to implement the targets or goals of the strategic plan. How the plan goals will be achieved is shown in greater detail and this plan is all about the logistics to see the strategic plan to completion. The timeframe of the operational plan of execution is usually budgeted as a project cost annually for major projects or within one fiscal year for smaller projects.