Taking Steps to Improve your Internal Communications: Plan Ahead

This is part 5 of our series helping you to improve your internal communications, check out part 1 here.

Planning ahead is something every smart business does regardless of size, industry, or location. It prepares you for the dangers of the future and covers your behind if anything should go awry. Do not think that you alone can plan for the future, for the future is built around us, by everyone.

The first, and most obvious strategy for planning ahead would be to draft a business plan; while this is a wonderful idea it should not be used as a crutch. More often than not companies will spend hours upon days into drafting the perfect business plan, only for it to become obsolete as the market shifts and their company has to adapt.

This being said, business plans are not a waste of time, they hold valuable information about the company and can be used to effectively communicate a financial plan across the business. In a study of small businesses conducted by Palo Alto Software: 79% of companies with a business plan said they are better off financially compared to a year ago, where only 33% of companies without plans can said the same. Furthermore, 75% of established companies that have business plans in place expect to grow more than 10% next year, compared to only 17% that do not have plans.

Clearly, creating an effective plan and communicating that plan across the company will provide management with a comprehensive look at the company and create opportunities to expand and grow beyond the competition.

Moving on from business plans, managers and employers should look for feedback on their performance as well as what their employees are seeing in their day to day activities. For example, if your marketers tell you there has been a significant drop in engagement in the local area, but a drastic increase in engagement the town over, it might offer you an opportunity to grow and save you from a potential collapse of business as the local area pulls their support. But had you not kept an open channel of communication with your employees and looked for their advice on the future, your bottom line could have suffered.

No one sees the company the way the employees do, there are too many moving parts for upper management to grasp the intricacies of every task. Therefore you have to trust your employees to provide feedback on what they are seeing and take their solutions into consideration when discussing plans of action for the future.

If you enjoyed this, read

Part 2 here

Part 3 here

Part 4 here