How to plan a long-term roadmap for continued success
With a stroke of luck or sheer focus and determination from your end your business can sometimes experiences immense success. But in order to generate continual successes, one after another, you cannot rely on favourable market conditions or just sheer hard work. For a continued success with your crowdfunding project or public offering, it is not adequate to rely on inputs from STO Consulting Services or, for that matter, STO Development Services. In a nutshell, you have to know where your business is heading and how it is moving forward, hence the importance of a long-term roadmap for continued success.
Defining a Strategic Roadmap
To keep it simple, a strategic roadmap can be contrasted with GDP in that both tell you where you are, where you are standing and where you are heading (with your business, in this context). A strategic roadmap for your business is a visualization of what approaches and avenues are appropriate to steer your business on the right track and take one step closer to your long-term goals every day. It coordinates the efforts of your organisation and ensures everyone is on the same track and everyone’s actions align with the company’s vision of where it wants to be tomorrow.
Therefore, it goes without saying that a well-planned strategic roadmap will go a long way in steering your business in the right direction. Like GDP, on top of showing you your relative position and the shortest route to your destination, it helps minimize effort, expense and time spent as it unifies your team towards one direction.
How to Create a Strategic Roadmap
Your Vision:
A vision may be simply defined as the mental picture you have for your business. As a business owner, your ultimate endeavour is to take your business to new levels and heights in course of time. You don’t want your business to stagnate. This is where vision comes into the picture and manifests in the form of the hopes and dreams you have for your business. As such, the first step in creating a strategic roadmap is to set a vision as it is imperative that you need to be crystal-clear about your company’s long-term vision first and foremost. This zoom-down on vision goes before designing your roadmap. Only then your company can be vision-driven. You company’s long-term vision can be within the range of two, five or ten years, depending on the nature of your business. And once you set your vision, your goals and strategies will take shape and fall into place.
One essential reason for having a vision is that it is unifying. When a vision is established within your company, it makes for a generic gathering point, an interest common to all, ushering in the pursuit of a common interest. It synchronises the march towards a common goal, and permeates an energy that is vital to propel the company forward.
Another reason as to why a vision is so pivotal is because it inspires. As a business owner, you have the conviction that your dreams can be achieved. This is due to vision that in turn generates conviction. Without inspiration there will be no scope for progress, no room for improvement. It has an impact on everyone in that it brings in enthusiasm and commitment. Vision is undoubtedly what keeps a business afloat even during hard times. It brings in the spirit of audacity and persistence.
Another vital reason is that a vision provides the necessary interface for goal-setting and business planning. It gives you a sense of purpose and direction, two key elements that will see you through the thick and thin of running a business. It simplifies the complexity of decision making, and helps you draw a sharp demarcation between short-term and long-term goals.
Your Values:
The second step is aligning your values with your vision. You have to make changes if they are not aligned because only then the people in your organisation will be guided by the same principles. Values give your team members a sense of responsibility and guide them to reach the goals you have set for your business.
Having a definite set of values enable your team members to see and understand what you stand for. Your company values are the tools that drive your business forward. They are beliefs, philosophies, and principles and impact every aspect of your team’s commitment and dedication to the company. In a way, they are the defining factors of what your company is. They influence every important business decision and action you take. Well, they influence all important aspects of your business, from product development to sales and marketing strategies, and customer services.
Listing the Critical Goals
The third step is that of zooming in on the critical goals or objectives that must be integrated to turn the vision into a reality. Unless there is the need for a separate roadmap, these goals and objectives can be applied across operations within the company such as brand development, social media marketing and customer service improvement.
Take, for instance, the factors that help your business generate more sales and profits. Also, take into account that the monthly revenue your workforce generates will fluctuate from time to time. What is in play here is nothing but a sense of goal and target amongst your team members. With a specific target or goal before them, your employees are stirred into action. The will to achieve the monthly goal gives them the necessary drive they need to make each day count. You do not need to prod them every now and then to show some action.
As such, goals are very powerful. Everyone is familiar with the age-old classic fable of the race between a turtle and a rabbit. Instead of just being in awe of the slow-paced turtle that wins the race, take a moment to dig into what enables the turtle to beat the agile rabbit. You will arrive at qualities beyond the physical. It is the turtle’s spirit of competition, focus and perseverance that works wonders and turns the table against the nimble hare. And all this boils down to one thing — goal. It is the goal, the finish point that brings out the best in the turtle. The same goes with your company. With clear-set goals, your business will have a sense of direction and each step you take you closer to your goals.
Shaping Critical Strategies:
You need a systematic approach for achieving your goals, hence strategies. You can always tap into the tried-and-tested, age-old frameworks for shaping strategies such as the one pioneered by Robert Kaplan and David Norton. It basically involves leveraging on four major perspectives: Financial, Customer, Internal (Processes), and Learning and Growth. As such, the Financial and Customer strategies lay emphasis on the outcomes you envision to achieve. In the meantime, the Internal Process and Learning and Growth perspectives stress on how to make plans to achieve the said outcomes.
A well formulated strategy map coordinates the objectives mentioned in the four perspectives. For instance, it simplifies the formulation of key financial strategies to facilitate the achievement of the overarching goals or objectives. It helps establish critical customer strategies to achieve the desired financial results. It helps implement the most effective internal processes that will strengthen the customer strategies that will in turn yield the envisioned financial outcomes and achieve the overarching goals. Also, it sheds light on the kind of learning and growth processes to be followed to strengthen the internal strategies aimed at establishing superior customer service, obtaining desired financial results and achieve the overarching goals or objectives.
Devising your Tactics:
All the key actions and strategies should be applied with tactics. Your strategies will fail if you do not give adequate attention to this aspect. Down the line you will see that tactics forms a crucial part of the roadmap. In fact, it is the element that constitutes every component of the map because tactics streamlines even the very micro-level action taken towards the achievement of your objectives and policies.
With tactics in place, you can talk about quantifiable aspects from your business performance. What tactics really does is that it ensures effective implementation of strategies and enables you to conquer new landscapes and strive ahead of competitions. Tactics enables you to successful tap into the strategies you formulated such as to race competitors, to capitalise on their weaknesses that can be seen in areas of service, cost, quality and delivery. Tactics lays the foundation for effective marketing, competent service and attraction of new customers. While it helps you to retain current customers, it helps you generates a new customer base.
Outlining Potential Roadblocks:
Make it a point to identify and outline every potential risk in each of the strategies you intend to execute and the key actions you plan to take. Only by knowing a potential roadblock can you formulate a solution. Paying attention to this aspect is essential because roadblocks have the potential to disrupt normal workflow and drastically slows down your pace of progress.
As a company, you are bound to encounter the generic financial, management, and operational issues down the line. And what all these barriers do is keep your company from tapping into its full growth potential. You are even more likely to face them when expanding your business which means recruiting fresh workforce to maintain the new landscape you conquer. Therefore, it is important to outline beforehand the roadblocks you will come face to face with.
Promoting Strategic Communication:
To coordinate the efforts of your team, strategic communication is a must tool.
Strategic communication forges and regulates connections, making efficiency become a component of daily operations. It aligns the members of your team and drives their contributions towards the same goal through the same path or track. It makes for a result-oriented communication by zooming in on only meaningful conversations and cutting out excessive meetings. Every communication should be driven towards a specific objective.
A Regular Review and Modification:
Introduce a regular review and modification to ensure the trajectory of your business is aligned with your goals and to see that you make headway every day towards those goals. With regards to modification, you can determine when to exercise by reviewing your goals, strategies and action plans on a weekly basis. One step in this direction will be to schedule time in your calendar. Weekly check-ins enables you to periodically evaluate your action plans in light of any progress, challenges, or changes.
Integrating Adaptability:
Prima facie, flexibility is the inward ability to adapt to new conditions and challenges. In the context of modern business, it is a company’s ability to make internal changes to effectively respond to the external environment. In a nutshell, it is an organizational ability to adapt to new market conditions and turn new challenges into fresh opportunities.
You can’t be prepared for everything. Both challenges and opportunities will come your way. Nothing stays the same. You must be adaptable to amend your plans and strategies accordingly. A plan will lose its lustrous aspect down the line as new developments loom on the horizon. A plan will not always be strategic because you cannot make accurate prediction of both the near and distant future.
Think of the erstwhile big companies that were giants back in the day and yet no longer around in the present. Undoubtedly, it was due to insurmountable odds and conditions. Stiff competitions, compromised internal infrastructure, inability to reinvent in the face of evolving markets, and the list may go on. But what it all boils down to is the failure to adapt, the inability to be flexible and bend and bow with the tides. Therefore, integrating flexibility is the only foolproof way to hold out any tempest and stand the test of time.
Conclusion
As a business owner, you couldn’t be more wrong if you think you should be taking everything into your hands. It is imperative to create a strategic planning team to execute the strategies and action plans you have in place. A strategic planning team can assist you and simplify every process, from formulating your company vision to integrating your strategy week-to-week.
Planning a long-term roadmap for continued success can be immensely challenging. But having both the team and the strategic planning will help simplify the complexity thereof. As a business owner, the onus of taking the business forward falls on your shoulder. You can best commit to that onus by making optimal use of your team and the action plans you have in place. Therefore, feel free to experiment with the above given tips. You will see a streamlined business processes and long-term results helping you generate continual success.
