Strategic Planning - Facilitation

The Need for Strategy, Strategic Thinking and Strategic Plans

It is said that: “strategy is for generals, tactics are for captains”.  

The General stands on the hillside overlooking the battle, taking a big picture view and directing major movements and commitments of resources.   Meanwhile the Captains are down on the battlefield, leading the troops into close quarters combat, in accordance with the strategies developed by the Generals.

Without a strategy, even a powerful body like an army is no more effective than the proverbial “headless chook”.

Like armies, businesses and organisations in general are also competitive entities, locked into a constant struggle for survival and success.  Consequently, every business, from the smallest to the largest, needs an appropriate Strategic Plan to direct its efforts towards its desired ends.  These plans form (and result from) a shared vision for the future and a common sense of purpose and destiny.

Strategic Plans aren't much use when they're locked up in a proprietor’s or Managing Director’s head – they need to be formulated and disclosed, at least to trusted personnel within the business – to ensure that everybody is pulling in the same direction and to motivate the team to work together to achieve agreed goals.

The Strategic Planning Process

Dispute Solutions combines many years' experience in conventional business and management consulting with highly developed mediation and creative problem solving skills, to provide a uniquely effective, fully facilitated, Strategic Planning service.

Our Strategic Planning process is a continuation and refinement of the Visioning process described elsewhere on this site.  Strategic Plans are developed through intense, tightly focused and confidently facilitated work sessions that convert visions (dreams) into commercially viable, “big picture” plans.

We use facilitated retreats to create a challenging, dynamic environment where business owners and executive teams are encouraged and assisted to break through the boundaries of their current perceptions of their business.  Groups are energised to develop and commit to new Strategy Plans - designed to take their businesses well beyond its current expectations. 

We cannot recall a single occasion when the process has failed to help lift a group's financial expectations (turnover and profits) for its business (over the long term) by at least 50% - and they usually go further, with considerable confidence.

As agreement is reached, on an issue by issue basis, the developing Strategy Plan is committed to writing so it can be developed into a Business Plan.

Benefits of Strategic Planning

A good Strategy Plan will help to grow the business further and faster than was previously anticipated, in an atmosphere of shared purpose and optimism.  These factors help to raise business and personal performance standards, while also helping to prevent conflict from arising in the business.