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Strategic Planning

A strategic plan looks at all the things your small business could do and narrows it down to the things it is actually good at doing. A strategic plan also helps business leaders determine where to spend time, human capital, and money.

But, how should small businesses approach strategic planning? There are hundreds of business books dedicated to the topic. We’ve read most of them. We put the others on our bookshelf just for show.

Developing a strategic plan might seem like an overwhelming process, but if you break it down, it’s easy to tackle.

Executive Coaching

There are many ways to help executives grow as leaders. High-level training, mentoring, reading, job rotation and special assignments are just a few. The most overlooked alternative is attention from the individual’s own manager. As coaching has become more fashionable, I’ve seen too many managers abdicate their own coaching responsibilities, turning a struggling executive over to a professional. Sometimes the problem is beyond what the manager can handle. But often managers hand off executives because they’d rather not deal with messy people stuff.

The manager is already being paid to coach. Don’t incur an executive coaching expense if the problem is within that manager’s capabilities.

Leadership Development

When you own or run a business, even the simplest decisions can have profound implications. In fact, our executive member companies have significantly outperformed non-member companies year after year. With regards to the compounded annual growth rate of the average D&B U.S. company from 2007 to 2012; our members saw an 11.6 percent increase in revenues, compared to the U.S. average of 5.4 percent. The numbers prove what our members already know: Business Advisors Leadership Development program works.