Business strategy and planning isn’t just a box to check off on your to-do list. Strategic planning underlies many things: your small business identity, your advertising and revenue, your operations, your management plan, and your financing. Even established businesses need to differentiate themselves from the competition to increase and grow their margins. As we learned the pomodoro technique, planning is more than just a team-building exercise, but among the benefits of using the comprehensive planning process described below is creating a good, cohesive management team. Here is my six-step process for creating an actionable strategic business plan.

Build the Orient Participants

Building a common understanding of the preparation process and framework that provides a vision for your business is the first and the chief of every successful business planning. This step sets the framework for the process and explores alternatives to develop the process’s unique elements fully. Members of the planning team should be drawn from the company’s business units (finance, marketing, operations). So, they can bring different perspectives depending on their area of expertise. The ultimate goal of these owners is a key element of the plan.

Review Your Current Mission and Goals

You should continue by determining your starting point and explore options that add value to your current plan. If you are unsure of your position, it will be difficult for you to define your leadership. With a three-question customer-focused exercise, I represent your current business and look ahead to the next 12 months. Defining your …