Do small businesses really need strategic planning?

Large businesses do a lot of strategic planning. They have the resources. And they have a lot of stakeholders who will be displeased if something fails. So they need to think things through to ensure success.

Small businesses, on the other hand, only have their very survival on the line. They don’t have resources. And what resources they have are often working outside of their area of expertise. The number of things they have to react to now is so high, that thinking things through becomes a luxury.

Escaping the Catch 22

Small businesses have to constantly react. They can’t fulfill their potential without thinking things through. Strategy can feel like a luxury, even when you know it’s a necessity. It helps to develop strategic planning habits. If you don’t and your businesses gets lucky and does well, it can all suddenly come crashing back down. This happens all the time. How many small businesses do you know that looked like they were doing well and then one day they were just gone?

Strategic planning the small business way

One of the things that small businesses can do to prepare for success is to learn from large businesses. Both the good and the bad. Because small businesses simply can’t do strategic planning the way large businesses do it, and even if they could it just wouldn’t make sense. Small businesses don’t need a document that’s going to sit on a shelf that they can show their stakeholders. Spending time creating something like that diverts your attention from a hundred other things that need it. So skip the strategic planning and embrace strategic thinking instead. What small businesses should do is replace the word “planning” with “thinking.”

Small businesses should leverage the fact that their decisions don’t need to be made by committees. They should always be thinking about their product compositions, positioning, messaging, and value. They should always be thinking from the customer’s perspective. They should always be thinking about how to better make, improve, clarify, simplify, deliver, track, administer, train, reach out, build relationships, collaborate, and discover. They should be always changing. Adapting. Improving. Without change there is no growth.

The trick is to do all this while finding customers, delivering on your promises, and paying your bills. It does not take extra time or slow you down to always be observing, aware, and in consideration. This is potentially your biggest strength. Large businesses have trouble observing and being aware because they have to follow scripts. They only change when they have to. You set the pace for your business. You control the direction. You have complete freedom in how you respond. You are also overwhelmed.

Always be doing more than one thing at a time. Make each thing that you do count twice. Make each piece of content you write find multiple uses. Make each thing you create for a customer also be an example, a photo, a demonstration, a new story, or a proof of something strategic for your business. The very act of coaching and consulting is the development and testing of ideas that can inform your future services and messaging. Even the simple act of record keeping and financial planning can lead to insights about where you have been and where you should go from here.

Becoming strategic

Practice makes perfect. Large businesses often prepare their strategic plans annually. Small businesses who learn to think strategically do it every single day. Constantly. The more you practice, the easier it becomes until it is simply how you approach the things you do. When there is no difference between thinking and thinking strategically, you will find that you are also constantly implementing your strategies. And instead of strategic planning being a luxury you don’t have time for, you’ll find your business has made a shift from being too busy and overwhelmed to do strategic planning and simply reacting to everything, into a business that simply does everything strategically.

Look at successful businesses. How many of them are reactive and how many of them behave strategically? Which do you want to be?