Leadership and Long Term Business Planning

"Think a year ahead and move fast at a slow speed."

If there is one piece that of advice that I could give you that will help you focus on the important task at hand, it would be this "Make sure you are not fighting the same battles next year that you are fighting today". If you are, then you really haven't made much progress.

A year goes by real fast when you look back in time. It seems like a long time off when you look ahead. It can be good either way. If you are doing the right things and making progress, you look back and say "wow, we really accomplished a lot in a short time. If you are in the planning stage, you are looking ahead and saying "we have a whole year to get this right".

This is why it is so important to keep that long-term perspective during the long term planning process. You want to be very practical and calculated to make sure you are moving the ball forward. Each action you take gets you a little bit closer to your goal.

We tend to want to make things happen today, sometimes out of panic and sometimes because we are delusional about the current situation.

I have seen this scenario a number of times when it comes to turning around a weak sales staff. Generally the new manager comes in and quickly hires a half-dozen new sales people. At this point they think that problem is solved and they can go on to something else. Well surprise and think again. Whenever you hire a lot of sales people at one time, you then have to spend even more time training them. To train a salesperson right requires a lot of time and effort, sometimes requiring more time then most sales managers have. As the months go by, you find some of the new hires have left, of what is left, maybe one might turn out to be a keeper. To make matters worse, maybe some of the experienced sales people you had on staff to begin with end of leaving for one reason or another.

So here you are a year from now finding yourself in the same boat, or worse, floating along like you were 12 months ago. You may have had a long term plan but on a day to day basis you lost your long term perspective. That is the biggest problem with long term plans. It may be a brilliant plan but, because we don't keep a long term perspective on a day to day basis, the long term plan isn't of any use.

This is such a common problem for struggling business's yet they don't change their behavior.

How do you change? Well, you want to make sure that you have a stronger sales staff next year then you have today. To do that you say to yourself, "if I can hire one or two good salespeople over the next twelve months, and spend the time necessary to properly train them, I will at least be a little bit better off next year".

You repeat that same saying next year and after twelve months you have a significantly better sales department. If all goes to plan, your sales department is arriving as the rest of the company has turned around and you see this geometric growth in company sales.

The approach works for just about any department within the company from engineering to customer service. It is not practical or logical to assume all problems are going to be fixed overnight. If it was that easy, there wouldn't be as many troubled companies.

The real leader is pragmatic and understands this. As long as employees see progress no matter how slowly at first, they will give the plan some time. If you are new to the company employees will watch you. If they see the same behavior as the guy or girl before you, they aren't going to be so ready to hop on your band wagon.

This is an important thought to consider, because you need to keep in mind that you are not going to turn around the company, the employees are. You are really the agent of change in this process. Just as you evaluate their behavior, they are evaluating yours.

A good leader has a time frame for the future of their company of five, ten or twenty years depending upon their pay grade. But operationally you would like to be able to scratch some things off the to do list after a year if you want to be showing progress.

Long term planning is key. More important is to think long-term on a daily basis. Each important decision should be reviewed with a long term perspective. The future of your company is a cumulative result of all decisions. Great leadership never forgets this fact.