10 July 2017
Practical Business Planning

Practical Business Planning

 Developing and Delivering and Effective Business Plan

“To fail to plan is to plan to fail” – Benjamin Franklin, 1750

“No plan survives first contact with the enemy” – General Helmuth Von Moltke – Prussian General Staff, 1871

“Plans are nothing – Planning is everything” – President Dwight D Eisenhower, 1957

Business planning has gained a bad reputation as a corporate ritual which absorbs lots of energy, imposes lots of stress and delivers very little value – shelves groan with the weight of strategic plans developed by major organisations – documents that are never opened and which often function most usefully as doorstops!

While everyone who has worked in an organisation has seen this negative aspect, there’s no doubt that the process of planning – if used effectively, is a very powerful tool which can make the difference between the good and the great organisations.

Rather like the discovery by Moliere’s ridiculous character, Monsieur Jourdain, that he has been speaking prose all his life – all of us naturally plan our activity to some extent, but the trick is for organisations to do the right kind of planning in the right way.

This Practical Business Planning training course demonstrates a practical approach using everyday techniques to harness the understanding and insights of business leadership teams in order to achieve continuous improvement, through the mechanism of a well-managed business plan operating under effective governance processes.

Eisenhower’s and Von Moltke’s comments from a military perspective go to the heart of the issue – it is unrealistic to expect that plans will ever pan out as expected, but the process of planning is what adds value to the organisation in three main ways:

Firstly, through systematic and critical information-gathering about the business environment both inside and outside the enterprise.

Secondly, through the teamwork involved which promotes alignment of the stakeholders within the business; a clear-headed appraisal of where the business stands now and an agreed vision of where it needs to be in 3-5 years establish the basis for the business plan.

Thirdly, through the specification of a set of projects which make up the overall programme of the plan and the allocation of personal project accountability for the key strands of activity that will realise the plan.

The effective deployment of a business planning process is a key leadership responsibility and the AZTech approach shows how this can be established and embedded as part of “business as usual”.


AZTech Training & Consultancy
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