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In my opinion, where business planning is concerned there is not enough attention paid to what I refer to as the “business’ corporate strategy”.  What is the business corporate strategy?  Think about a business plan.  In every business plan, there should be an executive summary.  The business corporate strategy is really a summary of the executive summary – it is a combination of the mission statement and vision statement.   In just a few short paragraphs, it can tell you:

• the reason the business exists
• where the business is going
• how the business will get there
• what the key issues of the business are

Often, I’ll be in a conference with six or eight senior executives.  When I ask them to write down what they consider the business corporate strategy – the results are just incredible.  There are almost always six or eight different ideas for where the business is moving, what the business is focusing on in terms of the key issues – and in terms of the development of a business, this is bad!

It’s important that everyone agrees on the direction of the business and what the key issues are, in order to be focused and generate results.  If everyone is working towards different goals, then their time and the company’s resources are being wasted and the business is not moving in too many different directions.

The key to successful and sustainable businesses is to define a business corporate strategy that everyone agrees with and to set tasks that are in line with that strategy.  The benefit of defining this business corporate strategy is really in the analysis and not so much in the final document that gets created.  The analysis will answer the five questions or stages of business, (where are we now? Where are we going? How do we get there? How much does it cost? Where will the money come from?) and will help get investors on board because they can clearly see exactly what you’re doing with the business and how you will get there. It is smart business planning to have a business corporate strategy that is communicated to all involved with the business.