Fernando Ojeda Llanes
Company executives make decisions in the short term with a view to sales, profits and working capital, meeting the objectives established in the year’s budget, for all this the administrative, operational and financial departments are combined.
The following year, according to the above, the decisions are measured, the budget is compared with the actual and the business routine is continued.
The company requires not only sustained growth, but also a vision beyond the short term, analyzing its strengths, weaknesses, its competitiveness, the competition, that is, also seeing the long term, seeing the possibilities of more accelerated growth and the entire path ahead towards its future.
In business language, for the long term, strategic planning has become a fashionable expression.
Everyone talks about it, everyone includes it in their corporate speeches, and many companies boast of having it.
According to my own experience, in practice an alarming majority of these plans do not come to fruition, a high percentage are not successful, this is for two main reasons: they never implemented them, or if they did, they lacked continuous follow-up.
Document
Strategic planning, in essence, is not a document or an administrative requirement, it is a valuable element of the business vision, an exercise that seeks to define the direction of the organization, anticipate the future and prepare the necessary actions to achieve it. This requires a good diagnosis, commitment, methodology, above all, coherence and teamwork; This is where the stumbling blocks appear.
In many cases, company directors promote planning as just another procedure, without truly getting involved in its development or execution.
An impeccable plan is designed in the boardroom, but it does not then descend into operational reality, employees do not know it, do not understand it, or simply do not feel it belongs to them.
A strategy that is not communicated is a strategy that does not exist.
Another common error is the lack of monitoring, companies formulate ambitious objectives, but do not establish mechanisms to measure their progress or adapt to changes in the environment, this makes it become an academic exercise of static prediction, when it should be a living process, capable of adjusting flexibly; Here it is valid to mention that saying that without review there is no learning and without evaluation there is no improvement.
Endurance
Added to this is resistance to change, a phenomenon as human as it is dangerous for competitiveness; Every strategy implies transformation: of processes, of structures, of mentalities, of talents, if it is not managed properly by applying human techniques and values, the fear of the new ends up stopping any attempt at evolution.
In many companies, organizational culture acts as an invisible wall that stops even the best ideas.
Nor can we ignore the gap between vision and real resources. Formulating visionary plans without ensuring the budget, talent and time necessary is like building a building without a foundation. Therefore, we should not measure it by what is promised to be done, but by what can be achieved.
We must take into account the elements of the administrative process, what follows planning is action, it cannot remain at the level of discourse nor rest in beautiful folders filed on management shelves, like a good wish—never realized.
Rhetoric
A plan that is not executed is as useless as a map that no one consults, it must be breathed, lived and translated into daily decisions; Otherwise, it stops being a strategy and becomes simple business rhetoric, only to respond to friends when they ask: Do you have strategic planning? and answer “yes I have it.” They can even show it, on paper, even on beautiful modern Power Point boards, but it has never been implemented.
In summary, strategic planning fails not because the method is wrong, but because it is forgotten that behind every plan there are people, without genuine leadership, without clear communication, without shared commitment, the best strategy becomes forgotten paper and without the action of implementing it is a scroll to write down in the history of the company.
The challenge, then, is not to plan more, but to do it better: with participation, with purpose and understanding that the strategy is not the arrival point, but the path that is taken every day.
I refer to the point of arrival when we have it in beautiful documents to show that it is there, but never implemented. If it was carried out, it is the starting point to follow the other steps of the administrative process: act, organize, direct, control.
Strategic planning will continue to be the essential map of every company; but it will be useless if those who carry it are not willing to follow the route and walk it decisively, but that path has different obstacles to overcome and paths to choose, we need a compass in our hand, this is referring to continuous monitoring so as not to lose our way towards the final objective, which is to grow and obtain greater profits in the shortest possible time. —Merida, Yucatan
Doctor in scientific research. Business consultant
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