These Are 12 Transcendantly Important Business Principles You Must Know: Critical Insights!

I have a different paradigm: I believe in "Importance Planning" rather than just "Strategic Planning". I believe that, timeframe-wise, the Long-Range should be hard-wired with the Short-Range, sphere-wise, External should be understood with Internal, scope-wise, Strategic should be understood with Operational. A huge problem in companies, at work, and in life is things are cut into pieces, not considered as one, holistic, process or organism! Strategic planning dies because it has been severed from the rest of the company, amputated from the overall corpus. No wonder the track record is miserable overall! APPLICATION: Convergence means that everything should flow together from inception to completion! Vision flows to Values, which inform the  External Analysis, which helps drive Long-Range Business Objectives/Financial Targets, which flow to Major Prioritized Goals, which flow to Major Action Plans, which flow to Monthly Tracking, which Flow to Completed Actions, which Flow to On-going Results, and the process re-cycles! Convergence, not Isolation!

Consider a line graph with time on the horizontal axis and $ on the vertical axis. Now take your Old Plan and chart it (likely) as a gradually rising line from left to right, like most Plans. Then chart the Old Actuals -- they usually are the line that is slightly (or more) under the Plan line. Now consider that the company/department/team is largely in an operational, reactive, firefighting, individual mode, not a strategic, proactive, new idea, teamwork mode. Tighten up your implementation and execution of goals process now and consistently from now on. You will find something stunning happens: the New Plan will likely be higher, more aggressive than the old plan. And the New Actuals will also be higher than the Old Plan! These are clinical data from many dozens of companies that become good implementers! That is what I call The Swath of Strategic Opportunity! It is out there for the company, unit, team, or individual at work or in life! APPLICATION: Make your implementation/execution discipline and practices much better. Raise your bar. Pull together. Focus on the priorities. Follow up monthly. Make the swath on your mind's eye YOUR swath in reality! 

I believe it is a costly executive mistake to take the "either/or" route in planning and implementing. It is NOT strategic or operational, NOT long-term or short-term. Not internal or external focus. How about concurrent? This means you should be both working your short-term operating plan while, and in the context of, working your long-term strategic plan. Either/or makes absolutely no commonsense, and leads to myopic movement and under-performing results! Either/or makes no common sense from the standpoint of achieving sustainable greatness.

You will very much enjoy this mental image illustration, I hope! Form a mental image in your mind of one of those big, old wooden barrels, with the vertical wooden staves, bound together by lateral metal braces. Now think of each stave as an important category of your work or life.  APPLICATION: Concurrently evaluate each of the 16 Company categories in #5. above [or 10 Life Categories]. Look Concurrently at where and what specifically are your lowest and lower staves in the barrel? The precious water is leaking out because of the lowest stave! Raise the stave; raise the water mark of performance/results. THIS is what I mean by The Concurrency Principle. Inspect all the key pieces! Not all categories are equally important, but a low stave in a key place is extremely costly at work and in life!

I believe that a company (and the human cycle for that matter) has 4 critical stages: 1) Building the Infrastructure, this is laying the strategic foundation; 2) Launching the External Expansion Strategy, to establish the growth engine; 3) Achieving Business Process Optimization, the refining and perfecting of performance excellence, and 4) Sustaining Market and Industry Leadership, the preserving, renewal, and perpetuating of industry and market leadership. Of course, in reality some, even all, of these stages may be overlapping. The key is to know in what stage your company is overall. APPLICATION: Are you in Stage 1? Focus on making sure you business has a strong foundation of attaining and servicing customers via solid internal and external processes; Stage 2? Look at the whole external picture, pick the most attractive growth opportunities, and brilliantly plan and do accordingly; Stage 3? Look for tuning, smoothening, streamlining, automating, simplifying everything according to its importance and upside; Stage 4? Keep growing; resist complacency; leverage your differentiating strengths, admit and work on your vulnerabilities!

In companies, work, and life, many things do not need to be nearly as complicated as people have made them! Strategic planning is the best example of the biggest morass! I say, SIMPLIFY! Any purpose, including strategic planning, can be broken down into 2 words: Plan and Do! First you: 

Plan: 

1) Set Desired Results; 

2) Set Goals to Achieve Results; 

3) Set Action Plans to Fulfill Goals, then 

Do: 

4) Complete the Action Plans, which

5) Fulfill the Goals, which

 6) Achieve the Desired Results! 

APPLICATION: Challenge complexity! Every permutation must have an ROI/some real value! Get back to basics. Start with a clean slate. How can we plan simply and simply do? Business and life are difficult enough. Plan and Do the important things consistently!

This also is quite relevant to any kind of project, work or life. For any Goals and its Action Plans (steps to carry out the goal in time) there are 3 variables that must be carefully orchestrated, or choreographed: 

In my mind, the Principle of Consistency is the Monthly Meeting, the check-up, the follow-up, of everything that is important for you yo accomplish. For the individual, it is a personal check-up on your goals progress with yourself and an accountability partner if you deem that helpful. For companies, the Monthly Executive/Department/Team (whatever entity you are) Review covers 3 important components:

I passionately believe that Accountability is absolutely critical to getting anything done in work and life. Tie Action Plans into Performance Plans. Hold folks accountable. Make sure Action Plans are sewn into the fabric of ongoing day-to-day business processes and practices. Define New News Monthly. If you add an item, what changes on your Goals list? You can't keep adding! What other due-dates must slip? Is that acceptable? This is The Principle of Closure. 

APPLICATION: In any meeting, in any situation, what specific things need to be "covered off"? Do not leave a meeting or discussion without making it clear who exactly will do what by what date coming out of that huddle. Sloppiness in not reaching prompt Closure is very costly. Everything suffers: timeliness, accountability, performance -- you name it! Closure is a discipline. Closure is a habit. When done, it proves invaluable. Not done, it is like death by many cuts -- it adds up, but in hidden, gradual ways that are usually realized late!