The Business World Uses Strategic Thinking

Regular readers know that I believe in the necessity of strategic thinking for running your coaching business.  See previous post here.   My husband, Bob reminded me recently of the importance of strategic thinking for all businesses.  Bob is general manager of a small company that manufactures specialty fibers.  Not too long ago, he and the other managers rewrote their business plan.  They wanted to make some changes in the business due to changes in the marketplace and the business environment in general.  They rewrote the plan, made some business changes and things have started to look better.

About two weeks ago, Bob realized that they had made some good changes, but were still failing to look ahead to keep the successes going.  He actually printed out my blog post on strategic thinking and took it to his managers for a “what’s next discussion”.  It would have been easy for them to look at the improvements they had made and sit back content at that.  What they did instead is to review the long-terms goals and the progress they had made to date.  They then devised new next steps on the plan to reach the final goal.  Whenever we do this, we are likely to find areas that have changed and that need our attention.  Any change in your business is going to effect things in many areas. 

You need to do similar strategic planning on an ongoing basis in your coaching business.  I am currently looking at the strategic advantages and disadvantages of social networking with Twitter.  What area of your business are you making decisions about that may affect your overall plan?