A long-term strategic plan is a document that outlines what your business wants to be in the future. If you're not sure where you want your business to go, it can be difficult to know what steps you should take today. By creating a long-term strategy and writing it down, you'll have an easy reference point when making decisions about the next few years of your company's life.
This is useful to also develop your short term business strategy. It will help you guide on what resources and investments are needed to achieve your business' vision.
Understand your business' vision and mission.
A vision and mission statement are a company's overarching goals. They should be short, clear, and easy to remember.
A good vision and mission statement will explain what you want your business to achieve in the long term, as well as what you strive for on a daily basis. You should include any values or beliefs that you consider important in your business here.
For example: "Vision: We aim to become the most admired global brand by 2020." Or: "Mission: To provide our customers with the best products at competitive prices."
Analyze your current situation.
In order to create a long-term strategy, you need to understand your current situation. Understanding your current situation will help you make better decisions and create a better plan, which in turn will help focus on the right things.
If you have nothing at the moment you can always look at assuming what you want to work with with the investment that you'll be putting into your land surveying business. Any strategy will be thrown out of the window within the first day of dealing with customers. What you assume is just a hypothesis and you have to do a lot of course correction.
For us at Icelabz we're cornering the market on domestic clients rather than large enterprise as there is this need in the market to produce measured surveys for domestic clients.
Define your core values.
In the next step, you must define your core values. What are the core values of your business? How do they help you achieve your goals? How do they impact your employees and customers? And so on.
Once you have defined your core values, write them down in a document. I prefer using Evernote, coda.io or notion app to put things together and refer to them. Do not move onto another step until this is done. If there are any gaps in your reasoning or logic, now is the time to address those issues head-on before moving forward with defining your strategy.
Create a SWOT analysis.
A SWOT analysis is a good place to start. This is a tool that can help you identify the strengths and weaknesses of your business, as well as the opportunities and threats it faces. Strengths are internal factors, such as a loyal customer base or an employee with great ideas for improving efficiency in your company's operations. Weaknesses are also internal factors—for example, if you have difficulty collecting payments from customers on time or consistently sending invoices to clients due to lack of resources at your disposal (perhaps because of high turnover rate).
Opportunities are external factors: perhaps your industry has recently seen an influx of competitors; they may be stealing some of your customers' attention away from you! On the other hand, threats could include economic downturns or new technology being developed—this might mean it's time for all businesses in this field to rethink what they do best so that they're not left behind when competition heats up again!
If there was ever any doubt whether SWOT analyses can help us find solutions to problems...
Set goals and objectives.
You'll want to set goals and objectives that are challenging but achievable. These goals should be specific, measurable and time-bound. They should also align with your business' values.
For example, if you value sustainability, then one of your goals might be to reduce energy consumption by 20% in three years' time.
Or in general you can state that you want to make £1m in 5 years with a 12% profit margin.
Goals have to be realistic: if you're planning for rapid growth (which is good), don't make it so rapid that it's impossible for you or your company to achieve. And goals need a deadline: when will these things happen?
You really have to think about the budget and runway you have to achieve this, anything in business needs investment and you need to see if you have enough of it to grow that quick and that fast. It is always best to start small and achieve them.
Choose what actions you'll execute toward those goals and objectives.
In order to achieve the goals that you've set, you'll have to do some planning. To do this, you need to define what exactly your goals are and choose the actions that will help you reach them.
First and foremost, make sure that your goal is realistic—if it isn't achievable or obtainable within a reasonable amount of time (think 3-6 months), then it's not worth setting as a goal. Also be sure that whatever it is, there's an actual problem being solved by achieving it. If there isn't any issue with things as they are now, then don't try changing them for no reason. Finally - be ambitious! You can always revise later if needed once everything has been laid out on paper in front of us:
Let's say I want to lose weight so I'm healthier overall; by doing so I'll feel more energetic and stronger during my workouts which lets me burn more calories while exercising at home (or wherever else). This means my body will become slimmer over time while still being able create healthy cells without damaging muscle mass or increasing fat deposits around my midsection where they shouldn't be located.
Create a timeline for your strategy.
Once you’ve identified your business goals and developed the roadmap to achieve them, it’s time to create a timeline.
Create a timeline for your strategy with the following steps:
- Define what you want to achieve in the short term (1-2 years) and long term (5-10 years).
- Identify your goals, objectives and actions.
- Decide on the specific steps you need to take in order to reach these goals and objectives.
- Create a timeline for each step that includes who will be responsible for each action item and when it will be completed by.
Share your strategy with your team members.
Now that you have a plan in place, your team needs to know about it. In fact, getting buy-in from your team is as important as writing the strategy itself. So, how do you make sure everyone understands and agrees with what's written?
Hold regular meetings where you discuss and review the strategy document with each member of your team. This can be done in a number of ways:
- Meetings where everyone talks about their own goals for the next quarter or year (this allows for some time for reflection)
- One-on-one meetings with members who are new to the organization
A long-term strategic plan will help set you up for success in the future.
A long-term strategic plan will help set you up for success in the future. It's a big, broad vision of where you want to take your company and what that looks like.
A long-term strategic plan is used by companies and organizations to look at their goals over time and how they can meet them through specific actions. A business' strategy helps define who it wants to be as well as its purpose for existing in the first place - so it's really important! The strategy should reflect what your company thinks about itself (values), where it's going (vision) and how it'll get there (objectives).
Conclusion
As you can see, creating a long-term strategic plan isn't easy. But it's worth the effort and can be a very rewarding experience. Once you've completed your plan, share it with your team members so they understand what their roles are in achieving the goals and objectives that have been outlined by the company. You'll want to revisit this plan regularly as things change over time; however, having this document will help keep everyone focused on what needs doing now as well as later down the road!
