Strategic Planning in a Family Business
Who has time to plan?
When first approaching many family businesses about the importance of the strategic planning process, they typically respond with any one of a number of predictable comments such as:
- "We don't have time for strategic planning. We're in our busy season."
- "We're too busy putting out fires. Who has time to plan?"
- "We have the plan in our heads, but we don't feel comfortable sharing it with our employees. We're disappointed that they don't share our sense of direction and urgency."
One client even told us:
- "Our family used to meet in late fall to discuss strategic planning. Often our ‘planning' was a discussion of revenue projections and goals. Once, about 4 years ago, we also took our key employees off site for a day of company visioning and planning. It was a great success. But we haven't done that type of planning ever again for lack of time."
For many owners of growing businesses, planning is a tortuous or worrisome task that is simply avoided. It gets in the way of actually running the business. It is also made too challenging by the reality of actually implementing the plan. It means looking inward, outward, backward and forward, then making a commitment to the future based on the present day picture which emerges. Because of the rapid changes taking place in today's world, planning is an even more uncertain art than ever before.
Linking the vision to the future therefore seems all but impossible, especially in the face of dealing with daily crises that seem to completely absorb an organization's energies. As a result, it becomes easier to wait for events to happen to the company, and respond to them after the fact, rather than to face them proactively.
Why plan for an uncertain future?
However, because of the lightning pace of change which now occurs, planning is ever more essential for successful business growth, especially in family businesses. Even though we may know successful businesses that have operated without a strategic plan, we should also question how much more successful they could have been with a plan. Even more disturbing is the thought of the number of businesses that have failed, unnecessarily, for lack of a plan.
Every business that enjoys success will have moved along a path which enables it to attain its goals. But the business that truly plans for success creates a road map of its own design. This company will most likely reach its desired destination, rather than where it just happens to land.
How to maximize the planning process
While the dream of building a business and the vision for the future should begin with the family members who are running the business, it is through the company's employees that visions become transformed into reality.
Planning should therefore be an employee, team driven process, rather than a top-down, family only event. The key employees of a family business must also help create and buy into the company's growth concepts in order to champion and drive them across the organizational home plate. Employees need to feel they are part of the company's future, rather than outsiders just putting in time.
One of the dilemmas that family business owners often face in launching the strategic planning process is a difficulty in letting go of control, and having more open discussions about the organization's future with key employees who are truly outsiders in the business. While owners would like for their employees to take ‘ownership' of their jobs in terms of the bigger picture, they typically don't want to share the information necessary to enable their employees to do so.
If a company's employees help determine how the plan will be implemented, they'll be much more likely to pull in the right direction. It's no coincidence that the most dynamic businesses are those which have grown themselves through the broadest support base of their people.
A company's employee resource is often the sole appreciating asset of the business, and a vital means for building the strongest possible planning support base. For a family business, having a strong employee resource helps strengthen the fabric of the business by providing different viewpoints which are often extremely valuable to creativity and long term success.
Ultimately, the real value of any strategic planning process is a function of its execution. This means translating a company's mission, goals, objectives, and strategies into well defined projects designed to produce the plan's desired results.
This is also the point where the rubber meets the road. If a family business has developed a strong supporting team through which to champion the plan throughout the company, these change masters will provide the necessary thrust to fashion the vision into reality. If not, family members will find themselves carrying the entire load.
Link the vision to the future-tie the employees to the plan
The family business clients with whom we have facilitated the planning process over the years are always amazed at the tremendous employee energy which is unleashed in pursuit of focused, common goals, no matter how ambitious or daunting they may appear on paper. For employees who love working in a family business, feeling a part of the ‘family' pays rewards that owners couldn't ever hope to buy.
Such an outcome is hardly surprising, though, considering that everyone wants to be associated with a winner. Happily, being part of a successful team brings pride and enthusiasm not only to those who work for the company, but also to other stakeholders ranging from customers to suppliers.
Business owners can achieve planning success, and create organizational strength and unity by taking the time to build employees into the planning process. In so doing, not only will they have developed a road map for achieving their vision, they will also have transformed what could have been their weakest link into their strongest tie to a successful future in which everyone is a winner.
