Your Business Planning Workbook

Your Business Planning Workbook outlines in detail how to develop a strategic plan, an operational plan and a work plan. It explains that a strategic plan is your big picture direction and clarifies the difference between vision, mission, values, goals, key results and initiatives. The Operational plan follows the strategic plan and provides a more detailed road map providing SMART objectives, and the Work Plan points to a twelve-point process to map out an action plan.

There are no guarantees that once you develop a business plan that you will achieve your ends. What it does do is give you a map to follow and when you experience blocks along the way, it allows you to take a detour until you can regain the direction. This is no different than when you are on a road trip to New York and you come across construction along the highway that forces you to take a detour. You don’t stop going to New York, you take the detour then return to the highway that takes you to New York.

A basic tenant of planning documents is that they are ‘living documents’ and all of us must adjust to the challenges and opportunities we face as we work toward our vision.