Set the Stage

Ask some basic questions before formulating this year’s strategy.

For most companies, strategic planning is an incremental adjustment process in which the past strategy is examined to determine if it is still relevant or needs to be adjusted.  This approach may be appropriate for sedate businesses or markets for a year or two but will leave the company vulnerable to unanticipated events that could have been easily anticipated and, perhaps, avoided by taking the time to review their core assumptions about themselves, their customers, the market, and their present and potential competitors.