Strategic Growth Plan Implementation

By TCV Growth Partners

It can take months and thousands of dollars to create a viable strategic growth plan. Then what? Many times a well-developed plan that everyone on the team has bought into gets “put on the shelf” and, over time, forgotten. What a waste!  So how to make a strategic plan a “living document”? 

The answer is to translate the strategic plan into actionable bite sized pieces that can be reasonably executed – a Quarterly Action Plan or QAP.  The QAP has specific goals that are related to the overall strategic plan goals.  These goals, in turn, have sub goals that are achieved thru a series of activities that are undertaken by responsible parties with deadlines and an associated cost that is incorporated into the company’s overall annual budget.  Below is an illustration of what a QAP might look like.

Quarterly action plans should be developed for not more than 4 quarters at a time because as the plans are acted on, adjustments will be needed to keep the plans aligned with the realities of the market place. For example, what if it takes longer for a new sales person to generate the anticipated sales revenue? You will need to make an adjustment to the next quarter plan for increasing headcount to provide services for the anticipated new customers. This in turn may require an adjustment to the Strategic Plan goals. These adjustments ensure that the overall Strategic Plan remains a living document.

As you can see in the example above, designating a responsible person, having deadlines and using KPI’s are essential to the success of the QAP. Regular (weekly) management meetings to review progress on the QAP are strongly recommended. This all ties to management accountability and making sure everyone is pulling on the oars in the same direction. Often senior management doesn’t have time to go through the learning process of creating and executing a strategic growth plan. TCV Growth Partners can help! Contact Doug@TCV-Growth.Partners for more information.